Going Soft

I will be the first to admit that I have made such comments as, "If I wanted a 4.0 I would have been a psychology major." I have been disgruntled about how those "other" majors have it easier because they don't have classes on Friday or 3 hour labs to attend. I have, at times, said snobby things about social scientists. And, I'm sorry. I should know better. I come from a non-traditional academic background and in my 200+ undergraduate credits, have gained a great appreciation for a wide range of academic disciplines. I have learned an immense amount from not just my science professors, but psychology professors and writing professors alike. I should REALLY know better because I have been adopted into social science/humanities professor circles and know from first-hand experience that these professors are just as intelligent as my chemistry professors. So, I do not take it personally when chemistry students stop me in the hall and say things like, "How is the biology department? Aren't you sick of just counting squirrels all day?" or "I heard you became a psych major. Oh, you became a biology major, same thing." There is a certain level of friendly academic jousting among disciplines. But, there is also a serious misconception about the "hard sciences" and the "soft sciences" and it is unfortunate. Many, though certainly not all, professors and students in the physical sciences truly believe that they are doing "real" science and that somehow they are superior as a result. I have also been in psychology classes (not with R.W-S!) where the professor has completely skipped over the biological sections saying, "Well we'll leave that to the biologists." (hmmm, last I checked you can't have a brain without biology and you can't have psychology without a brain) Yes, there are distinct differences between the methodologies of these branches of science but there has to be. In some ways, I think social science is more difficult than physical science. Trying to understand the complexities of human cognitive processes or the intricacies of an entire culture is quite the task. It is easy to do lab experiments in which you can control the number of variables. In areas of social science, there are numerous variables that can be impossible to control for. At its root, science is about trying to understand the world around us, from the way molecules interact to the way humans interact. There are those that understand molecules better than people and those that understand people better than molecules. This is a good thing! Let's all have a bit more respect for each other and remember that whether we realize it or not, our academic disciplines do overlap in the real world and we have valuable information to share amongst ourselves.

Publish or Perish OR Publish and Perish?

The following article was published in the Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog. It reports that plagiarism is not uncommon in primary scientific articles. Based on the story below, it seems that the majority of the plagiarism is unintentional. The predominant issue is that far too many researchers are publishing "original" ideas without giving credit to previously published research documenting the same ideas. With so many online article databases, I wonder how this is happening? Are researchers in such a hurry to submit their work that they are failing to take the time to do proper background research? Or, are there too many scientists out there without the proper tools to thoroughly research the topic they are invesigating? Either way, this is an excellent example of why it is important to develop these skills because, clearly, even peer-reviewed academic journals are not perfect.






March 6, 2009



Plagiarism in Science Research Is Often Ignored, Studies Find



Washington — Shock. Denial. Disbelief. Sadness. Regret. Embarrassment.
Those, according to a commentary published today in Science magazine, are some of the reactions from both scientists and science journals when they are found to be involved in cases of potential plagiarism.
The commentary was offered by researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, who used a computer-based text-searching tool to analyze millions of randomly selected research abstracts.
The analysis of Medline, a database of biomedical research articles, found 9,120 entries “with high levels of citation similarity and no overlapping authors,” including 212 pairs of articles “with signs of potential plagiarism,” the researchers wrote.
The lead author, Harold Garner, a professor of biochemistry and internal medicine at the medical center, said he and his colleagues then conducted a survey of the authors and journal editors, promising them anonymity. The survey responses, Mr. Garner wrote, included explanations, denials, embarrassed apologies, and some retractions. Among the original authors, he wrote, 93 percent were not aware of the duplicate article.
Mr. Garner also wrote an article for Nature, published in January 2008, titled “A Tale of Two Citations,” that reported a similar finding: His computerized search of several million scientific-journal articles revealed thousands of cases in which one article had large similarities with another article.
Both of Mr. Garner’s articles were based on research involving the Medline database and UT Southwestern’s computer-based text-searching tool, eTBLAST. And in both articles, Mr. Garner suggested that the size and severity of this problem continued to be ignored by publishers.
The Nature article warned against both plagiarism by another author and “self plagiarism,” in which the same author or authors present duplicate findings to different journals.
Mr. Garner nevertheless said that his Science magazine report represents a significant advance over his earlier article in Nature. The survey published in Science, while anonymous, prompted 83 internal investigations at scientific journals, which in turn led to 43 cases in which an article was retracted, he said.
That compares to only 17 such retractions last year, which is a more typical annual figure, he said.
Such a case of plagiarism or duplication can have serious medical consequences, Mr. Garner said, as it could lead a doctor who is investigating a patient’s condition to believe a scientific finding is more recent, or perhaps more reliable, because of its repeated appearance in medical journals. —Paul Basken



http://chronicle.com/news/article/6080/plagiarism-in-science-research-is-often-ignored-studies-find-twice