Stanford University

Peer-Review Fraud: Hacking the Scientific Publication Process

Authors
Charlotte J. Haug
News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs

In August 2015, the publisher Springer retracted 64 articles from 10 different subscription journals “after editorial checks spotted fake email addresses, and subsequent internal investigations uncovered fabricated peer review reports,” according to a statement on their website. The retractions came only months after BioMed Central, an open-access publisher also owned by Springer, retracted 43 articles for the same reason.

Charlotte J. Haug, MD, PhD, a visiting scholar at Stanford Health Policy, writes in this New England Journal of Medicine perspective that the pressure to publish is huge for scientists, what with rewards such as promotions and financial incentives. This is leading to a growing number of cases of plagiarism and errors.

"The pressure to publish is huge for scientists everywhere, and the competition for space in the best journals harder than ever," she tells Stanford Health Policy. "One reason for this is the rapidly increasing amount of research and number of researchers coming from emerging economies like Brazil, India, Turkey and China — to mention a few. When the rewards for publishing is also very high (promotion, money), one might be more willing to take some short-cuts to get published." Haug, who was the editor-in-chief of The Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association and is a international correspondent for the New England Journal, said that as long as authors are rewarded for publishing many articles, and editors are rewarded for publishing them rapidly, new ways of gaming the traditional publication models will be invented more quickly than new control measures can be put in place. "Science is a collaborative endeavor," she said. "Not only in the sense that most scientific papers have a number of authors, but also in the sense that all science builds on previous science. One — or more — bad apple can have tremendously negative effects by leading other researchers in the wrong direction, wasting their time or directly harming for example patients that get the wrong treatment." You can read her full commentary here. 
Hero Image
nejm logo
All News button
1

Is Bangkok Pivoting toward Beijing? What the 2014 Coup Means for Thai Foreign Policy

-

How has the May 2014 coup in Thailand affected the country’s foreign policy? Has the junta realigned Thailand toward China and away from the US?  Some Western governments reacted to the coup by criticizing the military government of prime minister cum army general General Prayuth Chan-o-cha and subjecting it to downgrades and penalties. Washington bluntly called on the junta to return power to the Thai people. In reply, hoping to lessen the effects of Western pressure, Prayuth tried to diversify Thailand’s links and options in foreign affairs, including strengthening relations with nearby China, and with Myanmar, Cambodia, and Japan.

A January 2015 visit to Bangkok by US assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs Daniel R. Russel did not improve US-Thai relations. When Russel called on the junta to lift marshal law, the junta told him to mind his own business. Yet president Obama has not revoked Thailand’s status as Washington’s “major non-NATO treaty ally” nor has Prayuth aligned his country fully with Beijing. Pavin will sketch the changing contours of these among other relationships and relate their tenor and prospects to the political crisis that continues to unfold in Thailand.

pavin4x6
Pavin Chachavalpongpun is an associate professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies in Kyoto University. His many publications include Reinventing Thailand: Thaksin and His Foreign Policy (2010) and A Plastic Nation: The Curse of Thainess in Thai-Burmese Relations (2005). He is chief editor of the multilingual on-line Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia. His PhD is from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies. Following his fierce criticism of the 2014 coup in his country, the junta twice summoned him to Bangkok. Rather than comply, he reaffirmed his opposition to the coup. A warrant was eventually issued for his arrest, his Thai passport was revoked, and he was obliged to apply for refugee status in Japan.

Pavin Chachavalpongpun 2015-16 Lee Kong Chian National University of Singapore-Stanford University Distinguished Fellow on Southeast Asia
Seminars

How “Developmental” Was Japan’s Colonial Impact on Northeast and Southeast Asia? Did the “Stanford School” Get It Right?

-

Co-sponsored by the Japan Program

Prof. Booth will assess the socioeconomic consequences of Japanese colonialism in Taiwan, Korea, and Manchuria from 1910 to 1945. She will compare Japan’s policies with those implemented by other colonial powers in South and Southeast Asia. In particular she will address the writings of what has been termed the “Stanford School”—an influential group of scholars who published widely on Japanese colonial policies over the last fifty years. Their work has been used to support the argument that Japanese rule was more developmental than that of other colonial powers, and that it laid the foundations for the stellar economic performance of Taiwan and the Republic of Korea in the decades after 1950. She will challenge these conclusions by comparing economic and social indicators for Korea, Taiwan, and Manchuria with those from other Asian colonies and also from Thailand. While Japan’s colonies, especially Taiwan, do score well on some indicators, they do less well on others. The notion that Japanese rule was exceptionally “developmental” does not merit support.

