Who can you believe in academic writing?
In January 2006, the journal Science retracted a 2005 article by university professor Hwang Woo-Suk and colleagues that had claimed the existence of patient-specific embryonic stem cell lines. If the article had been true, it would have suggested that tangible medical applications of embryonic stem cells might be close in time. Regarding the publication of this fraudulent article, it is interesting to note BOTH that the reviewers and editors found no difficulty with the article at the time of submission AND that the scientific experts in the field of embryonic stem cells did not question the article before before it was revealed in December 2005. No one in the field could identify a fraudulent document.
In my article LESSONS TO LEARN FROM THE HWANG AFFAIR: ANALYZING INNOVATION THE RIGHT WAY (88 JPTOS 239 (March 2006)), I noted that incidences of misstatement by academics in the published literature are not uncommon. For example, a Stanford University professor writing in the Stanford Law Review claimed that Gary Boone was the inventor of the integrated circuit. Mark A. Lemley, Patenting Nanotechnology, 58 Stan. L.Rev. 601, 612 (2005). This misstatement, ignoring the actual inventors Noyce and Kilby, sailed straight through the “review” process at the Stanford Law Review. Furthermore, the “message” that Lemley drew from Boone’s invention of the IC was that The sum of all these stories is quite remarkable: for one reason or another, the building blocks of what might be called the enabling technologies of the 20th century, including the computer, software, the Internet, and biotechnology, all ended up in the public domain. Actually, the IC is an example of a situation where users had to pay royalties to not just one patent holder, but two (Texas Instruments AND Fairchild).
Academic research is not the only area in which one must be careful.
Did New Jersey really fund stem cell research?
Several publications have suggested that the state of New Jersey was the first to use public funds for embryonic stem cell research:
New Jersey officials on December 16, 2005 announced $5
millions in grants for stem cell research, including
studies with human embryonic stem cells. Tea
awards are said to be the first instance of a status
using public funds for such research.
The grants may seem modest compared to the
for other scientific endeavors, but they represent a
important step in New Jersey’s effort to establish a
stem cell research industry. with strong competition
already underway from California and Florida,
supporters say New Jersey can’t afford to fall
behind.
”The grants we have awarded today are based on
science, not politics, and have been conceived by some
of the brightest minds and the best institutions of our
state,” Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey said in a
declaration. ”Hopefully this funding will set the stage
for a new era in medical treatments that will alleviate the
suffering of millions and ultimately saving lives.”
New York Times, B2, December 17, 2005
California’s pioneering initiative has sparked a
backlash, as some states have enacted bans
funded embryonic stem cell research. However, others –
including Connecticut, New Jersey, Texas, and Illinois
— have recently approved small amounts of state funds
funding for research.
Los Angeles Times, B1, February. 27, 2006
“Californians’ decision to welcome embryonic stem cell research has sparked a backlash among states that
I don’t want to see a brain drain in biotech.
Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey have passed
state laws to encourage embryonic stem cell research.
New Jersey Law Journal, Feb. 20, 2006
At this time, it is not clear if both houses of the New Jersey state legislature actually approved this spending of money, or if the actual money went from the state of New Jersey to research institutions to fund stem cell research.
Google uses citation hits, not accuracy, to determine hit rank in search engine results.
People are still only willing to look at the first few dozen results. Because of this, as the size of the collection grows, search engines need tools that have very high precision (number of relevant documents returned, say, among the first tens of results). In fact, search engines want the notion of “relevant” to only include the best documents, since there can be tens of thousands of slightly relevant documents.
Briefly, Google, in part, assigns “rank” in its search engine results in the same way that the Science Citation Index (SCI) assigns the “value” of a scientific article based on the number of articles that cite it. Google assumes that you will find a given web page more valuable if others have linked to it.
–> If a human reads a web page and finds it relevant, that human could link to it on their own site.
–> The greater the number of pages that link to a given web page, the more relevant it is.
Thus PageRank was born, brought to us by a small search engine called Back-Rub that later changed its name to Google.
With Google, we have a strong goal of driving further development and understanding in academia. Academics love the citation index and create mutual cross-dating societies: I’ll cite your paper if you cite mine. Although some will say that this is “objective”, a more accurate description is that it is “quantifiable” according to relatively simple rules.
The web citation (link) graph is an important resource that has largely gone unused in existing web search engines. We have created maps containing up to 518 million of these hyperlinks, a significant sample of the total. These maps allow quick calculation of the “PageRank” of a web page, an objective measure of its citation importance that corresponds well with people’s subjective idea of importance. The academic citation literature has been applied to the web, largely by counting citations or backlinks to a given page. This gives an approximation of the importance or quality of a page. PageRank extends this idea by not counting links from all pages equally and by normalizing by the number of links on a page. Links from well-linked pages are better indicators of quality.
An interesting example of why Google’s ranking system is not necessarily effective was a study of Google searches for +”patent reform” +2795, in the time period after the introduction of Lamar Smith’s HR 2795 on reform. of patents in June 2005. Initially, Google searches seemed uninclusive, but at least it returned results relevant to the content of the bill. Over time, the number of hits increased dramatically, but there was an almost selective “culling” of substantive hits (those that actually discussed the content of HR 2795 and what it might mean) in favor of more popular hits that just provided information. cosmetics discussion of the bill. Web pages with significant content were almost eliminated.
On the subject of integrated circuit, a Google search for +Noyce +Kilby +”integrated circuit” on April 21 yielded 34,300 results. A search for +Boone +”integrated circuit” produced 23,300, the first two search results were directed at the case:
#one. http://www.law.cornell.edu/patent/comments/96_1514.htm on the Hyatt v. Boone
#2. http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/Federal/judicial/fed/opinions/96opinions/96-1514.html on the case
Lemley’s “Patenting Nanotechnology” was one of the hits:
lawreview.stanford.edu/content/issue2/lemley.pdf
siepr.stanford.edu/programs/SST_Seminars/Patenting_Nanotechnology.pdf
So googling may lead you to the conclusion that Gary Boone invented the integrated circuit.