Stings, Scams and Science - Publishing fake research papers is a flourishing business in India-China

[Chanakya's_Chant]

Stings, Scams and Science​

​

This is not how science ‘research’ is always done. — G.P. Sampath Kumar

Publishing fake research papers is a flourishing business in India and China.​

The global landscape for scientific research is fast changing. Going by criteria such as national spending on research and development (R&D) and scientific publishing, the axis appears to be shifting from America and Europe to Asia and elsewhere. India, China, Brazil and Korea have significantly stepped up their efforts in the scientific arena in the past decade or so.

China and India are among the top 10 countries in terms of the number of research papers published annually. China has surpassed the UK and other European countries to emerge as the second most prolific publisher of research papers, next only to the US. India ranks seventh in this list.

It’s a racket

The overall quality of research papers published by academics in India and China, however, leaves much to be desired. Two separate sting or undercover operations have recently revealed that scientific publications are virtually on sale in India and China.

One can get published any fake research paper with astounding findings such as new cures for cancer in several Indian journals by making a cash payment, while in China scientific authorship or data can be bought with money without any need to do research, sting operations carried out by the journalScience have revealed.

The first sting exposed fraud in scientific publishing globally, and it seems India leads in this business. Thousands of scientific journals are published from India covering practically every field of science. Most of them fall in the category of ‘open access’, meaning they can be accessed online by anyone without paying any fee. Open access journals are sustained by the processing or publication fee paid by the authors or institutions they belong to, while subscription-based journals are not available for free online.

The system of open access journals came into vogue a decade ago with the legitimate objective of making scientific research accessible to academics in poor countries. It was felt that subscription-based journals such as Nature or The Lancet were unaffordable to academics and researchers in poor countries.

Both open access and subscription-based journals are supposed to rigorously examine a research paper through a system of peer-review before they publish it. But, as the expose shows, some publishers have reduced open access publishing to a racket.

In an operation that lasted 10 months, science journalist John Bohannan concocted a research paper describing the anti-cancer properties of a chemical extracted from a lichen. He sent 304 versions of this paper with fake and utterly flawed data to open access journals.

Names of scientists and institutions were all fake (such as Dr Onoohaw D. Induah from Iyeparroo Doctor's College, Malawi or Dr Ocorrafoo Cobange from Wassee Institute of Medicine). The spoof paper sounded credible but contained grave errors. Surprisingly, more than half of the journals accepted the paper and a bulk of them were based in India (at locations such as Bijapur, Jaipur, Chidambaram, Udaipur, Srinagar, Chennai, Mumbai, etc). As email trails show, journal editors were quick to accept papers and send invoices along with bank account details.

About a third of the journals were based in India — visibly or as revealed by the location of editors and bank accounts — making it the world’s largest base for open access publishing, says Bohannan in the expose published in Science.

As many as 64 India-based journals accepted the flawed paper and just 15 rejected it. The US emerged as the next largest base with 29 acceptances and 26 rejections. Even journals hosted by top publishers — Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer, Sage — reportedly accepted the bogus paper.

Thriving black market

The second investigation – also carried out by Science – shows that even mainline journals are not impregnable for unscrupulous scientists in China. The investigation has found a “flourishing black market” in academic publishing involving shady agencies, corrupt scientists, and compromised editors.

They are trading authorship in research papers in top journals with globally accepted benchmarks such as Science Citation Index (SCI) of Thomson Reuters and Engineering Index of Elsevier. Middlemen are selling authorship in research papers to be published in high impact journals. Co-authorship of research papers can be bought for fees ranging from $1,600 to $26,300.

Undercover reporters of Science discovered various ways of getting papers published in top journals. The website of an operator called Sciedit openly advertises — “Publish SCI papers without doing any experiments”.

Another has a ready stock of abstracts for clients who need to get published fast, while some list titles of papers that only lack authors. One such company representative revealed that his firm buys data from a national laboratory in Hunan province.

