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What to do about peer review

by Jeremy Horne, Ph.D. The Inventors Assistance League www.inventions.org mindsurgeon@hotmail.com

Presented to:
The 16th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics: WMSCI 2012

17-20 July 2012 Orlando, Florida, USA

Whom are we talking about?


Editors Reviewers Writers Readers

Each has an ethical duty to monitor the integrity of what is being presented.

Carl Zimmer

In the fall of 2010, Dr. Ferric C. Fang made an unsettling discovery. Dr. Fang, who is editor in chief of the journal Infection and Immunity, found that one of his authors had doctored several papers. It was a new experience for him. Prior to that time, he said in an interview, Infection and Immunity had only retracted nine articles over a 40-year period. The journal wound up retracting six of the papers from the author, Naoki Mori of the University of the Ryukyus in Japan. And it soon became clear that Infection and Immunity was hardly the only victim of Dr. Moris misconduct. Since then, other scientific journals have retracted two dozen of his papers, according to the watchdog blog Retraction Watch. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/science/rise-in-scientific-journal-ret

What we think is peer review?


Ethical environment reviewers, reviewed, and audience Standards of quality Judgment of quality Quality reviewers Contribution to the body of knowledge

What peer review often is


Editorial bias Destructive competition Fraud, data manipulation, etc. No uniform standards Unqualified reviewers

Richard Horton, editor of the British medical journal The Lancet The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptabilitynot the validityof a new finding. Editors and scientists alike insist on the pivotal importance of peer review. We portray peer review to the public as a quasisacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong [Horton, Richard (2000). "Genetically modified food: consternation, confusion, and crack-up". MJA 172 (4): 1489. PMID 10772580.].

"Only 8% agreed that 'Peer Review works well as it is'," according to a survey made to the members of the Scientific Research Society. " [Chubin, D. R. and Hackett E. J., 1990, Peerless Science, Peer Review and U.S. Science Policy; New York, State University of New York Press, p. 192.]

`the practice of peer review is based on faith in its effects, rather than on facts'.

[Jefferson T, Alderson P, Wager E, Davidoff F. Effects of editorial peer review: a systematic review. JAMA2002;287:2784 -6 http://jrsm.rsmjournals.com/content/99/4/178.full#ref-2 ]

Peer review is not only about academics.


Faulty software Poor documentation Defective products counterbalanced against the claims Business scandals Bankster bailout, Wall Street debacle Politics Sales The whole legal system Advertising

90% of home computers are Microsoft Windows-based

Interesting source note to illustrate lack of accountability -

Even today, Microsoft has more than 90 percent market share of desktops, compared with 6 percent for Apple. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57455261-94/why

No sources given for this ubiquitous figure.

Other areas GSK [Glaxo-Smith-Klein] targeted the antidepressant Paxil to patients under age 18 when it was approved for adults only, and it pushed the drug Wellbutrin for uses it was not approved for, including weight loss and treatment of sexual dysfunction, according to an investigation led by the US Department of Justice. The company went to extreme lengths to promote the drugs, including distributing a misleading medical journal article, providing doctors with expensive resort vacations, European hunting trips, high-paid speaking tours and even tickets to a Madonna concert.
[http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2012/07/201272195753767494.html]

Sources of problems

Dishonesty Lack of knowledge Ideology Wishful thinking Peer pressure Sloppy methods Ego

Sources of dishonesty
Willful altering of truth due to:

Genetics Ego Peer pressure Loss of sense of virtue

How organisms manage to venture their egos to meet peer pressure and competition -

Consider

It's natural!

They are not what they appear to be.


In animals, plumage, camouflage, and a cat ruffling its fur are forms of puffery, or, to us a form of the lie saying something to the outside world when the truth is something different. We seem to be stuck with this basic constitution.

The Emperor's New Clothes

[Illustration by , Andersen's first illustrator]

We ask, who are the wizards, or experts?


What is our knowledge base?

The White Lie

The Black Lie 2007-2012 by Zindy http://zindy.deviantart.com/art/The-Black-Lie-58075950

Who are we?

