Reflections on the Three Controversies in Economic Methodology by Virtue of the Philosophy of Science

The philosophical foundation of the mainstream neoclassical economics is empirical philosophy.The controversies of economic methodology over inductive and deductive methods,over verificationistic and falsificationistic approaches,and over positive and normative analyses in the evolution of economics are associated with those in the philosophy of science.The evolution of philosophy of science suggests that the above-mentioned pairs of economic methodologies should be appropriately combined when used in economics.It is not sensible to overemphasize either one inside each pair of economic methodologies.

An algorithm based on evidence theory and fuzzy entropy to defend against SSDF

In cognitive radio networks, spectrum sensing is one of the most important functions to identify available spectrum for improving the spectrum utilization. Due to the open characteristic of the wireless electromagnetic environment, the wireless network is vulnerable to be attacked by malicious users(MUs), and spectrum sensing data falsification(SSDF) attack is one of the most harmful attacks on spectrum sensing performance. In this article,an algorithm based on the evidence theory and fuzzy entropy is proposed to resist SSDF attacks. In this algorithm, secondary users(SUs) obtain the corresponding degree of membership function and basic probability assignment function based on the local energy detection result. The new conflicting coefficient is calculated based on the evidence distance and classical conflicting coefficient, and the conflicting weight of the evidence is obtained.The fuzzy weight is calculated by the fuzzy entropy. The credibility weight is obtained by updating the credibility. On this basis, the probability assignment function of the evidence is corrected, and the final result is obtained by using the fusion formula. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has a higher detection probability and lower false alarm probability than other algorithms.It can effectively defend against SSDF attacks and improve the performance of spectrum sensing.

Substandard/Falsification Antibacterial Agents: A Systematic Review of Liquid Chromatographic and Spectrophotometric Methods for Their Detection

Falsified antibacterial agents continue to pose serious public health problems around the world. They are notably responsible for resistance emergence in the treatment of infectious diseases that can lead to death. The aim of this study was to summarize the literature on the methods developed and validated to detect poor quality antibacterial agents in order to assess the impact of these available methods in the fighting against Counterfeit/substandard medicines. Thus, studies published in the time from January 2000 to July 2017, were accessible via Google Scholar and Pubmed and allowed to analyze 41 papers. The majority (30) of developed and validated methods concerned LC methods, 9 regarded UV/V is spectrophotometry and two studies simultaneously developed both methods. Antibacterial agents belonging to beta-lactams group were the most concerned by the methods developed and validated (39%), followed by quinolones (18%) and macrolides (12%). Regarding active ingredients, amoxicillin (12%) was the most concerned by the development and validation methods. In spite of several available methods to detect substandard drugs, antibacterial agents for which methods were developed and validated were the most concerned by worldwide detected non-conformities. The fight against this scourge should not be only limited by their detection, but it also requires an effective involvement of different actors notably: health authorities, international organizations, pharmaceutical industries etc.

Data-Driven Model Falsification and Uncertainty Quantification for Fractured Reservoirs

Many properties of natural fractures are uncertain,such as their spatial distribution,petrophysical properties,and fluid flow performance.Bayesian theorem provides a framework to quantify the uncertainty in geological modeling and flow simulation,and hence to support reservoir performance predictions.The application of Bayesian methods to fractured reservoirs has mostly been limited to synthetic cases.In field applications,however,one of the main problems is that the Bayesian prior is falsified,because it fails to predict past reservoir production data.In this paper,we show how a global sensitivity analysis(GSA)can be used to identify why the prior is falsified.We then employ an approximate Bayesian computation(ABC)method combined with a tree-based surrogate model to match the production history.We apply these two approaches to a complex fractured oil and gas reservoir where all uncertainties are jointly considered,including the petrophysical properties,rock physics properties,fluid properties,discrete fracture parameters,and dynamics of pressure and transmissibility.We successfully identify several reasons for the falsification.The results show that the methods we propose are effective in quantifying uncertainty in the modeling and flow simulation of a fractured reservoir.The uncertainties of key parameters,such as fracture aperture and fault conductivity,are reduced.

Analytical Methods in the Quality Control of Scientific Publications Part III: Publishers’ Ethics and Editors’ Complicity