Another common brokerage method is bringing on authors after a paper has gone through peer review with a journal. Some journals allow authors to be added at a late stage in the review process. Chinese researchers are ready to buy authorships in journals with a high impact factor because they are critical for getting promotions.

The two stings clearly show that scientific publishing, particularly open access, has been reduced to a scam in many countries. It is child’s play to get fake or flawed research papers published in journals without any peer review and scrutiny.

Scientists are using these journals to increase the number of research papers published by them since it is directly linked to promotions, incentives and other rewards in the academic system.

Common man conned

Unethical practices in scientific publishing are not new. Plagiarism, ghost writing, conflict of interest have plagued mainline research publications as well for a long time.

There have been several instances of drug and chemical companies surreptitiously getting favourable mention for their products or procedures in research papers. Leading publishers have hosted sponsored journals without disclosing the source of income to readers.

The two scandals indicate that the scale of fraud has been institutionalised and has become an industry in which culpable scientists are becoming partners. Even peer-reviewed journals are not above board, as indicated in the Chinese scam.

Fraudulent research publishing has severe implications for the common man, as most medical and science stories in media are based on what appears in scientific journals. Clinical practices of doctors are influenced by research findings that appear in technical journals.

If research published in journals itself is compromised so will be the news reported in media. It is time researchers and science academies woke up and took corrective measures to put an end to fraud in scientific publishing.

By DINESH C. SHARMA
(The writer is a science journalist and author based in New Delhi)

(This article was published on December 27, 2013)

Source:- Stings, scams and science | Business Line
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[Fattyacids]

As many as 64 India-based journals accepted the flawed paper and just 15 rejected it. The US emerged as the next largest base with 29 acceptances and 26 rejections. Even journals hosted by top publishers — Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer, Sage — reportedly accepted the bogus paper.

Indian academic got caught for cheating, China has to be dragged in. In the article, no figures on chinese academics was reported. What kind of journalism is this??

No wonder, the writer doesn't even dare show his name!!

(The writer is a science journalist and author based in New Delhi)

Indian media please grow a brain!!

 

[Icewolf]

Well not china cheating but definently India cheats on medical papers which is why 50% of surgeries in India end up with the person dead or their kidney being stolen

 

[Chanakya's_Chant]

Indian academic got caught for cheating, China has to be dragged in. In the article, no figures on chinese academics was reported. What kind of journalism is this??

Chinese are often seem to be allergic towards Indian media reports when something doesn't please them well - Its primarily focused on India and maybe that's the reason it is being posted in this section - never-mind here is what "The Economist" has to say about your queries in the same concern -

Looks good on paper
A flawed system for judging research is leading to academic fraud

DISGUISED as employees of a gas company, a team of policemen burst into a flat in Beijing on September 1st. Two suspects inside panicked and tossed a plastic bag full of money out of a 15th-floor window. Red hundred-yuan notes worth as much as $50,000 fluttered to the pavement below.

Money raining down on pedestrians was not as bizarre, however, as the racket behind it. China is known for its pirated DVDs and fake designer gear, but these criminals were producing something more intellectual: fake scholarly articles which they sold to academics, and counterfeit versions of existing medical journals in which they sold publication slots.

As China tries to take its seat at the top table of global academia, the criminal underworld has seized on a feature in its research system: the fact that research grants and promotions are awarded on the basis of the number of articles published, not on the quality of the original research. This has fostered an industry of plagiarism, invented research and fake journals that Wuhan University estimated in 2009 was worth $150m, a fivefold increase on just two years earlier.

Chinese scientists are still rewarded for doing good research, and the number of high-quality researchers is increasing. Scientists all round the world also commit fraud. But the Chinese evaluation system is particularly susceptible to it.

By volume the output of Chinese science is impressive. Mainland Chinese researchers have published a steadily increasing share of scientific papers in journals included in the prestigious Science Citation Index (SCI—maintained by Thomson Reuters, a publisher). The number grew from a negligible share in 2001 to 9.5% in 2011, second in the world to America, according to a report published by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China. From 2002 to 2012, more than 1m Chinese papers were published in SCI journals; they ranked sixth for the number of times cited by others. Nature, a science journal, reported that in 2012 the number of papers from China in the journal’s 18 affiliated research publications rose by 35% from 2011. The journal said this “adds to the growing body of evidence that China is fast becoming a global leader in scientific publishing and scientific research”.