anne booth
Anne Booth has been an Asia-focused professor of economics in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, since 1991. She studies the modern economic history of Southeast Asia with emphasis on the 20th century. Her many writings in this field include Colonial Legacies: Economic and Social Development in East and Southeast Asia. Her latest book, Economic Change in Modern Indonesia, is due from Cambridge University Press in April. Before coming to SOAS, she held research and teaching positions in Singapore and Australia. Her degrees are from Victoria University of Wellington (BA) and the Australian National University (PhD). Before 1991 she held research and teaching positions in Singapore and Australia. She grew up in New Zealand.

Download pdf
Anne Booth 2015-16 NUS-Stanford Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Fellow on Southeast Asia, Stanford University 2015-16 NUS-Stanford Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Fellow on Southeast Asia, Stanford University
Seminars

2015 Annual Holiday Party

-

holiday party invite web

Schwab Residential Center

Vidalakis Dining Hall

680 Serra Street

(between Galvaz & Campus Dr. East)

Jose E. Sumangil

Shorenstein APARC

Encina Hall, E301

Stanford, CA 94305-6055
(325) 660-4220
0
Senior Military Fellow
sumangil_3x3.jpg

Prior to the start of his Senior Military Fellowship at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center), Lt Col Sumangil was the commander of a B-1 squadron and led Airmen through two combat deployments in support of Operations ENDURING FREEDOM, INHERENT RESOLVE, and FREEDOM’S SENTINEL in the United States Central Command area of responsibility.  He has served in a variety of operational assignments as a Weapon Systems Officer and Instructor Weapon Systems Officer at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho and Dyess AFB, Texas and he was a joint staff officer at Headquarters United States Strategic Command at Offutt AFB, Nebraska where he was the lead planner for the combatant command’s space campaign plan.

At Stanford, Sumangil is examining China’s actions in the South China Sea and the Philippines arbitration case regarding Chinese actions there. He seeks to offer perspectives and policy and strategy options to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea.

CV

Ryan Blake

Shorenstein APARC

Encina Hall, E301

Stanford, CA 94305-6055
0
Senior Military Fellow
blake_3x3.jpg

Prior to the start of his Senior Military Fellowship at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center), Lt Col Blake was the commander of a flight test squadron, where he was responsible for the flight test of many new Air Force programs.  Lt Col Blake is a pilot with over 2400 flying hours in over 40 aircraft.  He is a graduate of the US Air Force Test Pilot School and has had a number of flight test assignments testing multiple aircraft (including F‑15C/D, F-15E, F-16).  He has also had two operational F-15E assignments, including combat deployments in support of Operations Southern Watch, Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.  Lt Col Blake has also had an assignment at the Pentagon (where he was responsible for acquisition matters related to the F-22 and F-35) and at the Office of Security Cooperation in Baghdad, Iraq (where he was on the staff of the Army 3-star General in charge of all security cooperation and assistance efforts in Iraq).

At Stanford, Blake is researching the U.S. policy toward China and its relation to Northeast Asia. He aims to discover areas of cooperation between the U.S. and Chinese militaries.

John S. Chu

Shorenstein APARC

Encina Hall, E301

Stanford, CA 94305-6055
0
Senior Military Fellow
chu_3x4.jpg

John Chu was born in Seoul, Korea in 1972. The son of an immigrant, he grew up in California where he calls home.  John attended West Point and graduated with honors in 1995 and a commission as a Military Intelligence officer. John has held critical leadership and staff positions at every echelon, from platoon to Army staff. John has deployed twice to Iraq and once to Bosnia, with multiple overseas assignments to Korea, Germany, and Turkey. Prior to the start of his Senior Military Fellowship at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center), John served on the Department of the Army, Intelligence (G-2) staff as the Chief of Intelligence Training. He hopes to deploy to Afghanistan for his follow-on assignment.

At Stanford, Chu is researching the Korean armistice agreement and the United Nations mission to South Korea. He will also examine U.S. policy toward North Korea, particularly analyzing the “brink of war” tension and developing strategic deterrence measures to reduce risk of unwanted military escalation on the Korean Peninsula. For both research streams, Chu aims to produce analyses and recommendations that could inform a policy audience.

