03/19/24 Editor’s note: The research authors have shared their full poster presentation for updated details about their research abstract. Please see the digital file attached, in the right hand column for these details. The most current statistics, ...
As a big fan of IF, I find this really depressing.
This shouldn't be taken seriously. It's a very quick and dirty analysis presented at a conference without peer review. Start worrying when/if the scientific paper comes out, which might be years or never.
Peer review is unfortunately not a magic bullet. And conference abstracts do get a form of peer review because that's how they get accepted for the conference.
The actual problem is that academics can pad their CVs doing terrible research and publishing it with alarmist headlines.
When they've written it up, it will get through peer review, somewhere, somehow, because peer review does not work. The fight will happen in the letters pages (if anyone has the energy) and won't change a damn thing anyway.
I didn't say they did. But authors don't just get to submit an abstract and have it accepted, it has been selected by whatever committee process was set up to sift the submissions. Many conferences will do a better job than the journals but mileage varies all over the fucking shop.
But my main bugbear here is the idea that peer review means anything. The dross that gets published is beyond depressing. But it's probably worth noting that dross is much less likely to get submitted to a conference because a) fuck all CV points for an abstract and b) getting accepted means registering for the conference and turning up to get your peer review in person. Scammers don't do that. Although there have been entire scam conferences so ... heuristics don't work any which way, really.
I've been to 30 or so national or international conferences in biology, and have never had an abstract rejected. I don't think I'm doing anything special, so I assume pretty much everyone gets in. More presenters = more money. I've also been on the selection committee side and it is definitely not more selective than peer review. We're only reviewing an abstract, usually under 100 words. Prob varies by field though. Maybe medical conferences are selective?
You can't generalise about conferences any more than you can generalise about individual journals, or publishers, or peer review.
Lack of peer review is not a standalone criticism. The problems with this study are obvious and you do not need to rely on an imaginary peer reviewer to point them out.