Society of lies lies to ourselves, our spouses, the products we sell the whole ecosystem is based on lies advertising

EGO

Lack and questionable integrity of knowledge


This extends all across the spectrum from general public to the scientists.

June 1, 2012 In U.S., 46% Hold Creationist View of Human Origins


by Frank Newport PRINCETON, NJ -- Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years. The prevalence of this creationist view of the origin of humans is essentially unchanged from 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/155003/hold-creationist-view-human-origins.aspx

In Academically Adrift, sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa report that after two years of college, 45% of American students havent learned anything, and after four years, 36% havent. Most students, they discovered, define college as a social, not an academic or intellectual, experience; half the students in their study said they hadnt taken a single course in the previous semester that required more than 20 pages of writing, and a third said they hadnt taken a course requiring more than 40 pages of reading. A Marist poll released on 4 July 2011 (appropriately enough) showed that 69% of Americans in the under-30 age group are unaware that the U.S. declared its independence in 1776. http://morrisberman.blogspot.mx/

We come to the borderlands of science when good science goes bad


Norm Shealy Richard C. Hoagland Stanley McDaniel William Shockley Linus Pauling Rhine Institute Journal of Frontier Science Journal of Scientific Discovery

Then, there are

Bernard Haisch - Solar & Astrophysics Laboratory at Lockheed Martin in Palo Alto, California, deputy director - Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, visiting scientist - Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany and at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. More than 100 papers Nature, Science, Physical Review, Astrophysical Journal, and Annalen der Physik. Website - UFO Skeptic, which promotes the investigation of the UFO phenomenon by professional scientists. Brian Josephson 1973 Nobel Laureate Josephson Junction, parapsychological phenomena may be real, Eastern mysticism may have relevance to scientific understanding Criticism by several fellow physicists including David Deutsch, a quantum physicist at Oxford University who stated: "It [telepathy explained by quantum processes] is utter rubbish. -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Josephson

Stanley McDaniel

Instructor in Philosophy, Brooklyn College, CUNY, 1964-66 Teacher of Philosophy at Sonoma State University, 19661992: (Pragmatism, Kant, Logic, Eastern Thought, Philosophy of Psychology, Aesthetics of Music, Philosophy of Esoteric Systems, etc.) Chair, Department of Philosophy, Sonoma State University Member, American Philosophical Association. Member, Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. Member, American Association of Philosophy Teachers. Vice-President of the Board of Directors, The Foundation for Critical Thinking;Rohnert Park, California.

The McDaniel Report


Instead of carrying out legitimate scientific enquiry , NASA has regularly sent false and misleading statements regarding the landforms to members of congress and their constituents. [http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/marte/esp_marte_41.htm ]

8 April 2001 1976 Viking 1photograph of the Face on Mars

Pareidolia (play /prdoli/ parr-i-DOH-lee-) is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D

Gigatens

Gigatens circuit diagram

Signs of crossing the boundary

Faulty methods Will to believe Abandonment of dispassionate search for truth Straying into area outside of expertise Not qualifying conclusions Psychotic break Commercializing your findings Release of results first through popular press Generalizing from a few legitimate examples Religiosity and ideology control research direction

If this weren't bad enough

[ h ttp ://w w w .c h ris to p h e r m c g ill.c o m /2 0 1 0 /0 5 /2 4 /th e - to p - n in e - c v - lie s -to -lo o k - o u t- f o r -s a n a n to n io / ]

A small sample
The dean of admissions at MIT was forced to resign in 2007 for falsifying her resume.[ ] The vice dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania resigned Thursday, one day after he was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation into his false claim to have a doctoral degree. [http://www.academicjobstoday.com/news-1658Penn_education_graduate_school_vice_dean_Doug_Lynch_resi gns_over_questions_about_his_doctoral_credentials.html 27 April 2012 ] On Monday morning, President Pamela Gann of Claremont McKenna College announced via email to members of the CMC community that a senior administrator at the Office of Admission had been reporting inaccurate SAT statistics since 2005. - January 30, 2012 at 12:54 pm [http://cmcforum.com/news/01302012-cmc-office-of-admissionfalsely-reported-sat-scores ]