In 2010, however, Nature had also noted rising concerns about fraud in Chinese research, reporting that in one Chinese government survey, a third of more than 6,000 scientific researchers at six leading institutions admitted to plagiarism, falsification or fabrication. The details of the survey have not been publicly released, making it difficult to compare the results fairly with Western surveys, which have also found that one-third of scientists admit to dishonesty under the broadest definition, but that a far smaller percentage (2% on average) admit to having fabricated or falsified research results.

In 2012 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an American journal, published a study of retractions accounting for nation of origin. In it a team of authors wrote that in medical journal articles in PubMed, an American database maintained by the National Institutes of Health, there were more retractions due to plagiarism from China and India together than from America (which produced the most papers by far, and so the most cheating overall). The study also found that papers from China led the world in retractions due to duplication—the same papers being published in multiple journals. On retractions due to fraud, China ranked fourth, behind America, Germany and Japan.

“Stupid Chinese Idea”

Chinese scientists have urged their comrades to live up to the nation’s great history. “Academic corruption is gradually eroding the marvellous and well-established culture that our ancestors left for us 5,000 years ago,” wrote Lin Songqing of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in an article this year in Learned Publishing, a British-based journal.

In the 1980s, when China was only beginning to reinvest in science, amassing publishing credits seemed a good way to use non-political criteria for evaluating researchers. But today the statistics-driven standards for promotion (even when they are not handed out merely on the basis of personal connections) are as problematic as in the rest of the bureaucracy. Xiong Bingqi of the 21st Century Education Research Institute calls it the “GDPism of education”. Local government officials stand out with good statistics, says Mr Xiong. “It is the same with universities.”

The most valuable statistic a scientist can tally up is SCI journal credits, especially in journals with higher "impact factors"—ones that are cited more frequently in other scholars’ papers. SCI credits and impact factors are used to judge candidates for doctorates, promotions, research grants and pay bonuses. Some ambitious professors amass SCI credits at an astounding pace. Mr Lin writes that a professor at Ningbo university, in south-east China, published 82 such papers in a three-year span. A hint of the relative weakness of these papers is found in the fact that China ranks just 14th in average citations per SCI paper, suggesting that many Chinese papers are rarely quoted by other scholars.

The quality of research is not always an issue for those evaluating promotions and grants. Some administrators are unqualified to evaluate research, Chinese scientists say, either because they are bureaucrats or because they were promoted using the same criteria themselves. In addition, the administrators’ institutions are evaluated on their publication rankings, so university presidents and department heads place a priority on publishing, especially for SCI credits. This dynamic has led some in science circles to joke that SCI stands for “Stupid Chinese Idea”.

Crystal unclear

The warped incentive system has created some big embarrassments. In 2009 Acta Crystallographica Section E, a British journal on crystallography, was forced to retract 70 papers co-authored by two researchers at Jinggangshan university in southern China, because they had fabricated evidence described in the papers. After the retractions theLancet, a British journal, published a broadside urging China to take more action to prevent fraud. But many cases are covered up when detected to protect the institutions involved.

The pirated medical-journal racket broken up in Beijing shows that there is a well-developed market for publication beyond the authentic SCI journals. The cost of placing an article in one of the counterfeit journals was up to $650, police said. Purchasing a fake article cost up to $250. Police said the racket had earned several million yuan ($500,000 or more) since 2009. Customers were typically medical researchers angling for promotion.

Some government officials want to buy their way to academic stardom as well: at his trial this month for corruption, Zhang Shuguang, a former railway-ministry official, admitted to having spent nearly half of $7.8m in bribes that he had collected trying to get himself elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Chinese reports speculated that he spent the money buying votes and hiring teams of writers to produce books. Widely considered to be a man of limited academic achievement, Mr Zhang ultimately fell just one vote short of election. Less than two years later, he was in custody.

