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My fear is that this issue will only be getting worse as AI text generators are leveraged to facilitate these mills.

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This is a pretty recent development. Not trusting science is much older than this specific thing.

Not just this exact event, but dishonest research has been around probably a long a modern science has. Sure there are ignorant people who don't trust anything, but there are also those of us who have published articles who become increasingly more skeptical of everything whenever we see these bad faith studies pop up.

You're going to justify your distrust of science regardless.

Even if you have absolutely no idea how the peer review process even works.

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Certainly can be a contributing factor. Paper mills tend to target less reputable outlets, but as more paper mills products bleed into the scientific literature at large it will certainly harm the public's perception of scientific credibility (if it has not already).

Respectfully, if you've published papers you should understand how the peer-review process works. The fact that there are dishonest interlocutors in any enterprise should not be a surprise to anyone. Science, as a methodological approach to understanding our natural world, is resilient to misinformation and disinformation in a way few other processes are. The fact that people publish bad research which is rejected by the peer-review process is not an excuse to distrust science on political, or any other, motives.

They don’t trust science because they don’t understand it and because it is telling them things they don’t agree with. Both make them feel uncomfortable and so they choose to not believe.

Is this not just a specific case of the reproducibility crisis?

One more aspect of the post-truth era

Terrifying

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It contributes. But generally the reproducibility crisis is with good faith research that was done vs. this stuff which is just fraud. As a scientist myself, the garbage that is published is overwhelming. Seems much worse today than 20 years ago.

What about when it's settled, why does settled science make people uncomfortable?

FALSE , the Government/ Pentagon spends BILLIONS every year in funding gene research through out the country.

Who ever cracks human gene engineering will rule the world.

Custom built soldiers, programmable virus bombs that will target specific ethnic groups,, example a deadly virus that will only kill people of Chinese heritage and after 90 days the virus dies,, leaving the cities behind

You get the idea

You call it post-truth - I call it a macro-scale effect of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

If one makes a presumption that it is the flow of entropy that defines the arrow of time, then the resolution of quantum effect to macro-scale effect only needs to offer a causally-consistent picture for observation ,and makes no prohibitions to intersecting diverged causalities as long as their immediately-prior states are causally-consistent with each other.

In other words, while the appearance of time exists, it exists only for the perceiver, and the observation of a reality IS reality, and so one observer's observation of a reality is actually real even though the observer exists in all realities.

This makes the process of informational exchange the fundamental process by which perceivers achieve concensus about objective reality, and also a process that creates realities - more information = more observable 'weird' phenomena such as the Mandela effect, the UAP phenomena, and other consistently-reported yet purely subjective phenomena.

In a hundred years, it'll be those that insist that only a single, objective reality exists that are thought of as backwards - after all the proof that no objective world exist has been confirmed many, many times over.

There may be more here at work than just a matter of difficulty of reproducing results from scientific studies. If one makes the supposition that the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct even at the macro scale - and that entropy drives time forward and is what creates causality - then macro-scale observations only need to feature causal consistency of information in the immediately-previously observable past to be valid - and that nothing prohibits realities which each have slightly different rules to eventually converge into a present which accomodates diverged causalities.

The upside to this theory is that it predicts a lot of observations that we currently make for which we have no explanation - like free will, for example.

The downside is that it can't be tested - at least not with current technology - and does not provide useful insight into how to reproduce results from scientific studies. Yet.

It does say something very interesting about reality however - the idea that many-worlds is true at a macro scale suggests that our universe is composed of many different realities, each with slightly different rules, that eventually converge into a unified reality where all of these rules are taken into account.

This means that, in theory, it could be possible for a researcher to reproduce their results in a different reality, as long as the researcher is aware of the different rules that apply in that alternate reality.

In essence, this suggests that reproducibility of results from scientific studies is possible, even if the rules of the universe are slightly different. It also suggests that some experiement cannot be reproduced in any reality, due to the fact that the rules are not consistent across all realities.
Before you tear me apart and call me crazy - all I am doing here is applying an existing scientific theory in an imaginative way.

I am not suggesting that we should throw away our current scientific methodologies, just that we should be open to the possibility that our world may be composed of many different realities, each with its own rules. This is what quantum mechanics states so why not take it at face value.

