How do we improve peer review?

David Stuart at Research Information spoke to Chris Graf of Springer Nature and Coromoto Power Febres of Emerald, who is one of our volunteer advisers.

https://www.researchinformation.info/feature/how-do-we-improve-peer-review

#PeerReview #ScienceReform #ResearchInformation

New blog post! There's a version of this on Psychology Today, but I got some weird edits, so I wanted to have a "version of record" here.

This one is about how the President of Stanford allegedly falsified Alzheimer's research, has been called out on it for over 2 decades, and continues to "fail up."

Comments here are welcome.

@socialpsych
@cognition
@neuroscience

https://danvers.substack.com/p/failing-up-in-research

#ScienceReform #Alzheimers #ResearchFraud #Stanford

Why we need to change our performance metrics in science:

"...swiftly publishing several small but catchy contributions trumps publishing a carefully planned multistudy investigation [...] Performance metrics should be redesigned to [..] understand complex research questions; to test boundary conditions and the generalizability of insights; or to ask research questions that lie off the trodden path of the mainstream."

via https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01508-2
#ScienceReform #AcademicChatter @academicchatter

There are thousands of hyerprolific researchers that publish one paper every 5 days or less. Their numbers have increased 20-fold over 13 years 📈

How do they do it?

Some reasons include: hard work, lots of mentees, large collaborative network, little sleep.

"the increase in the average number of authors per paper does not reflect so much the genuine needs of team science as the pressure to ‘publish or perish’"

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06185-8
#OpenScience #ScienceReform #Science @academicchatter

Graduate students are 6 times more likely to have depression and anxiety. 👩‍🎓

The reason?

According to one study, unsupportive supervisors and a poor work-life balance may be important contributors (N = 2,279): "Work–life balance is hard to attain in a culture where it is frowned upon to leave the laboratory before the sun goes down."

https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4089
#AcademicChatter #phdlife #ScienceReform @academicchatter

How many 1st author publications is too much? 🚩🚩🚩

An (unscientific) poll I did suggests that a majority see 5 to 7 first-author publications per year as a red flag. About 1 in 5 thought that even 3 to 4 first-author pubs a year was concerning. (N = 81)

Would be interesting to see how it would pan out with more poll response options, answers separated for early vs. late career, and by field.

https://fediscience.org/@erinnacland/109485626432316469
#academicchatter #researchintegrity #sciencereform @academicchatter

https://www.cos.io/unconference

Excited to submit a proposal to the #OpenScience virtual #unconference !!!!

@academicchatter
@socialwork
#ScienceReform
#OER #OpenEdication

Stanford University is investigating its president for manipulating images in their papers.

"...these cases aren’t rare" says @retractionwatch @armarcus @ivanoransky

"A retraction for image manipulation happens about once every other day"

That amount is likely the tip of the iceberg given that image fraud is usually discovered by unpaid research sleuths, not publishers.

@academicchatter #sciencereform #researchintegrity #academicchatter #science
https://www.statnews.com/2022/12/02/image-manipulation-in-science-is-suddenly-in-the-news-but-these-cases-are-hardly-rare/

Hey #OpenScience and #ScienceReform folks, are there good papers out there discussing "salami slicing" of studies? Also, does anyone know the original paper to cite the term?

Holy absolute crap.

I have never before encountered this in all of my research career. Here is an article from a *freelance journalist* that appeared in the British medical journal under "external peer review". She has a number of articles in that journal. They contain COVID misinformation. This profoundly unethical practice led to students sharing COVID misinformation in class.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://scholar.archive.org/work/mah52fcwzfa3xjlgwa23spmoky/access/wayback/https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/373/bmj.n1397.full.pdf&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bbOLY_jNEY70mgG3m7KgDQ&scisig=AAGBfm2zj5w1f0lhKAomhUcPlsxJr2VurA&oi=scholarr

#researchethics
#openscience
#sciencereform

@academicchatter
@socialwork

@Russpoldrack

Holy shit. I thought out editorial staff was bad in social work.

#OpenSicence #ScienceReform #peerreview

Just came across this online textbook. Looks like a great resource!

https://open-science-training-handbook.gitbook.io/book/

#OpenScience #ScienceReform #Research

An article to @EU_ScienceHub @ERC_Research
"Research shows that, barring a minority of outstanding projects, grant winners and losers are not decided by a precise and objective identification of worthy and unworthy projects. Instead, the luck of the draw — who reviews what proposal and the opinions they hold — generally determines these outcomes."

"It is excessively wasteful in terms of researchers’ time."
https://www.statnews.com/2022/10/21/research-funding-broken-lottery-approach-could-fix-it/​

#sciencereform​
 @academicchatter

On science criticism:

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/11/21/only-positive-reinforcement-for-researchers-in-some-fields/

"One thing I really dislike is the idea that its not possible to be both an inclusive field and a field that embraces criticism. ... It’s unfortunate I guess that some fields that embrace criticism are not very diverse (say, finance or parts of econ), and that other fields that prioritize novelty and diversity in methods over critiquing what exists tend to be better on diversity, like HCI or visualization"

#ScienceReform #Research

This authoritarian streak in high prestige scientists was something #SocialPsychology dealt with for the last decade. There was name calling, bullying, denial of basic facts, refusal to engage with the logic of the critiques.

"Thomas Basebøll remarked that, whether the critics are on the “attack” or not, LeCun is certainly on the defensive, reacting to the criticism as though it’s an attack. Kind of like calling it “methodological terrorism” or something."

#ScienceReform

An article to read @EU_Commission
"Research shows that, barring a minority of outstanding projects, grant winners and losers are not decided by a precise and objective identification of worthy and unworthy projects. Instead, the luck of the draw — who reviews what proposal and the opinions they hold — generally determines these outcomes."

"It is excessively wasteful in terms of researchers’ time."
https://www.statnews.com/2022/10/21/research-funding-broken-lottery-approach-could-fix-it/

#sciencereform
@academicchatter

I just saw a postdoc ad for $36,000 CAD.

(27,000 USD or 26,000 EUR)

It stated is was 35 hours/week, but only when they didn't need you to work more. So likely closer to 40h/week.

That's $17/hour—only $2 above the minimum wage of $15 in the province.

That's the pay being offered to our most educated, highly specialized citizens. It's no wonder PhDs are leaving academia in droves.

#sciencereform #canada #macademia @academicchatter

Should grants use a lottery approach? 🎟️

"Research shows that, barring a minority of outstanding projects, grant winners and losers are not decided by a precise and objective identification of worthy and unworthy projects. Instead, the luck of the draw — who reviews what proposal and the opinions they hold — generally determines these outcomes."

"It is excessively wasteful in terms of researchers’ time."

https://www.statnews.com/2022/10/21/research-funding-broken-lottery-approach-could-fix-it/

#sciencereform #macademia #metascience @academicchatter

@kaitclark @rdhawkins thank you! Please add: #socialpsychology #personality #sciencereform #openscience #psychmethods

Here's my #PsychologyToday blog, because sharing this kind of stuff was a big part of why I used social media:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/alexander-danvers-phd

#psychology #sciencereform #research #methods