The pressure of evaluation in scientific journals

Prof. Ph.D. José M. Torralba, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Scientists should use in his scientific work many sources, but the main one is the scientific journals, scientific conferences, other scientific information. One original source of information used to be for us conferences, in which you can attend and to see previous. Usually in a conference people present works which are not always finished. Sometimes it’s preliminary work or sometimes it’s finished work. But conferences are a good source of information. Also, of course, scientific journals. I think the most important sources are the scientific journals. Today with the Internet you have access to the worldwide scientific journals. It’s not so difficult to find any kind of information in the network.

As an answer to “what are the best ways to distinguish objective information and credible sources from the fake ones?” in my opinion in the scientific world nobody used to believe directly on news from any different source than the scientific journals. So in principle scientists usually don’t believe directly information out of the scientific journals. In that sense, there are a few scientists that really believe some fake news because most of us, we can go directly to the source of the information — to the scientific journals. If the new is not based in a really counter-stable, a really easy way to contrast the information, we don’t usually believe in that usually.

For this reason the fake news does not affect the scientists as much as the general people because scientists used to have a good source of information with the scientific journals. So for this reason I think fake news effects much more to the general population than the scientists.

Speaking about unwritten rules in Academia and why it is customary to do something that sometimes has nothing to do with the results of scientific activity, hard to answer. I think there are a lot of “ethics” codes in which you have to follow that edit code. So in principle scientists must don’t publish non-contrasted results according to the proper experimental way. There is the scientific method which is very well standard that is based on experimentation and the contrast — how to contrast the results with the real experiment. And in principle good scientists must know those ethics rules in terms of publishing. So in my opinion if you don’t follow these ethics rules, you are not a good scientist. It’s so important to be a proper scientist in terms of ethics than knowledge. So ethics are as much important as knowledge.

I think day by day much more people are involved in topics regarding ethics. So there is a lot of serious journal papers, in which people can understand the general rules for ethics in science. So I think if you don’t follow these rules it’s because you really don’t want to do it because more or less everybody knows how to proceed in a scientifically good way.

When we speak about what does the notion “scientific” start with and what is the breaking point distinguishing science and junk science, I think science is when you have followed the scientific method. This is the most easy answer. A scientific method means an experimental approach: you have to propose a thesis, you have to try to consider (to configure) this through one experimental approach and you have to confirm that your thesis was fulfilled with the experimental approach. If not – it’s not science. So if you just propose one theory, but it’s not base through an experimental approach, this is not science.

In my opinion science is made on the strong basis of the experimental approach where you have to confirm, you have to check what your thesis was really developed or not, has been confirmed or not. So this is a real difference between science and other things.

When we speak about “should we just trust the things the scientist endorses and should believe this in something credible simply because some scholars say so, of course I say “No”. We don’t have to believe in that. In the scientific world we have an advantages is that the most of the scientific journals when you submit a paper or you submit an information, if it’s a good reputation journal (a good Journal), this paper is reviewed by, at least, two peers  review that can really check that if you have published or not good information. So I think in most of the journals you’re completely sure that you are publishing good science because there are other people who review your work. And these people are external people to your life. Maybe you don’t know them. So the other scientists and all the sciences based on the peer review. And peer review tries to assure that information that you publish is good information (is not a fake information).

I think the much more important problem now is that we have a lot of the pressure of valuation in the scientific world.  The pressure is so high that people day by day are trying to publish much more quickly each time. So this pressure is really so high that there are some rules that are starting to be broken. And there are a lot of journals that are not really good journals: it looks like a good scientific journal, but the peer reviewing is not so good and they are publishing in a very fast way papers with not so proper well-developed reviewing systems. And this is producing a lot of “second division” science. But in terms of the journalist and in terms of the general people, they don’t distinguish which is the good information about information. Most scientists know which are good journals and bad journals. But there are a lot of so-called “scientific” journals that are not so well established in their peer reviewing system and they are publishing a lot of fake news in some way because they are publishing papers with not properly peer reviewing. So this is a very high risk today.