5 ms·
This is a quite biased view. As a non-Chinese scientist, I can attest that there is intense pressure to publish as many papers as possible pretty much everywhe
by Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
This is a quite biased view.
As a non-Chinese scientist, I can attest that there is intense pressure to publish as many papers as possible pretty much everywhere, and this leads to a problem of bad research across the world.
China may be among the worst offenders in this respect, but the particular thing the OP is asking about doesn't strike me as a Chinese-specific thing at all. I see non-Chinese scientists rushing half-baked results to arXiv all the time.
- light_hue_1 3y agoIt's not biased, it's a fact. I see it all the time as PC/AC/reviwer/etc. There is deluge of terrible papers from China that are just a mess, below any imaginable standard. Ones that labs in the EU/US/Russia/Japan/etc. don't put out. Yes, everyone has to publish, and there are bad papers out there, but the volume and low quality from China is unmatched.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- OO000oo 3y agoUnmatched doesn’t make it qualitatively unique. It’s a problem everywhere.
- cinntaile 3y agoIf the problem is much bigger from certain countries then I would say that qualifies as qualitatively unique.
- tough 3y agoIf those certain countries have a very big population I'd say is more of a quantitative issue. If china had 10 scientists they couldn't pump as many papers, fake or good or not as if they're 1million scientists
- dylan604 3y agoIsn't the population of China much bigger as well? Laws of percentages and what not can go along way. Has anyone displayed a percentage of rushed/inaccurate studies between countries to see if the lines normalize?
- nyolfen 3y agoi saw such a chart a few days ago, specifically for withdrawn papers -- forgive me if i can't dig it up again but china made up something like 50% of the total number e: recollection was slightly off but it is actually much worse! https://sci-hub.ru/10.1007/s11948-017-9939-6 https://sci-hub.ru/10.1007/s11948-017-9939-6 china is truly in a league of its own with this stuff, by literal orders of magnitude
- michaelmrose 3y agoPopulation of researchers != Population it's more than 4x as large in terms of population but only has ~25% more researchers while having around 50x the retractions.
- jldugger 3y ago> Isn't the population of China much bigger as well? Yes, but official government stats have also been overstating the population a bit. I think it mostly affects the younger generation at present though.
- SZJX 3y agolol I don’t know where you got this impression but during the one-child policy phase it’s widely known that people would underreport their kids to avoid fines. Why would the population be overstated?
- jldugger 3y ago> lol I don’t know where you got this impression but during the one-child policy phase it’s widely known that people would underreport their kids to avoid fines. The news mostly. But also this guy[1], who I guess is using the leaked data. But even the official data shows a huge drop in the 0-4 bucket. > Why would the population be overstated? As I understand it[2], the local governments are reliant on two sources for income: land sales and money from the central government. Both are influenced by demographic change, so there's incentives to adjust the numbers upwards to keep revenue coming in. [1]: https://zeihan.com/new-chinese-demographic-data-population-collapse/ https://zeihan.com/new-chinese-demographic-data-population-c... [2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-13/china-s-provinces-are-increasingly-reliant-on-beijing-for-money https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-13/china-s-p...
- sheepscreek 3y ago> It's not biased, it's a fact. I see it all the time as PC/AC/reviwer/etc. Let's agree this is anecdotal at best, and move on. Facts need data to back them up. There's no data or links to research in this post.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y agoI'm confident that poster's experiences are based on the data they saw if you're doubting the veracity of the poster's claims, just say so directly
- macintux 3y agoData linked from another comment. https://sci-hub.ru/10.1007/s11948-017-9939-6 https://sci-hub.ru/10.1007/s11948-017-9939-6
- PicassoCTs 3y agoface culture and science dont mesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept)
- d0gbread 3y agoSeems like a wild generalization.
- hotdogscout 3y agoIt is not wild, if you can't disagree with the majority I'm skeptical of your ability to discover truths. I anecdotally feel religious or leftist western circles very much fall under the definition of face culture though.
- throwaway2037 3y agoThat is crazy talk. I don't believe it. Korea and Japan both have crazy levels of "face" in their culture (and Taiwan to somewhat less extent), and they all produce huge amounts of high quality scientific papers.
- happytiger 3y agoChina publishes more science research with fabricated peer-review than everyone else put together https://qz.com/978037/china-publishes-more-science-research-with-fabricated-peer-review-than-everyone-else-put-together https://qz.com/978037/china-publishes-more-science-research-... I respectfully submit that you may be providing an anecdotal experience. It’s so bad that China’s courts have called for the death penalty for scientific fraud. https://www.statnews.com/2017/06/23/china-death-penalty-research-fraud/ https://www.statnews.com/2017/06/23/china-death-penalty-rese... Goodness me.
- danielheath 3y ago“More than everyone else together” is meaningless without considering the relevant population sizes (in this case, the relevant population is “number of researchers producing papers”). If China has half the worlds academics-writing-papers, one would _expect_ them to be responsible for half the fabricated ones.
- bloppe 3y agoChinese researchers [1] publish fewer total articles in Nature than American ones [2]. It's just one journal, with an admittedly western-leaning audience, but that's what the QZ article focuses on. It does include the caveat that it's possible that translation problems played a bigger role in the Chinese retractions than they did for other countries' retractions, although it would be surprising if that were the only cause of such a widespread problem. [1]: https://www.nature.com/nature-index/country-outputs/China https://www.nature.com/nature-index/country-outputs/China [2]: https://www.nature.com/nature-index/country-outputs/United%20States%20of%20America%20%28USA%29 https://www.nature.com/nature-index/country-outputs/United%2...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- janalsncm 3y agoNice to see a government that takes science seriously. In the US if you fake data you can become president of Stanford (for a while).