Orazio Schillaci, images and publish or perish
Considerations on the sidelines of the journalistic investigation concerning the Minister of Health, Orazio Schillaci. Battista Falconi's comment
In the case of Orazio Schillaci, it affects the defense more than the prosecution. The latter, in fact, would bring out a script often represented in scientific research: one in which the images of a scientific work are somehow adapted to the substance. An illicit act, of course, an irregularity which however has the aim, sometimes by admission of the authors themselves, of making the iconography of an article better correspond to a seriously conducted research. Other times, however, they are real scams, publications in which both the figures and the substance exposed are incorrect, the results are invented or even the entire research is invented and never carried out.
WHAT CRISANTI SAID
In this specific case, some figures would have been duplicated, shown with different levels of magnification, a ploy to confuse those who have to evaluate the study, according to the evil ones. In eight articles, irrelevant images were used to validate the results. My colleague Crisanti, incidentally a member of the Democratic Party, says that the matter is serious, "draw conclusions". And he adds: "in my opinion it is best to carry out only one activity at a time". Finally, he maintains that "whoever signs a work is always responsible for others too". The first sentence refers to the president of Stanford, who resigned over a similar case. The second refers to the current role in government of the former rector of Tor Vergata: now the name of Vaia, the health director who is very active in the media in recent days, is circulating in the buzz, while a question to Prime Minister Meloni is being prepared. The third sentence responds to Schillaci's defense: “The images? They are not mine, I trusted you, I am not an expert in microscopy."
SCHILLACI BRINGS UP HIS COLLEAGUES
In short, the minister brings up his colleagues: "But they haven't done anything wrong." He downgraded the matter to a venial sin, making it clear that he had not checked, despite having acted as guarantor and therefore having been consciously involved. Here we enter into the seriousness of the defense: the frequency of similar episodes is in fact high and has also affected authoritative institutions and researchers, such as the rector who resigned and who is now cited as a precedent to which reference should be made . There have been both Italian and foreign cases and this gray area of scientific production falls under the slogan "public or perish", try to accumulate as many signatures and citations as possible because the entire system of international careers in research is based on these scores.
THE MATTEO EFFECT
What happens then? What is not sociology is called the "Matteo effect": notoriety is gained and younger or less established authors ask VIPs to collaborate, in order to increase the prestige of their works even if they hardly know what they are about to publish. nothing and sometimes nothing at all. An absolutely vicious circle that leads those who are already famous to become increasingly so, an abuse where the illegitimacy is very blurred compared to the actual hoaxes, which have also involved the most famous magazines in the world in the past. Indeed, there have been researchers who came close to winning the Nobel and then turned out to be authentic impostors. Scams, it is indicative, generally revealed by younger researchers or even by completely external people, since the academic and baronial system is very difficult to self-reform and self-report, even when suspicions are widespread.
In short, today's episode is instructive because it illuminates a dark part of the scientific world that the public misses. To tell the truth, the public absolutely misses the entire system, people who aren't so at all and are just famous are often interpreted as authoritative experts. And even if we rely on official rankings, as we should, these are strongly influenced by systems of co-optation and lobbying.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/ministro-schillaci-inchiesta/ on Fri, 15 Sep 2023 06:16:34 +0000.