Source:- Scientific research: Looks good on paper | The Economist

Meanwhile in Canada -

Some of Canada’s top brain specialists have apparently been duped by shady operators in China.

The Canadian doctors approved and recently published a scientific report on Alzheimer’s disease that came from a “flourishing” academic black market in China, according to a report released Thursday.

Source:- China’s academic ‘black market’ fooled Canadian journal, report says

And many others on the go -
China’s Research Problem
Academic fraud in China is getting out of hand
Fake research paper accepted into hundreds of online journals - Salon.com
Faking of scientific papers on an industrial scale in China
Big trouble in little China: Two looks at what warps scientific publishing there | Retraction Watch

- You will find hundreds of these reports online - the only condition being - don't call it a western propaganda against China please!!!! And frankly speaking India is much better off in this concern - that's not done on an Industrial scale here....

No wonder, the writer doesn't even dare show his name!!
(The writer is a science journalist and author based in New Delhi)

Indian media please grow a brain!!

I guess you should rather grow up a brain first - His name is well mentioned both in the original article as well in this thread - High IQ right????

By DINESH C. SHARMA
(The writer is a science journalist and author based in New Delhi)

(This article was published on December 27, 2013)

Source:- Stings, scams and science | Business Line

 

[Chanakya's_Chant]

Well not china cheating but definently India cheats on medical papers which is why 50% of surgeries in India end up with the person dead or their kidney being stolen

Boot-licking the Chinese as usual!!!! Grow up man - You master wont really be pleased with that!!!

And yes kindly refrain from replicating Pakistani facts and figures on India - It may be definitely be in in Pakistan that 50% of surgeries end up with the person dead or their kidney being stolen - but certainly not in India and that's why India’s medical tourism industry, pegged at around $2 billion in 2013 beginning and is growing at 20% a year and Pakistanis constitute around 15-20% of the total international travelers coming to India for medical treatment.

BBC News - Pakistanis crossing border for Indian medical treatment
Indian doctors help Pakistani patients - Los Angeles Times

And guess what - rowing terrorist unrest and a hostile attitude towards minorities in Pakistan forced over 20 doctors to migrate to Gujarat last year. Over the past over four decades, 64 doctors have migrated to the safe haven of Gujarat from Pakistan, mostly from the Sindh province, and registered with the Gujarat Medical Council. Even your doctors are migrating in India for better prospects in their career!!!

Pakistani doctors flee Sindh, seek safety in Ahmedabad - Times Of India

Medical tourism is a growing sector in India. India’s medical tourism sector is experiencing an annual growth rate of 20%, making it a $2 billion industry this year. As medical treatment costs in the developed world balloon - with the United States leading the way - more and more Westerners are finding the prospect of international travel for medical care increasingly appealing. An estimated 150,000 of these travel to India for low-priced healthcare procedures every year - lol can you explain that as well?????

#You are making a fool out of yourself here and nothing else

 

[Fattyacids]

Chinese are often seem to be allergic towards Indian media reports when something doesn't please them well - Its primarily focused on India and maybe that's the reason it is being posted in this section - never-mind here is what "The Economist" has to say about your queries in the same concern -

Chinese have no allergy, the problem is Indian poor cognitive ability. Anyone with a fairly good intellect would've spotted the problem with 3rd rate indian media report, where it mentioned China in the heading, but failed to provide anything substantial in the article.
So what if you're posting in Indian section?

1) Does it exonerate the article from its sub standard journalism?

2) Does it mean Chinese member cannot read it?

Clearly, indian intellect failed to grasp that I'm taking issue with the article, not the subject matter. It is a well known fact that academic fraud happens in every country. What's the use of posting another article if one doesn't have the skill to read the article in its entirely and discern any shady journalism???