Plagiarism
data are sorely lacking on the true extent of plagiarism, whether its prevalence is growing substantially and what differences might exist between disciplines. [Plagiarism pinioned Nature 466,159160 (08 July 2010) doi:10.1038/466159b Published online 07 July 2010 - ] The University of Virginia recently stripped Fred D. Smith of his doctorate in education. Last year, iThenticate was utilized by a reporter from to break a story on Smith, the exPocantico Hills superintendent who plagiarized much of his UVA dissertation. [http://www.ithenticate.com/plagiarism-checker-blog/bid/52964/Dissertation-Plagiarism ] Boston University, where King received his in , conducted an investigation that found he plagiarized major portions of his doctoral thesis from various other authors who wrote about the topic. Boston University decided not to revoke his doctorate, saying that although King acted improperly, his dissertation still "makes an intelligent contribution to scholarship." However, a letter is now attached to King's dissertation in the university library, noting that numerous passages were included without the appropriate quotations and citations of sources. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr._authorship_issues ]

...more
Study by Don McCade, a University of Rutgers Professornearly 40% of college students have plagiarized papers by the cut-and-paste function on their computers to lift text off the internet (Heyboer). At the University of Toronto, more than 200 cases of plagiarism are reported each year, and the university's administration notes that this is probably only a fraction of those who actually commit academic fraud . An article in London's Daily Mail claims that in the United Kingdom as many as 30 to 35 percent of student assignments are cribbed at least in part, from essay banks and fellow students' work (Grant). An August 2002 report by Larissa Dubecki observes that of 1000 university students surveyed from four Australian universities, 41% admitted cheating on tests, while 86% of males and 77% of females admitted to committing some form of plagiarism ( ). -

Inflating test scores

E x c e rp ts T h e y a re a m o n g a t le a s t 2 2 0 C a n a d ia n s w ith b o g u s a c a d e m ic c re d e n tia ls u n c o v e re d in a re c e n t p ro b e . W o rld w id e , fa k e d e g re e s a re a b illio n d o lla r in d u s try , e v e n th re a te n in g g o v e rn m e n t s e c u rity , in v e s tig a to rs s a y . L a s t w e e k , a n u n d e rc o v e r S ta r in v e s tig a tio n e x p o s e d P e n g S u n , a Y o rk U n iv e rs ity g ra d w h o fo rg e s u n iv e rs ity d e g re e s fro m re a l C a n a d ia n u n iv e rs itie s fo r $ 4 ,0 0 0 . S u n 's c l i e n t l i s t w a s n o t a v a i l a b l e , b u t t h e S t a r o b t a i n e d a l i s t o f C a n a d i a n s w h o b o u g h t fa k e d e g re e s fro m a n A m e ric a n d ip lo m a m ill b u s te d th re e y e a rs a g o b y th e U .S . S e c r e t S e r v ic e a n d H o m e la n d S e c u r it y . T h e g a n g ra k e d in m o re th a n $ 7 m illio n in s a le s to 1 3 1 c o u n trie s . It s o ld e v e ry th in g fro m h ig h s c h o o l d ip lo m a s to P h D s a n d m e d ic a l d e g re e s . D o z e n s o f U .S . g o v e r n m e n t e m p lo y e e s a r e o n th e lis t, in c lu d in g a W h ite H o u s e s ta f f m e m b e r, N a tio n a l S e c u rity A g e n c y e m p lo y e e s , a s e n io r S ta te D e p a rtm e n t o ffic ia l, a n d a D e p a rtm e n t o f J u s tic e e m p lo y e e . T e n s o f th o u s a n d s o f p e o p le a re w a lk in g a ro u n d w ith " tic k in g tim e b o m b s in th e ir re s u m e s ," s a y s A lle n E z e ll, a fo rm e r F B I a g e n t w h o h a s s p e n t a b ig c h u n k o f h is c a re e r in v e s tig a tin g d ip lo m a m ills . A th ird -y e a r O s g o o d e H a ll L a w S c h o o l s tu d e n t, F re d e ric k , 2 8 , is o n th e lis t a s h a v in g p a id $ 1 ,1 0 9 f o r a " B .A ." in B u s in e s s A d m in is tr a tio n , p lu s a tr a n s c r ip t o f m a rk s . U s in g th e d e g re e tra n s c rip t, F re d e ric k g o t in to O s g o o d e a s o n e o f 2 9 0 s tu d e n ts s e le c te d fro m 2 ,5 0 0 a p p lic a n ts in 2 0 0 6 . [Q u e s tio n W h e re w a s th e s c re e n in g , h e re ? ] [ h ttp ://w w w .th e s ta r .c o m /n e w s /in v e s tig a tio n s /p r iv a te c a r e e r c o lle g e s /a r tic le /5 5 3 3 3 0 --p h o n y -d e g re e s -c a tc h -u p -to -b u y e rs ]

