How citation distortions create unfounded authority: analysis of a citation network

A study by Steven Greenburg from Harvard Medical School and published in the BMJ into herd behaviour amongst the scientific community. Principally it sets out to prove that citation alone can convert hypothesis to fact and citation bias or invention was present in eight of nine proposals for funding by the National Institutes of Health

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ABSTRACT

Objective To understand belief in a specific scientific claim by studying the pattern of citations among papers stating it.

Design A complete citation network was constructed from all PubMed indexed English literature papers addressing the belief that β amyloid, a protein accumulated in the brain in Alzheimer’s disease, is produced by and injures skeletal muscle of patients with inclusion body myositis. Social network theory and graph theory were used to analyse this network.

Main outcome measures Citation bias, amplification, and invention, and their effects on determining authority. Results The network contained 242 papers and 675 citations addressing the belief, with 220 553 citation paths supporting it. Unfounded authority was established by citation bias against papers that refuted or weakened the belief; amplification, the marked expansion of the belief system by papers presenting no data addressing it; and forms of invention such as the conversion of hypothesis into fact through citation alone. Extension of this network into text within grants funded by the National Institutes of Health and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act showed the same phenomena present and sometimes used to justify requests for funding.

Conclusion Citation is both an impartial scholarly method and a powerful form of social communication. Through distortions in its social use that include bias, amplification, and invention, citation can be used to generate information cascades resulting in unfounded authority of claims. Construction and analysis of a claim specific citation network may clarify the nature of a published belief system and expose distorted methods of social citation.

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Vocabulary of citation distortions
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Citation
- Both scholarly and social forms: the scholarly form connects statements to the broader medical literature, the social form (social citation) includes self serving and persuasive subtypes

Citation distortions
- Self serving citation is always a distortion
- Persuasive citation may be necessary to communicate new, sound claims to the scientific community; it may, however, have distorted uses—citation bias, amplification, and invention

Citation bias
- Systematic ignoring of papers that contain content conflicting with a claim
- Bolster claim; justifying animal models to provide opportunities to amplify claim

Amplification
- Expansion of a belief system without data
- Citation made to papers that don’t contain primary data, increasing the number of citations supporting the claim without presenting data addressing it

Invention

Citation diversion—citing content but claiming it has a different meaning, thereby diverting
its implications

Citation transmutation—the conversion of hypothesis into fact through the act of citation alone

Back door invention—repeated misrepresentation of abstracts as peer reviewed papers to fool readers into believing that claims are based on peer reviewed publishedmethods and data

Dead end citation—support of a claim with citation to papers that do not contain content addressing the claim

Title invention—reporting of “experimental results” in a paper’s title, even though the paper does not report the performance or results of any such experiments