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Journalists have published a fake cancer study as part of an extensive investigation into unscrupulous publications in a little-known scientific journal, Le Monde reported on Thursday.
The survey was designed to demonstrate that anyone, on condition of paying, could pbad "false science" for the real one.
Journalists of two German media, the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung and the public radio NDR, transmitted to the journal Journal of Integrative Oncology "the results of a clinical study showing that propolis extract was more effective on colorectal cancer than conventional chemotherapies."
Propolis is a resinous substance derived from trees and transformed by bees in order to build the cells of their hives
"The study was fictitious, the data produced, and the authors, affiliated with an imaginary research institute, did not exist either. The publication was nevertheless accepted in less than ten days and published on April 24, "explained Le Monde.
The daily's website offers a link to an archived version of this study, which was withdrawn once officials
It states that the researchers compared the effectiveness of chemotherapy with propolis capsules. Moreover, the conclusion of the pseudo-scientific article speaks of an unrelated subject, the effect of mbadage on thromboembolic diseases.
The German Minister of Research, Anja Karliczek, expressed support for an investigation to to determine why this false study could have been published
"It is in the interest of science itself," she said, quoted by the German news agency DPA. According to her, everything must be done "so that credibility and trust in science are not affected (…) It is good that such errors are brought to light. that we can change what is wrong. "
The magazine in question is published by an Indian publisher, Omics. But according to Le Monde, it is "dozens of unscrupulous publishers" who "have created hundreds of free-access journals with the name snoring, having all the finery of real scholarly journals." They affect a multitude of scientific disciplines.
Without any control on the quality of the presented works, they claim to the authors "some hundreds of euros" by article, according to Le Monde and NDR.
In the most prestigious, where to publish requires a review by expert scientists in the same field (called "peer review"), and where the validation process usually takes several months, authors do not always pay.
An NDR journalist has also told on the air improvise, with a colleague, computer scientist through a fake university website and false references to scientific articles. Both even intervened in a conference where they "received a prize at the end".
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