Simon Gandevia, a giant in the research integrity community, assembled an international A-list of incredible speakers–plus me–for this Conference (IRIC) recently in Sydney.
Diversity of disciplines, but a common focus
There were more than 100 registrants, so the presentation room was usually packed. A striking feature was our enormous diversity of disciplines: medicine, law, neuroscience, statistics, psychology, journalism, education… and more. Our common focus was the integrity of research, Open Science, and meta-research (research on how research is done). Most presentations to the conference were either an alarming assessment of how the research literature has been polluted, or a (sometimes) encouraging evaluation of efforts to improve integrity.
We felt strongly about so many things, with emotions swinging wildly. Mainly we felt enormous pride in group cohesion across such a diversity of backgrounds, and conviction that our mission–the very trustworthiness of research–is enormously important.
Paper mills, fakery, and more
But then we’d despair when a speaker documented the extend of deadly pollution spreading in the scientific literature, from old-fashioned fakery to plagiarism and fake manuscripts sold by paper mills. Anyone wanting to bulk up their cv can buy an AI-generated manuscript and submit it to a dozen journals. The best journals will identify the fakery, these days using AI to help, but some ‘vanity’ journal will publish the manuscript after a bogus peer review process–of course for a hefty payment. What criminality! What waste, especially of the time and effort of expert editors!
The memorable conference dinner was held on the roof deck of the stunning new Museum of Contemporary Art. Champagne in hand, sun setting on the harbour bridge to the left, opera house to the right: what’s not to like?
Significance Roulette released to the world
I’m delighted to say my brief presentation was very well received. Most importantly, I released to the world for the first time Bradley Dean‘s Significance Roulette that you can download, save, and run in your browser. Or simply go to esci web and select the significance roulette menu item to see and run the roulette wheel.
From here you can download my powerpoint slides, also a pdf summary, and the .html file you can save to your computer and run in your browser to enjoy significance roulette.
Read more about the rationale for significance roulette here.
Good luck at the p value casino!
Geoff