[Irtalk] 120 'peer-reviewed' studies retracted after being exposed as computer-generated fraud

[Hilton Gibson]

(NaturalNews) What good is the peer-review process if fraudulent studies
routinely make it past this supposed litmus test into popular journals,
completely unnoticed? This is the question many are now asking following
the revelation that more than 120 papers published by two of the most
prominent publishing groups in the world were fraudulent, having been
generated by a computer program rather than written by real scientists.

*The Germany-based publishing group Springer and the New York-based
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) both pulled dozens
of papers recently after a computer scientist came forward with information
about their illegitimacy*. Cyril Labbe from Joseph Fourier University in
France had been tracking papers published by the two groups when he found
that many were produced using a software program known as SCIgen, which
randomly strings together words and phrases to produce phony papers.

According to a report by Nature, Labbe discovered that these fraudulent
studies had somehow made it into more than 30 published conference
proceedings between 2008 and 2013. All of them had supposedly been
peer-reviewed before publishing, but this clearly was not the case. In
fact, Labbe says their illegitimacy was quite obvious, illustrating what
appears to be rampant dishonesty both in scientific inquiry and peer-review
scrutiny.

"The papers are quite easy to spot," stated Labbe to Nature, noting that he
has since built a website where members of the public can test the
authenticity of published scientific papers.

http://www.naturalnews.com/z046023_scientific_fraud_peer-reviewed_studies_retracted_papers.html
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