Criss-crossing Red Lines in the South China Sea: The Destroyer, the Court, and the Future

-

Last Tuesday in the hotly contested South China Sea (SCS), ignoring fierce objections coming from China, the American guided-missile destroyer USS Lassen cruised within 12 nautical miles of Subi and Mischief Reefs.   One day later, in The Hague, the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled unanimously that it does have jurisdiction over a “suit” brought by the Philippines against China regarding China’s claims in the SCS.  The court must now approve or reject Manila’s position that Beijing’s (in)famous “nine-dash line” (actually now a ten-dash line) is incompatible with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea—that the line is, in effect, illegal under international law.  The court must also adjudicate Manila’s additional request for rulings on the status of certain land features in the SCS that are controlled by Beijing.  Beijing’s efforts to prevent the maritime penetration and the judicial judgment have failed.

Will these events be remembered as having marked the start of a Sino-American Cold War II?  What do they imply for China’s relations with the five other parties that claim land features and/or sea space there, i.e. Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam?  Was the US wrong to have breached China’s red lines and the court also wrong to have accepted jurisdiction?  Why?  Why not?  And how will these events impact the imminent Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit and Related Summits, as well as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders Meeting—gatherings to be held, respectively, in Kuala Lumpur and Manila between 18 and 22 November?

don photo
Donald K. Emmerson is a Senior Fellow Emeritus in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI).  At Stanford he also works with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies.  His latest writing on the SCS is “Reading between the Lines: China & the South China Sea,” CSIS cogitASIA [Washington, DC], 21 July 2015, http://cogitasia.com/reading-between-the-lines-china-the-south-china-sea/.  Before coming to Stanford, he taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  His degrees are from Yale (Phd) and Princeton (BA).

Donald K. Emmerson

0
Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Affiliated Faculty, CDDRL
Affiliated Scholar, Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies
aparc_dke.jpg PhD

At Stanford, in addition to his work for the Southeast Asia Program and his affiliations with CDDRL and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Donald Emmerson has taught courses on Southeast Asia in East Asian Studies, International Policy Studies, and Political Science. He is active as an analyst of current policy issues involving Asia. In 2010 the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded him a two-year Research Associateship given to “top scholars from across the United States” who “have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.”

Emmerson’s research interests include Southeast Asia-China-US relations, the South China Sea, and the future of ASEAN. His publications, authored or edited, span more than a dozen books and monographs and some 200 articles, chapters, and shorter pieces.  Recent writings include The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (ed., 2020); “‘No Sole Control’ in the South China Sea,” in Asia Policy  (2019); ASEAN @ 50, Southeast Asia @ Risk: What Should Be Done? (ed., 2018); “Singapore and Goliath?,” in Journal of Democracy (2018); “Mapping ASEAN’s Futures,” in Contemporary Southeast Asia (2017); and “ASEAN Between China and America: Is It Time to Try Horsing the Cow?,” in Trans-Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia (2017).

Earlier work includes “Sunnylands or Rancho Mirage? ASEAN and the South China Sea,” in YaleGlobal (2016); “The Spectrum of Comparisons: A Discussion,” in Pacific Affairs (2014); “Facts, Minds, and Formats: Scholarship and Political Change in Indonesia” in Indonesian Studies: The State of the Field (2013); “Is Indonesia Rising? It Depends” in Indonesia Rising (2012); “Southeast Asia: Minding the Gap between Democracy and Governance,” in Journal of Democracy (April 2012); “The Problem and Promise of Focality in World Affairs,” in Strategic Review (August 2011); An American Place at an Asian Table? Regionalism and Its Reasons (2011); Asian Regionalism and US Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010); “The Useful Diversity of ‘Islamism’” and “Islamism: Pros, Cons, and Contexts” in Islamism: Conflicting Perspectives on Political Islam (2009); “Crisis and Consensus: America and ASEAN in a New Global Context” in Refreshing U.S.-Thai Relations (2009); and Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (edited, 2008).