The dean of admissions at MIT was forced to resign in 2007 for falsifying her resume.[ ] The vice dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania resigned Thursday, one day after he was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation into his false claim to have a doctoral degree. [http://www.academicjobstoday.com/news1658Penn_education_graduate_school_vice_dean_Doug_Lynch_resigns_o ver_questions_about_his_doctoral_credentials.html 27 April 2012 ] On Monday morning, President Pamela Gann of Claremont McKenna College announced via email to members of the CMC community that a senior administrator at the Office of Admission had been reporting inaccurate SAT statistics since 2005. - January 30, 2012 at 12:54 pm [ http://cmcforum.com/news/01302012-cmc-office-of-admission-falsely-report ]

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Better controls over degrees and transcripts

Biometric identification one calling for it could require one submitting credential to validate it by fingerprint, etc. Hologram and/or manufacture in same manner as paper money Verify issuance with university by internet and in person Transcript serial number printed on degree

Question of information integrity


Problem: Source of most peoples information Google, blogs, opinions Solution: Require epistemology in all curriculums integrated with subjects in all grades summary course in both high school and college on in frequency as the teaching of country's language (in the case of the U.S., English) Require critical thinking, philosophy, and logic in both high school and college, as well as core curriculum

Where are we?

Alaric only sacked Rome for its gold the society was already gutted.

Are we approaching a new Medievalism?

Bhaskaranaidu http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Clear_picture_of_moat_at_rayavellore_fort.JPG

We need to avoid this!


Wait too fast we need to resolve one issue Are we willing to internalize a life and knowledge sustaining value system? What are our values? Once we have affirmed them, THEN we can proceed.

Before anything - 'Know Thyself'

Time for instrumentation

Basic standards

Who is the author? What is her/his background what qualifications does s/he have to write about the subject? With what organizations or individuals is/are the author(s) associated that might suggest a bias? Under what circumstances is the author writing that might contribute to a bias? How current is the information? In what context is the information framed? What method was to obtain the information? In what location was the information prepared or formulated? How plausible is the information? How skeptical should you be? How tight is the argumentation? How well is the information documented?

Belief and knowledge


Epistemology accounting for HOW do we know

Tradition History Logic Empiricism Science Faith

Programme to solve peer review problem must include


Need WILL to do something Plan and means to carry it out Action actual participation Knowledge of standards Ethics Screening of reviewers (education, area of competence, reviewing history, etc.)

Knowledge Generation and Communication Management


Knowledge from information from data Communication how to convey it interdisciplinary means

What can KGCM do?


Act is arbitrator Help establish common standards Act as pre-reviewer for writers, and reviewers Be a forum for writers, editors, readers, and peer reviewers Link together those in charge of peer reviewing venues editors, conference chairs, etc.

JOIN US in the ongoing workshop at this conference and work with us in the future in advancing our programme. The room for improving the process is endless.

What can YOU do?

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