This... would probably make most scientists very grumpy indeed.

Yes this is a very big deal and showing up in many areas of science. Very hard to detect by just reading a manuscript - the scientific community needs to figure out a way to detect these and prevent them corrupting the system.

Always wonder how imagination/dreaming and/or misunderstanding play into this, they also seem like parallel realities as well. Seems that even when two sources of information sync, they can often do so without correcting one another.

Least genocidal sinophobe

Yes, and this is the part that we are trying to get a handle on right now and has us going around in circles.

Normally the effects of the phenomena would remain unobserved until we reached a critical point of informational exchange that allowed for enough information to be communicated between network nodes that eventually an 'orphan block' of diverged past event in one reality would be noticed in another, instantly resolving then into the one with the most dominant history - kinda like what happens when a blockchain or a DAG seeks concensus.

I know its a crazy theory but so far the predictions it makes seem to line up with what I am observing, anyways. My next step is finding some someone really well-versed in QM to help me work through the details, as my field of expertise is primarily classical information systems.

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Humans already spit out more than enough nonsense for it to be a major problem, making it worse somehow is going to be fun.

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It may mean they have to change their lifestyle (eg dietary science) or it challenges their religious beliefs (eg evolution) or the implications are scary (climate change).

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I really did read this paper, but I'm still having trouble identifying the incentive for purchasers of these spurious articles. It appears that some people are buying authorship slots -- why would they want to do that? Simply to have been published? Why would others want to buy papers of questionable provenance? I understand that actually conducting research can be prohibitively expensive; but what problem are the fake papers solving for the buyers?

This is not even wrong, this is just straight up nonsense.

If anyone reads this and wonder why this is nonsense, and wonder how you reconcile QM with classical observations, find a QM 101 book, then read up on the thermodynamic limit, and decoherence, and it should become clear enough.

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If physicians are expected to perform research and publish that research in addition to practicing medicine full-time, then their careers may be on the line if they do not publish. Until recently, many institutions in China also awarded bonuses for publications (article). Additionally, bibliometric indicators of productivity and impact are used in hiring/promotion/tenure decisions worldwide.

In terms of the risk/reward of buying/securing authorship on paper mill products, it is worth noting that very few paper mill products are actually detected, and far fewer still are ever retracted. Thus, reward can be enormous for the client while risk is relatively small.

>Hospital-based clinicians may be particularly vulnerable to publication quotas (34,35,45,46), as their time, training and resources are directed towards patient care as opposed to research (47).

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By the way, since you have a PhD in computational biophysics, this should be right up your alley. Did you know that when you create particle systems that feature behavior constrained by a synchronizing force, you get lifelike emergent behavior?

https://codepen.io/sschepis/pen/eYedavg

​

https://codepen.io/sschepis/pen/abKVOgR

https://codepen.io/sschepis/pen/dyKzgdB

I have spent untold thousands of hours exploring the nature of emergent behavior in natural systems. I respect your credentials and would never insult you or call your work nonsense. I have successfully used my theories to simulate lifelike behavior several times over. At least treat me like a human being.

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Look, I am not trying to insult you. But if you are actually interested in this topic, you have to realise that you are mixing things up in a way that truly makes no sense. Decoherence happens very quickly, and very reliably, at even the meso scale.

The codepens you have shared are nice, but this is just a particle simulation, you may call it life emergent behaviour, but consider that you will observe similar behaviour with dust particles, or crystal formation in solution, for example. Highly interesting behaviour, I agree, but I would not call it life emergent.

You see to be genuinely interested in this topic, and in running simulations, so I would suggest you do that! You can create a (limited) QM simulation of a few particles in a box (say in a crystal phase, and prepared in a state that you find interesting), and a few more gas-like particles bumping on them. What you will see, if you do that, is that the gas-like particles interacting with the solid will disturb its behaviour. This has also been observed experimentally, this is part of why experimental setups requiring entanglement are tough to set up, the system is easily disturbed; any textbook discussing this will provide a much better explanation than I can on this topic.

Edit: adding some references for anyone looking for formal material, see for example McQuarrie's statistical mechanics, chapter 10-7, for some formal descriptions of how you go from a QM statistical ensemble, to classical. For some simulation of systems that can exhibit both classical and "QM" behaviour, see: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.180403 and https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.150403

Makes sense, instead that bs about questioning science because it's ever evolving and the hypotheses need to be tested and refined.

