December 30, 2021 —The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the problem of misinformation affecting the integrity of research. To spread awareness on this issue, the UP Manila Committee on Research Integrity (CRI) conducted a webinar, entitled, “Research Integrity and Misinformation” on December 3 as part of the UP Manila Science and Technology Week celebration.
From the perspective of an administrator and educator, UP Diliman Chancellor Fidel Nemenzo talked about predatory journals and conferences. Predatory Journals are fake journals whose primary goal is financial gain, not academic scholarship. Predatory conferences are bogus conferences with poor (or non-existent) paper review procedures. Both are money-making scams that prey on academics under pressure to boost their curriculum vitae for hiring, promotion, and tenure purposes. He presented examples and shared tips on how to spot and avoid probable predatory publishers and conferences.
Chancellor Nemenzo emphasized that while building research programs and increasing output, researchers need to be vigilant in protecting the integrity of research, scholarship, and academic standards.
UP Manila College of Medicine professor and Journal of Clinical Epidemiology (JCE) Editor Dr. Leonila Dans presented the usual business model (producer-retailer-consumer and vice-versa) and related it to scientific research (researcher-publisher-researcher and vice-versa). Recounting the history of Open Access Journals and predatory journals, she explained how the JCE introduced policies and strategies to increase publication of articles coming from lower- to middle-income economy countries and emphasized the roles of researchers, publisher, and institution leaders on countering predatory journals and conferences.
Dr. Jacinto Blas Mantaring III, CRI member and UPM Research Ethics Board Chair, reiterated the importance of research integrity during the COVID-19 pandemic. He discussed the role, advantages, and disadvantages of preprints during COVID-19 pandemic; preprints having transparent process, screening, and retractions. But he said that they can also be a source of misleading information. He underscored the importance of peer review and scientific scrutiny to ensure quality of information.
Dr. Iris Thiele Isip-Tan, UPM Interactive Learning Center Director and UPM TeleHealth Committee Chair, defined infodemic as an overabundance of information that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy and reliable sources. Differentiating misinformation from disinformation in the context of fake news, she described the former as misleading information that is shared without the intention to harm while the latter is a deliberate, orchestrated, and malicious information that is meant to manipulate or deceive others.
To fight mis/disinformation, Dr. Isip-Tan discussed how to introduce science to the public and the use of social media as a tool for wider and faster dissemination, but also stressed the importance of eHealth literacy and assessment.
Luz Emano
Published in the UP Manila Healthscape (Special COVID-19 Issue No. 34, December 2021)
