Scan barcode
gemmamilne's review against another edition
4.0
Originally published in French in 2016 and now translated into English, this is a great romp through the world of science fraud, academic culture and the inherent issues in the research world. For anyone who closely follows academic culture topics, not much in here will surprise you, but the examples are great and the way it's pulled together linking everything up is brilliant. Written more for an academic / insider audience, but super readable and the author is hilariously catty - worth the read for his snide..!
allisonmae's review against another edition
3.0
I found this to be super mediocre and not as exciting as it could’ve been. it spent way too much time recounting specific stories of fraud and not going into the issues it causes. I’m fine with talking about all these specific stories because they are interesting but it looses my interest when the story is recounted in two pages and then quickly moves on to the next one. There are so many stories they all kind of blend together. I also didn’t really learn anything new from this and found a lot of the ideas to be pretty common sense and too straight forward.
guojing's review against another edition
4.0
A good look at a misunderstood field. It's clear that the processes of the scientific endeavor have become massively distorted in pursuit of personal gain over scientific knowledge. This isn't the fault of individual researchers (though many exploit it), rather it's the natural consequences of the incredibly ruinous infrastructure of science, from university promotions that require good impact factors to journals not really doing the background work to make sure the articles they accept are legit, to the funding agencies' demands for irrelevant metrics. If the system is set up to encourage unethical behavior, then those who act unethically will advance beyond the ethical people, who will then feel compelled to copy their "betters" if they want to advance, or even to hold onto their jobs. Clearly, something is rotten in science.
More...