A familiar tune to ABA, they should look at wild horse studies! Below are some extracts from recent media – the full links are below.
Hundreds of scientific research papers published by Australian scientists have been found to be unreliable or compromised, fuelling calls for a national science watchdog.
For the first time, a team of science writers behind Retraction Watch has put together a database of compromised scientific research in Australia. Over the past two decades, 247 scientific research papers – some associated with the country’s most reputable universities – have been found to be compromised.
Compromised studies are not restricted to medical studies, In May this year; research on wind turbines by scientists at the University of Tasmania was retracted from the Energy Science and Engineering journal due to issues with the peer review process (independent scientific assessment of the study’s accuracy).
In Australia, universities and institutes self-regulate, so they’re able to cover it up but other countries have a national office to handle study concerns.
Professor Gandevia and Professor Vaux have been campaigning to establish an Australian Office of Research Integrity (bad science watchdog) empowered to investigate academics. It is extremely difficult to get a journal to retract a paper, and many more problematic papers go unretracted, meaning the 247 retractions were “just the tip of the iceberg”.
Catriona Jackson, chief executive of Universities Australia, said in reply “Researchers must comply with [the] new code or face strong sanctions.”
The University of NSW said no findings of misconduct had been made against the professor with six retracted papers as in each case …… where errors were identified …… they were found to be unintentional. However, The University of Melbourne said it received a formal complaint about the paper that was later retracted, conducted its own investigation and took disciplinary action against the academics involved.
An Australian Office of Research Integrity is urgently needed so many more flawed studies, including Australian environmentalists Brumby damage claims, can be put to the test.
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