> Moreover, it has been noted that the authors state that “no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study” which is contradictory to the study described.<p>Is peer review even worth anything any more? Is journal publication actually the scam my academic friends have been moaning about for years?
The question the editors should be asking of their peer reviewers is: why was neither this, nor any of the other glaring errors spotted during the process of peer review, a process literally designed to catch things such as this?<p>This is why I think that peer reviewers should be deanonymized post-review, to allow for accountability and open conflict-of-interest investigations.
The interesting part is that, technically, a correctly placed T could actually represent a correct error bar. I mean, they are obviously not (constant spacing), but the fact that a T is used is, by itself, curious, but not wrong.
I think the whole chart was made in a drawing program like MS paint or Visio. The spacing between the columns isn’t quite even as would be the case with any software charting library, especially noticeable for the gaps left and right of the blue bar.<p>Also this quote is amazing<p><pre><code> “the authors state that “no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study””</code></pre>
Yeah sure junk peer reviews, publisher should have noticed, etc.<p>Is it not equally, or more, terrifying that an academic sat down and deliberately did this?