{"id":2745,"date":"2025-04-01T05:30:27","date_gmt":"2025-04-01T05:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/?p=2745"},"modified":"2025-04-01T11:50:22","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T11:50:22","slug":"a-new-development-in-scientific-integrity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/2025\/04\/01\/a-new-development-in-scientific-integrity\/","title":{"rendered":"A new development in scientific integrity"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a 1st April post, I won\u2019t call it April Fool\u2019s as there\u2019s only one set of fools mentioned here. Rest assured that CrapMed does not (yet) exist.
\n\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014-
\nRecent changes in US scientific research are very worrying. The \u2018anti-science movement\u2019 is being spearheaded by Robert F Kennedy<\/a> – a leading figure of the modern anti-vaccine movement for many years. On their own his views are nothing new – the Skeptics in the Pub<\/em> movement<\/a> was spawned in 1999 to act as a corrective to science denialism. I remember that homeopathy attracted much criticism from the science community at that time, such as this 2002 systematic review by Edzard Ernst<\/a>. The difference now is that Kennedy is in charge of the USA\u2019s leading biomedical agencies – NIH, FDA, CDC – so is likely to do real damage.<\/p>\n

There is great concern too about political interference in NIH funding.\u00a0 Trump appointees will screen new funding proposals<\/a> \u201cto ensure the research that will be funded aligns with the priorities of President Donald Trump\u2019s administration\u201d. A recent article in the EHN Newsletter<\/a> says:<\/p>\n

Political interference in federal research funding compromises scientific integrity. It could skew national health priorities, delay urgent studies, and have a chilling effect on research related to topics like racial health disparities and vaccine confidence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In another very worrying move the NIH\u2019s Scientific Integrity Policy has been rescinded<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Will these worrying developments lead to an increase in the quantity of unreliable research results in the published literature? How can we detect research that has been compropmised?<\/p>\n

A new information tool is launching today, 1st April, to help sort genuine science from fake science. CrapMed<\/em> is an index of dodgy science. It contains 1) articles published in journals with suspect peer review, and 2) articles reporting research that has been compromised by political interference.<\/p>\n

There are plans to rapidly scale-up the service as there is expected to be a huge growth in this sector (mis-research) over the next four years.<\/p>\n

A team of scientific integrity experts has been assembled and many contributors in the broader community have volunteered to help to monitor the literature to identify candidate articles. Developers are also building links to Xitter, another rich source of mis-information.<\/p>\n

Commenters have suggested that CrapMed<\/em> could serve a useful purpose by identifying research that no-one should take seriously. By subtracting the results of a CrapMed<\/em> search from the results of a PubMed search genuine investigators can derive a set of results that is free from compromised or fake research results.<\/p>\n

CrapMed<\/em> leaders are also negotiating with CrossRef to ingest the Retraction Watch database of retracted articles.<\/p>\n

Noted researcher Lunchtime O\u2019Gilson said that \u2019CrapMed is the highest quality database of utter dross that I have ever seen\u2019.<\/p>\n

Initially the focus is on biomedical crap, but observers suggest that it will soon be necessary to expand to cover all branches of research. The Web of Crap<\/em> is likely to be needed before the end of 2025.<\/p>\n

Plans are also under way for a new bibliometric indicator based on CrapMed<\/em>. The working name for this indicator is the \u2018Crap-Index\u2019 but there are worries that this name is not sufficiently descriptive – there are so many other bibliometric indicators that people think are crap.<\/p>\n

Stop Press<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rumours emerging from the Department of Ghastly Egregiousness suggests that the NLM will be renamed as the National Library of Misinformation and will divert resources from PubMed to maintaining CrapMed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a 1st April post, I won\u2019t call it April Fool\u2019s as there\u2019s only one set of fools mentioned here. Rest assured that CrapMed does not (yet) exist. \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014- Recent changes in US scientific research are very worrying. The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-tools","category-searching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2745"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2751,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2745\/revisions\/2751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}