Prior to moving to Stanford in 1999, Emmerson was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he won a campus-wide teaching award. That same year he helped monitor voting in Indonesia and East Timor for the National Democratic Institute and the Carter Center. In the course of his career, he has taken part in numerous policy-related working groups focused on topics related to Southeast Asia; has testified before House and Senate committees on Asian affairs; and been a regular at gatherings such as the Asia Pacific Roundtable (Kuala Lumpur), the Bali Democracy Forum (Nusa Dua), and the Shangri-La Dialogue (Singapore). Places where he has held various visiting fellowships, including the Institute for Advanced Study and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 



Emmerson has a Ph.D. in political science from Yale and a BA in international affairs from Princeton. He is fluent in Indonesian, was fluent in French, and has lectured and written in both languages. He has lesser competence in Dutch, Javanese, and Russian. A former slam poet in English, he enjoys the spoken word and reads occasionally under a nom de plume with the Not Yet Dead Poets Society in Redwood City, CA. He and his wife Carolyn met in high school in Lebanon. They have two children. He was born in Tokyo, the son of U.S. Foreign Service Officer John K. Emmerson, who wrote the Japanese Thread among other books.

China and the World

Learn more

Policy Perspectives on the South China Sea

Learn more

Selected Multimedia

All people Back to top
Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label
Director, Southeast Asia Program, Shorenstein APARC
Seminars

Crossing disciplines and using technology could help populations in need

Authors
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Medical researchers must work together across disciplines to provide better health care to those who need it most, according to panelists at Stanford Medicine’s Annual Population Health Sciences Colloquium.

The symposium, hosted by the Stanford Center for Population Health Sciences, brought together working groups from across the Stanford campus to showcase the latest findings in population health research.

“Population health science at Stanford is likely to make the most important contributions when we cross traditional intellectual expertise disciplines,” said Paul H. Wise, a core faculty member at the Center for Health Policy/Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research (CHP/PCOR).

Many of the scholars at the daylong conference on Tuesday stressed that an interdisciplinary approach to health care is crucial to understanding and aiding underserved populations.

“To deal with life-course questions we need to create-life course observational windows,” said Mark Cullen, chief of the Division of General Medical Disciplines and director of the Stanford Center for Population Health Sciences.

Instead of trying to create an all-encompassing care plan for the human population as a whole, panelists demonstrated that studying the needs of particular groups, or smaller populations, can better serve individuals within populations that may not receive the best care.

Douglas K. Owens, director of CHP/PCOR, said the U.S.  Preventive Services Task Force, of which he is a member, has “often faced a real paucity of data trying to develop prediction guidelines for both the very young and the old.”

The Task Force, a panel of experts that makes recommendations for medical prevention services, is generally able to make guidelines for large populations like adults, but suggestions for specialized groups like children and the elderly are more challenging. Though Stanford researchers like Wise are working to improve care for particular sectors like children, more study is needed.

Several speakers at the conference said the underserved population of poor children could benefit from research targeted toward their population group.

“We don’t really understand the biology of the life-course, why things taking place in gestation and early life actually affect healthy aging and adult onset disease,” said Wise, adding, “We have a very poor understanding of how to translate this understanding into effective interventions for communities in need.”

Panelists agreed that big data can help them understand smaller, poorly served populations, such as young children in impoverished communities. By collecting large amounts of data from the general population, researchers will increase the amount of data available for more specific groups. This allows researchers to study these populations more closely and help create better outcomes.

Abby King, a professor of health research and policy and of medicine, and Jason Wang, director of the Center for Policy, Outcomes and Prevention (CPOP) and a CHP/PCOR core faculty member, believe life-course digital applications can provide individualized care while collecting data on a large-scale.

According to King, a life-course app, or a device to track health and provide care throughout one’s life, would grow with the user and help them through important developmental stages.

Wang has taken a first step toward creating such an app with PLAQUEMONSTER.  Intended for children eager for Halloween candy, the PLAQUEMONSTER app provides kids with a “tooth pet” they must keep safe from “plaquemonsters” and the so-called evil candy corporation. By flossing and brushing their teeth each day, kids earn points, and Wang’s team hopes the game will encourage good dental hygiene.

Health-care techniques using mobile devices, known as mHealth, could be particularly useful in underserved populations. King notes that even low-income populations have cell phones, so using phones as health-care tools could help decrease the gap between higher- and lower-income populations.

“I think for us one of the major challenges of the century is to really close that health-disparities gap and mHealth can help.”

However, each app must be tailored to the user.

“There’s no reason to believe that an African-American 16-year-old is going to be motivated the same way as a 45-year-old white man,” said Wang. “You need to involve patients in the design of the app.” When the app fits the specific patient’s needs, they are more likely to use it regularly, and knowing the needs of their population helps determine their preferences.

As the world continues to become more connected, the panelists said that reaching across disciplines and incorporating technology may hold the key to effective health care in the 21st century.

Hero Image
img 2419
Lorene Nelson
All News button
1
Subscribe to Asia-Pacific