Your Economist article that bashed China subtly mentioned China only ranked fourth in terms of academic fraud. (This is based on research papers of the highest quality that made it to American National Academy of Sciences publication.
Why India is not in the list, India produces very little high quality research papers)

Scientific research: Looks good on paper | The Economist

In 2012 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an American journal, published a study of retractions accounting for nation of origin.........The study also found that papers from China led the world in retractions due to duplication—the same papers being published in multiple journals. On retractions due to fraud, China ranked fourth, behind America, Germany and Japan

Economist maybe more reputable than Businessline, but authors are all human. Whether they are out to take a swipe at China or not, any discerning readers can certainly tell. Need I say more?

Meanwhile in Canada -
Source:- China’s academic ‘black market’ fooled Canadian journal, report says

And many others on the go -
China’s Research Problem
Academic fraud in China is getting out of hand
Fake research paper accepted into hundreds of online journals - Salon.com
Faking of scientific papers on an industrial scale in China
Big trouble in little China: Two looks at what warps scientific publishing there | Retraction Watch

- You will find hundreds of these reports online - the only condition being - don't call it a western propaganda against China please!!!! And frankly speaking India is much better off in this concern - that's not done on an Industrial scale here....

As i said academic fraud happens in every country, do not delude yourself to think that India, among the world's most corrupted country is cleaner than China, LOL. Indian academic plagiarism is worse than just fraud for commercial purpose by low rank university. Plagiarism is widespread even among Indian elite institutions, professors and chancellors included.

Here is a quick summary
Scientific plagiarism in India - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The best Indian institution is plagued with plagiarism, we're talking about IITs. Professors and students are both involved.
IIT results of 30 students withheld after reports of cheating - Indian Express

Chancellor plagiarized too.
The Hindu : Rajput found guilty of all charges

Even the Science Advisor to India Prime Minister got caught for plagiarism
PM's top adviser in plagiarism row - Hindustan Times

I guess you should rather grow up a brain first - His name is well mentioned both in the original article as well in this thread - High IQ right????

LOL, spare me your asininity! Are you going to dispute that this line didn't come at the end of the original article?
"(The writer is a science journalist and author based in New Delhi)"

DINESH C. SHARMA was added to the heading by news website, it was NOT in the original article. This is usually taken as the journalist covering the news. If by that Businessline refers him as the author, it's another proof of substandard journalism.

 

[Bombermanx1]

Well not china cheating but definently India cheats on medical papers which is why 50% of surgeries in India end up with the person dead or their kidney being stolen

No wonder pakistanis prefer to come to india for surgery instead of going to china their trusted partner with high surgical skills.some joke, even westerners come to india for surgery instead of going to pakistan.

 

[Icewolf]

No wonder pakistanis prefer to come to india for surgery instead of going to china their trusted partner with high surgical skills.some joke, even westerners come to india for surgery instead of going to pakistan.

If you can't swim in the pool, better to take a dip into a sewer right?

 

[Icewolf]

Boot-licking the Chinese as usual!!!! Grow up man - You master wont really be pleased with that!!!

And yes kindly refrain from replicating Pakistani facts and figures on India - It may be definitely be in in Pakistan that 50% of surgeries end up with the person dead or their kidney being stolen - but certainly not in India and that's why India’s medical tourism industry, pegged at around $2 billion in 2013 beginning and is growing at 20% a year and Pakistanis constitute around 15-20% of the total international travelers coming to India for medical treatment.

BBC News - Pakistanis crossing border for Indian medical treatment
Indian doctors help Pakistani patients - Los Angeles Times

And guess what - rowing terrorist unrest and a hostile attitude towards minorities in Pakistan forced over 20 doctors to migrate to Gujarat last year. Over the past over four decades, 64 doctors have migrated to the safe haven of Gujarat from Pakistan, mostly from the Sindh province, and registered with the Gujarat Medical Council. Even your doctors are migrating in India for better prospects in their career!!!

Pakistani doctors flee Sindh, seek safety in Ahmedabad - Times Of India

Medical tourism is a growing sector in India. India’s medical tourism sector is experiencing an annual growth rate of 20%, making it a $2 billion industry this year. As medical treatment costs in the developed world balloon - with the United States leading the way - more and more Westerners are finding the prospect of international travel for medical care increasingly appealing. An estimated 150,000 of these travel to India for low-priced healthcare procedures every year - lol can you explain that as well?????

