Authors are from Taiwan. They would take offense to be lumped together with the mainland.
1Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Medicine, Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, Hualien, Taiwan
2Management Office for Health Data, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan
3Graduate Institute of Clinical Medical Science, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan
4Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, Hualien, Taiwan
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Yes, Taiwan falls outside the China umbrella. I would also say research out of Hong Kong is trustworthy. Beyond that, it’s not worth trusting other Chinese research without other sources of validation.
I stand corrected: I’ve been to Taiwan roughly 40 times and understand well that it is not the mainland, nor hope that it ever will be. But I didn’t recall the location of the researchers. Thanks for the correction.
I’m still curious that they found something no one else has reported. I hope they’re wrong, but in the meantime I’ve stopped NAC (since there was no observable benefit after 8 months anyway) while keeping the glycine.
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Related issues around poorly done clinical trials:
Medicine is plagued by untrustworthy clinical trials. How many studies are faked or flawed?
Investigations suggest that, in some fields, at least one-quarter of clinical trials might be problematic or even entirely made up, warn some researchers. They urge stronger scrutiny.
How many clinical-trial studies in medical journals are fake or fatally flawed? In October 2020, John Carlisle reported a startling estimate1.
Carlisle, an anaesthetist who works for England’s National Health Service, is renowned for his ability to spot dodgy data in medical trials. He is also an editor at the journal Anaesthesia, and in 2017, he decided to scour all the manuscripts he handled that reported a randomized controlled trial (RCT) — the gold standard of medical research. Over three years, he scrutinized more than 500 studies1.
For more than 150 trials, Carlisle got access to anonymized individual participant data (IPD). By studying the IPD spreadsheets, he judged that 44% of these trials contained at least some flawed data: impossible statistics, incorrect calculations or duplicated numbers or figures, for instance. And 26% of the papers had problems that were so widespread that the trial was impossible to trust, he judged — either because the authors were incompetent, or because they had faked the data.
Carlisle called these ‘zombie’ trials because they had the semblance of real research, but closer scrutiny showed they were actually hollow shells, masquerading as reliable information. Even he was surprised by their prevalence. “I anticipated maybe one in ten,” he says.
When Carlisle couldn’t access a trial’s raw data, however, he could study only the aggregated information in the summary tables. Just 1% of these cases were zombies, and 2% had flawed data, he judged (see ‘The prevalence of ‘zombie’ trials’). This finding alarmed him, too: it suggested that, without access to the IPD — which journal editors usually don’t request and reviewers don’t see — even an experienced sleuth cannot spot hidden flaws.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02299-w
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I found this surprising. I guess always take any study with a bit of skepticism and wait for duplication by independent third parties before becoming too confident of any new research…
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The future of scam academic papers…
Everyone talking about a peer reviewed scientific paper published with an AI generated image (complete with nonsense words). Just look at the size of this rodent’s Dissilced! Published by @FrontiersIn , the world’s 6th largest, and 3rd most cited, research publisher.
Meanwhile, on the homepage of the journal…
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Jonas
#27
“Patients who received oral NAC over 28 days” and a lot of projections
Jay
#28
Oh yea, that is one impressive “Dissilced”!
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I’m not arguing there isn’t massive massive fraud across chinese scientific research (or virtually any data i analyze out of china) but i was briefly an assistant editor at the Journal of Organic Chemistry when i was in grad school ;for extra beer cash — fellowships are stingy on alcohol allotments). My main job was not editing scientific papers; it was to essentially try to figure out what the heck many foreign authors had shown in their experiments and then rewrite the paper so it made some semblance of sense in english (not that I’m feeling superior: if i was made to write my own research into Japanese or German it would have been a compete disaster as well). So finding a “new” word such as “dissliced” was not an uncommon occurrence.
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Seems the press is picking up on the paper…
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Its an interesting wider issue. I think we face a situation where pre-publication peer review is an inefficient hurdle that does not establish adequate quality control and that there needs to be a route towards post publication peer review in a semi-formalised sense.
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adriank
#32
I think fake papers exist everywhere. The way universities run their KPI is problematic everywhere, not just in China. I don’t believe the first thing I read but if it catches my interest I’ll follow up with other papers. Even reputable sources might not work for us individually so treat everything with caution. You decide what poison you want to try first.
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I would be cautious to attributing all of the issues with modern science to a single nation, they might publish more low quality research but theyre also almost 3x our population so that shouldn’t be terribly shocking.
There’s been enough domestic bunk peer reviewed research here, it really seems like they’re just rubber stamping each others work based entirely on b reputation and clout.
adssx
#34
Frontiers isn’t a great publisher in general, not the first time they publish crap: Frontiers Media - Wikipedia
Unfortunately, the % of bad articles (from total fraud to just honest research poorly done) is higher in some countries such as China, India, Iran, Egypt, and Thailand (from what I remember, I don’t have a access to the whole paper anymore): Medicine is plagued by untrustworthy clinical trials. How many studies are faked or flawed?
Of course, Westerners are not immune from fraud. Even at the most prestigious institutions. Infamous examples include:
(both neurologists btw…)
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Oh - you are absolutely right. This was just brought up originally due to a story in the Financial Times of London about the proliferation of fraudulent papers out of China. Given China’s size (number of scientists publishing papers) it seems that there are a large number of papers just due to population, but also because they seem to be a more frequent result of the academic pressures in China which seems to be more extreme than even the high levels of academic pressures in western countries (the “publish or perish” issue).
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AI in research papers have become a meme / joke:
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Key Point: If the paper originates in China, India, Iran, Russia, old USSR states, or Eastern Europe, it’s best to assume it’s fake until supported by Western research.
The startling rise in the publication of sham science papers has its roots in China, where young doctors and scientists seeking promotion were required to have published scientific papers. Shadow organisations – known as “paper mills” – began to supply fabricated work for publication in journals there.
The practice has since spread to India, Iran, Russia, former Soviet Union states and eastern Europe, with paper mills supplying fabricated studies to more and more journals as increasing numbers of young scientists try to boost their careers by claiming false research experience. In some cases, journal editors have been bribed to accept articles, while paper mills have managed to establish their own agents as guest editors who then allow reams of falsified work to be published.
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adssx
#38
Also Thailand and Egypt. To some extent Turkey. Outside of “the west”, I find Brazilian papers of good quality in general. Saudi Arabia seems also to get better.
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AnUser
#39
No, the western research is fake too.
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adriank
#40
When $$$ are involve… You better confirm or proceed with caution.
