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This kind of thing gets too much hype. I mean, these people are just sloppy, and catching them out is just a matter of how much effort you want to put in. Generally in any field you get to know quite quickly who isn't trustworthy, and largely ignore their papers. If only journal editors had the same information. What is a bigger problem is papers which seem important but actually reveal nothing due to statistical errors, mistakes you can't ever find without getting the data and redoing the analysis, irrelevant or contrived model systems, inadequate controls, inscrutable analytical methods etc


What about people who are not 'in the field' (presumably several years of work there), how do they know who to trust and not?


Don't get me wrong, ideally every paper would be trustworthy, but working scientists are well aware of the issues, and aren't waiting for a posse of armchair crusaders to save them.

If you aren't in the field, then it's difficult, although perhaps inconsequential.


Apparently there are quite a lot of "sloppy" people and they are screwing up even more researchers.




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