#You are making a fool out of yourself here and nothing else

Hindu traitors go to India for treatment . No sane Pakistani would go to a country like India

WOW! 64 doctors in 4 decades..... India is really a heaven for doctors !!!
Stop talking crap kid..... India has the worlds worst medical crisis..... You need doctors

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Don't think for one second this is a problem only in India and China. It is alive and well here in the US too. I have many contacts in research who are appalled at the faked data being used in papers just to get more federal grants.

That's why when somebody makes a big claim in a paper they have like 5 other teams redo the same study to verify it wasn't made up.

 

[Fahad Khan 2]

We Asians really need to improve our education standard and it can only be done by government good policies Chine's system has improved specially public.... India and pakistan public sector are big failure... Pakistan use to have good education system but Bhutto nationalization policy destroyed everything...

 

[armchairPrivate]

Indians Indians. China and India are separated by the holy mighty Himalaya. Please don't lump China together with India unnecessarily. China and India are sometimes spoken together only due to geographical proximity, but they don't necessarily do things the same way. For example, Chinese eat with chopsticks and Indians eat with their fingers.

 

[Cyberian]

India is now ranked No. 7 in the world with the number of research papers published? Well done India.










... but it's a fraud. What a shame.

 

[bolo]

Chinese have no allergy, the problem is Indian poor cognitive ability. Anyone with a fairly good intellect would've spotted the problem with 3rd rate indian media report, where it mentioned China in the heading, but failed to provide anything substantial in the article.
So what if you're posting in Indian section?

1) Does it exonerate the article from its sub standard journalism?

2) Does it mean Chinese member cannot read it?

Clearly, indian intellect failed to grasp that I'm taking issue with the article, not the subject matter. It is a well known fact that academic fraud happens in every country. What's the use of posting another article if one doesn't have the skill to read the article in its entirely and discern any shady journalism???

Your Economist article that bashed China subtly mentioned China only ranked fourth in terms of academic fraud. (This is based on research papers of the highest quality that made it to American National Academy of Sciences publication.
Why India is not in the list, India produces very little high quality research papers)

Scientific research: Looks good on paper | The Economist



Economist maybe more reputable than Businessline, but authors are all human. Whether they are out to take a swipe at China or not, any discerning readers can certainly tell. Need I say more?





As i said academic fraud happens in every country, do not delude yourself to think that India, among the world's most corrupted country is cleaner than China, LOL. Indian academic plagiarism is worse than just fraud for commercial purpose by low rank university. Plagiarism is widespread even among Indian elite institutions, professors and chancellors included.

Here is a quick summary
Scientific plagiarism in India - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The best Indian institution is plagued with plagiarism, we're talking about IITs. Professors and students are both involved.
IIT results of 30 students withheld after reports of cheating - Indian Express

Chancellor plagiarized too.
The Hindu : Rajput found guilty of all charges

Even the Science Advisor to India Prime Minister got caught for plagiarism
PM's top adviser in plagiarism row - Hindustan Times





LOL, spare me your asininity! Are you going to dispute that this line didn't come at the end of the original article?
"(The writer is a science journalist and author based in New Delhi)"

DINESH C. SHARMA was added to the heading by news website, it was NOT in the original article. This is usually taken as the journalist covering the news. If by that Businessline refers him as the author, it's another proof of substandard journalism.

Thank you sir for busting these Indians for lying, cheating and dragging China in articles about Indian scientists cheating and plagiarizing.

Don't think for one second this is a problem only in India and China. It is alive and well here in the US too. I have many contacts in research who are appalled at the faked data being used in papers just to get more federal grants.

That's why when somebody makes a big claim in a paper they have like 5 other teams redo the same study to verify it wasn't made up.

Yes, like global warming. That is one of the biggest "scientific" scam.

 

[Falcon29]

Not just China or India...all around the world this is business.