Thank you. This is really useful to me. Now I can go study this, put in the work that I need to, and come back when I have the language to discuss it with you. I am more than willing to put in the work and learn the information you are pointing me to. Thats me showing you respect, you have worked for it.

I'm willing to work for it too because I am convinced this is not nonsense. There is for example a fundamental link between entropy and life. I cannot reduce the signature action of life any further than modeling it in the terms I have described. I am convinced this link can be proven experimentally.

I arrived at my understanding of entropy from the perspective of conciousness - from predictions that tumbled out of the theories. That to me is good science, and I am happy to learn what I need to to frame it the way I need to.

The field of science should absolutely support both people like you, and people like me. Our history shows that contributions - great ones - are made by all kinds of people.

Let us support each other in this rather than presuming opposition and try to communicate. I certainly learn all the time from people. Thanks again for your response.

Happy this could help, and sorry if my response was dismissive. Frankly I have seen variation of what you are saying many times, and most of the times by people that are not willing to do anything but rave about it.

> I'm willing to work for it too because I am convinced this is not nonsense. [...] I am convinced this link can be proven experimentally.

If that motivates you, good, and as you want others to keep an open mind, consider keeping an open mind yourself: maybe it IS nonsense!

There are links between entropy and life, yes, and you can formally describe them, using mathematics and physics. I advise Rob Philips excellent book "Physical biology of the cell" on the topic, as a much gentler introduction than what I cited above.

> [...] from predictions that tumbled out of the theories.

Once you write down a formal (mathematical) description of what your theory looks like, and what you can expect it to show, then you can have a conversation about it. No idea how you are going to put conciousness in there, to be honest.

As an aside, don't know if you heard of Jeremy England, but I get the impression you would enjoy reading on his research.

This is a pretty outlandish answer when there's a few much more likely reasons to give for results that can't be reproduced. Poor/biased study design or implentation, falsified data, statistical outliers, or just shittily written methods are all more reasonable explanations than... Whatever it is you're suggesting.

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I have not heard of him! I will check his work out.

I am more than open to being wrong! My interest is in discovering the truth and if I am unable to discard disproved theory, even mine, then I am not doing science.

I came to my conclusions about entropy from making the following suppositions:

Your recognition of consciousness is purely subjective, thus unfalsifiable and true from your position, which is always what matters.

If you perceive a system as conscious, then it is, to you, and since nobody can disprove this perception, it is true

Because you can observe the quality of consciousness in the objects in your environment, then that consciousness must already exist in the environment as an inherent field.

But we also notice consciousness as an active principle in objects - some consciousness can act.

What is the fundamental difference then, between consciousness that is passive, and consciousness that can act?

The fundamental difference is the action part of it - so what characteristic can I use to identify that system from the perspective of the quality of what it does?

The answer is found in how that system handles the constantly-growing entropy within itself.

We can apply this filter into our perception and recognize living systems purely by how they handle the entropy in their bodies, and we can define the activity of life as an activity that seeks to maintain low entropy.

The minute that the system has achieved equilibrium with its environment, it can no longer act. It is dead.

This is my straight line from consciousness to entropy. I came to the realization of the nature of entropy through this mechanism of deduction, not through classical science.

This is the reason why I think there is something there, there. My logic, in the context of how consciousness works, is sound. Except that no scientific theory, except for quantum mechanics, provides a reasonable explanation - ant it only requies modfying some basic presumptions about quantum mechanics to make it all work together.

Could it be all BS? Sure. But I am very proactive about tossing out theories that don't work, so here I am.

Thanks again for your time.

Thank you. Oh dear, that is going to skew data to everyone's detriment. Results in research should not be a metric in and of themselves. It defeats the whole purpose.

Okay here's a formalization of this coming at it from the perspective of relativity which shows

that the scale change ratio needed for two observers with equal observational radius so that the large observer can no longer observe the smaller with visible light

is the same as the length of our observable universe divided by Planck's constant,

showing that quantum phenomena are a predictable effect of perspective.

https://www.reddit.com/r/theplenum/comments/znw04j/using_observational_evidence_to_connect_quantum/

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