[HN Gopher] Mass Retraction of unethical Chinese Forensic Geneti...
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Mass Retraction of unethical Chinese Forensic Genetics Papers
Author : car
Score : 64 points
Date : 2024-02-24 17:49 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| downvotetruth wrote:
| https://archive.is/0oJG7
| olliej wrote:
| cheers
| glerk wrote:
| What does a "retraction" mean in this field? Are the results of
| these papers considered incorrect?
| blacksqr wrote:
| Reading the linked article reveals that incorrectness was not
| the issue, but the unethical way that the genetic samples in
| the study were obtained.
| tomohelix wrote:
| It means the publisher no longer host/publish the papers. This
| can be done at the request of the author or by the publisher in
| the case of a controversy.
|
| In this case, it seems there is no particular issues with the
| content of the paper, just that the way the data was collected
| was not appropriate. A case can be made about the narrow set of
| data (focused on minority groups) and thus how representative
| the data is to whatever claims made in the paper. But that
| require a deeper read into the papers themselves and has
| nothing to do with the main complain, i.e. ethical concerns.
| DriftRegion wrote:
| If the publisher's aim in doing this is to make an ethical
| statement this seems like a heavy-handed and ineffective way.
| Let the information be published, make a statement and let
| the audience decide.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Let the journal decide, it's their journal and their
| hosting costs and their ethical guidelines for papers they
| publish. The audience can get it from anywhere else.
| infoseek12 wrote:
| It will be interesting if a lot of research gets published in
| Chinese journals and not the West. If this happens I wonder if
| Western researchers will get their information from Chinese
| journals or lag a bit behind Chinese researchers on the answers
| to these questions.
| worik wrote:
| Meh!
|
| Let the Chinese authorities burden themselves with questions of
| DNA markers and ethnic groups
|
| Eugenics has not done anyone any good, and when used as a means
| of controlling populations it goes to very dark places
|
| If the whole stack is not kept ethical, it is not ethical at
| all. If not ethical then it tends to evil
| aydyn wrote:
| > If the whole stack is not kept ethical, it is not ethical
| at all.
|
| This is such a naive, borderline illiterate take. How much of
| modern human biological knowledge is built upon a foundation
| of unethical practices?
| kibwen wrote:
| From a practical (rather than moral) perspective, the
| reason that scientific ethics are a thing in the first
| place is so that the public does not sour on scientific
| endeavors and view them as illegitimate. If you eschew
| ethics, then, like Dr. Frankenstein, eventually you will
| have the public beating down your door with torches and
| pitchforks, regardless of the results you achieve.
|
| Which is to say, if you care about advancing science in the
| long term rather than merely in the short term, you must
| care about ethics. Accusing others of naivete here is a bad
| look.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Are writing this comment from a phone made with no unethical
| issues?
|
| Cause I don't know any.
| xdennis wrote:
| > Eugenics has not done anyone any good
|
| It's reduced genetic defects in the population. For example
| in many countries you can abort babies with Down syndrome up
| to the time of birth.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| If you're willing to cut ethical corners in one dimension
| there's no reason to believe you won't in other dimensions.
| Doing rigorous research with honesty, transparency, and
| ethically is interrelated. That's why being a reputable journal
| is so important - presumably the standards are high and the
| research is more reliable, and citing it is more credible.
| While not consistently true or universally true, it's at least
| true the less reputable journals are known to be ... less
| reputable. So, yes, you could republish in less reputable
| journals, but other researchers will assume a low quality
| result intermixed with fraud, unethical practice, and lack of
| transparency. Fair or not Chinese journals don't have a
| reputation for quality like mainstream journals, even among
| Chinese researchers. Finally a Chinese language journal has
| almost no readership outside of China, further diminishing the
| impact of your research. Even citing the research in an
| international journal would be problematic.
| npunt wrote:
| Agree, unethical research also makes replication harder thus
| any results are more suspect.
| quotemstr wrote:
| "Ethics" isn't one thing. One can be committed personally to
| honesty and scientific rigor yet opposed to curiosity-killing
| IRB culture that purports to think that a questionnaire
| somehow might rise to the level of atrocity but not for IRB
| review.
| COGlory wrote:
| No. No one trusts Chinese research to be:
|
| A) accurate B) reproducible
|
| Even in Western journals it's frequently suspect.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| Similar controversy surrounds whether Nazi medical research may
| be cited. I (ironically) cite no sources, but I believe the
| consensus is that they may be cited if a) they are
| methodologically sound and b) other studies cannot serve as a
| substitute.
|
| I am personally of the opinion that "information wants to be
| free" and ethics is not a reason to ignore methodologically-
| sound, published science. Punish the researchers, perhaps
| g-b-r wrote:
| This is a way to punish the researchers
|
| If the consequences of these behaviors are negligible others
| will be encouraged to do it as well
| cvalka wrote:
| If the results and reasoning are sound, it's absolutely bonkers
| not to cite the source. This is a not criminal trial and the
| exclusionary rule should not apply here.
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