It always suprises me how people don't do minimum effort for hiding this stuff.
And no one notices. (or don't care about the obviously suspicious aspect)
Do scientists actually read what they cite?
And no one notices. (or don't care about the obviously suspicious aspect)
Do scientists actually read what they cite?
The AUTHORS of the original paper got a dataset from a company. They didn't assume the fraud from the start and published the paper based on it.
Later, when they tried to analyze the issue more in-depth, they couldn't replicate the results. THE ORIGINAL AUTHORS PUBLISHED a paper about a failure to replicate. It was just then that someone looked at the original data and found that it was faked.
The fear of reputational implosion is apparently insufficient.
I did completely read what was available to me without having an account.
> The AUTHORS of the original paper got a dataset from a company. They didn't assume the fraud from the start and published the paper based on it.
My comment is not about who the culprit is or isn't. Indeed, I don't mention anything about it.
Rather, it's about how, as the title says, a WIDELY cited paper has fabricated data following rather (IMO) obvious red flag patterns and none of the people -who cited the paper- raised issues about that.
Thus, I questioned whether scientists read or not the papers they cite in the parent post. The question is not a judgment, I'm just truly curious since I'm not part of the formal academia, just an undergraduate.
No. What are you kidding me. There's like typically over 50 papers referenced in a typical publication, no way I have the time to read all of them carefully
Yes, but few actually scrutinize the methodology of the studies. Statistics is really hard. It's easier to assume peer reviewers would have rejected the paper if it was bad.
I depends on ones probity, but yes the phenomenon is widespread. There are numerous reasons to cite a paper and just read it superficially: padding the references list, pleasing a reviewer by adding a paper he recommended, citing friends, etc. In my own lab they frequently cite a certain theory which if you actually read about it has nothing to do with what they are doing.