ReviewRoyal Society open science2019
Fake science and the knowledge crisis: ignorance can be fatal.
Review in Royal Society open science, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Social Context of Consciousness: An Integrative Framework for Neuroscience, Psychology, and Law.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2025Article
- The inaccurate citation of the "Universal Declaration of Animal Rights" (UDAR) in the scientific literature: a scoping review.BMC veterinary research · 2025Article
- Psychoanalytically informed MDMA-assisted therapy for pathological narcissism: a novel theoretical approach.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- How to fight fake papers: a review on important information sources and steps towards solution of the problem.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2024Review
- Framework for a Research-Based and Interdisciplinary Use of Sensors in Elementary Teacher Education.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Detection of ChatGPT fake science with the xFakeSci learning algorithm.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Review
- The Reviewer Academy of the Society of Critical Care Medicine: Key Principles and Strategic Plan.Critical care medicine · 2023Article
- Article
- George Orwell, objectivity, and the reality behind illusions.Perception · 2022Article
- Present Situation and the Future Development of Web-Based Prenatal Education in China: Cross-sectional Web-Based Survey.Journal of medical Internet research · 2022Article
- Combating Misinformation by Sharing the Truth: a Study on the Spread of Fact-Checks on Social Media.Information systems frontiers : a journal of research and innovation · 2022Article
- Understanding the spread of COVID-19 misinformation on social media: The effects of topics and a political leader's nudge.Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology · 2022Article
- Reducing Health Misinformation in Science: A Call to Arms.The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science · 2022Article
- Americans' Perspectives on Online Media Warning Labels.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Exploring Adolescents' Critical Reading of Socioscientific Topics Using Multimodal Texts.International journal of science and mathematics education · 2022Article
- The relationship between eHealth literacy, social media self-efficacy and health communication intention among Chinese nursing undergraduates: A cross-sectional study.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- Article
- The historic success of vaccination and the global challenge posed by inaccurate knowledge in social networks.Patient education and counseling · 2021Article
- Wired to Doubt: Why People Fear Vaccines and Climate Change and Mistrust Science.Frontiers in medicine · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Computers, the Internet and social media enable every individual to be a publisher, communicating true or false information instantly and globally. In the 'post-truth' era, deception is commonplace at all levels of contemporary life. Fakery affects science and social information and the two have become highly interactive globally, undermining trust in science and the capacity of individuals and society to make evidence-informed choices, including on life-or-death issues. Ironically, drivers of fake science are embedded in the current science publishing system intended to disseminate evidenced knowledge, in which the intersection of science advancement and reputational and financial rewards for scientists and publishers incentivize gaming and, in the extreme, creation and promotion of falsified results. In the battle for truth, individual scientists, professional associations, academic institutions and funding bodies must act to put their own house in order by promoting ethics and integrity and de-incentivizing the production and publishing of false data and results. They must speak out against false information and fake science in circulation and forcefully contradict public figures who promote it. They must contribute to research that helps understand and counter false information, to education that builds knowledge and skills in assessing information and to strengthening science literacy in society.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.