Courtney Monroe me-retweet
We all know how hard it is to do a great study and write a great paper.
And yet some conservative numbers are:
- 400,000 published papers are fake (2000-2022).
- 70,000 of them were published in 2022.
- At least 10% of all PubMed abstracts published in 2024 were written with LLMs
- Estimates show that 1 in 7 papers are likely FAKE [Science, 2024]
When citations and number of papers matter, some people turn to paper mills to become ‘successful’.
And paper mills produce huge number of papers at speed. They even have special templates for that.
Unfortunately, even among the respected and well-meaning scientists, it’s not uncommon to see those who:
- produce meaningless research
- boast about the NUMBER of papers per year
- feel anxious if they 'produce' fewer papers/year than before.
⚡️ Albert Einstein remarked: “An academic career, in which a person is forced to produce scientific writings in great amounts, creates a danger of intellectual superficiality”.
⚡️ Peter Higgs said he could NOT replicate his discovery in today’s academic climate: “Not enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964”.
📍 What can we do?
1. Stop measuring scientists by the number of papers, citations & awards (it is used in many countries, including the EU; I personally got such comments from ERC).
2. Stop giving grants based on the 'profile' of a researcher.
3. Instead, distribute funding based on the proposal quality and the quality of the last 5 publications.
+ Include the “depth of previous research” as a crucial factor (grant reviewers should evaluate this).
+ Include new criteria such as community contribution, publishing of codes, participation in committees, etc.
+ Include the feedback from ex-PhD students (randomly selected) as a big factor. Happiness of graduates is vital.
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