In 2012, the first paper in the series Analytical Methods in Quality Control of Scientific Publications was published in the American Journal of Analytical Chemistry, Vol. 3, No. 6, 2012, pp. 443-447. This paper was mainly based on evidence presented in the 2011 in book Historical Overview of Chromatography and Related Techniques in Analysis of Antimalarial Drug Primaquine (editor Ilia Brondz, Nova Science Publishers, Inc., ISSN 978-1-61761-944-1). The first paper in this series di- scussed issues of obvious falsification and plagiarism contained in paper published by Dongre et al., Applications of GC-EI-MS for the Identification and Investigation of Positional Isomer in Primaquine, an Antimalarial Drug. Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis, Vol. 39, No. 1-2, 2005, pp. 111-116. Dongre et al. copied their publication from an original research manuscript submitted for consideration by other authors. This paper was published in the Asian Journal of Chemistry, Vol. 17, No. 3, 2005, pp. 1678-1688. Conclusive arguments against the publication of Dongre et al. were presented in the American Journal of Analytical Chemistry, Vol. 3, No. 6, 2012, pp. 443-447. Further cases of general plagiarism and incompetence relating to authors, reviewers, editors, and publishers were presented in Part II in Analytical Methods in Quality Control of Scientific Publications Part II: The Authors’, Reviewers’, Editors’ Responsibility and the Publishers’ Authority in the International Journal of Analytical Mass Spectrometry and Chromatography, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2013, pp. 81-89. The present paper will discuss the following issues: the obvious neglect of the rights of authors by some publishers and editors;how original research manuscripts are exposed to mediocre researchers, and possibly sold, by editors to these “scientists” to boost the image of these particular “scientists”;how the order of authors’ names in published articles are changed to satisfy the commercial interests of companies;and how copyright is breached in an appalling way by well-established publishers. The documents presented here concern research publications in the fields of chromatography, chromatography-mass spectrometry, and mass spectrometry.

Econometric Modeling and Model Falsification

A recent literature on qualitative analysis has shown that its successful application in testing the consistency of the sign patterns of a proposed structure and an estimated reduced form was far less restricted than a previous literature had proposed. A frequent example used in this demonstration was the qualitative analysis of Klein’s Model I. For this, the proposed structural sign pattern was falsified by the sign pattern of the estimated reduced form. As a result, the subsequent application two-stage least squares would always find quantifications of the structure that could not possibly have resulted in the sign pattern of the estimated reduced form. We view this result as a diagnostic calling for further analysis. We show that the Klein model fails standard over identification tests. We make modest amendments to the model that resolves this problem but find that the resulting estimated reduced form still falsifies the structure, calling for further developmental effort. Our point is that qualitative falsification should be viewed as a diagnostic in developing a model, rather than a criterion for entirely dismissing the model.

Violence in the Political Construction of Trotskyism

Often the most brutal explosions of violence are admissions of impotence.Keeping this in mind,the author would like to bring to light the political terror of Joseph Stalin which was systematically disseminated on the Socialist Opposition lead by Leon Trotsky.In order to understand the brutal nature of the false trials and the numerous murders in the name of revolution,it is imperative to understand the degeneracy of the Soviet Union which has been analyzed very dialectically by Leon Trotsky.Paul Le Blanc notes that the socialism in one country perspective caused for all practical purposes a downgrade in the seriousness with which the Communist International was taken.Initially,established by Lenin and his comrades to build parties in countries all over the world,this theory was now being vulgarized and being transformed into a tool for the foreign policy of the bureaucratic brand of socialism which was being practiced by the Soviet Union.It is because of this theory that people who are not aware of the history and do not have a proper knowledge of dialectical analysis fail to analyze the Soviet Union.My paper talks about the violent construction of the myth of Trotskyism as a signifier signifying the betrayal to the big br(other)that is Stalin and exposing the bankruptcy and impotence of Stalinism.

Estimating a Falsified Model

It is common econometric practice to propose a system of equations, termed the “structure,” estimate each endogenous variable in the structure via a linear regression with all of the exogenous variables as arguments, and then employ one of variety of regression techniques to recapture the coefficients in the (Jacobian) arrays of the structure. A recent literature, e.g., [1], has shown that a qualitative analysis of a model’s structural and estimated reduced form arrays can provide a robust procedure for assessing if a model’s hypothesized structure has been falsified. This paper shows that the even weaker statement of the model’s structure provided by zero restrictions on the structural arrays can be falsified, independent of the proposed nonzero entries. When this takes place, multi-stage least squares, or any procedure for estimating the structural arrays with the zero restrictions imposed, will present estimates that could not possibly have generated the data upon which the estimated reduced form is based. The examples given in the paper are based upon a Monte Carlo sampling procedure.

Academic integrity disputes in China:a narrative case study

Because the research paper of Alzheimer's disease(AD)new drug(GV-971)was suspected to be fraudulent,the author filed a lawsuit for infringement of reputation.A court in Shanghai rejected the lawsuit.Legal documents openly support academic disputes and criticism.The FDA's approval of the listing of a new AD drug(aducanumab)is also full of controversy,and some scholars suspect that there are problems with clinical data(of course there are scholars who support the listing).Falsification of scientific research and papers is not uncommon in China.In 2021,more than 400 people were publicly investigated for falsification of papers(these papers published in SCI journals).The reason for the prevalence of falsification was related to the promotion policy,evaluation system and economic interests.Academic fraud was a serious waste of funds and corrupted the academic atmosphere.And hinder the development of science and technology.In the past two years,the government has successively promulgated a series of scientific research and academic integrity norms,prohibiting the use of scientific research funds in international predatory journals,advocating the purification of the academic environment,and conducive to genuine innovative research.The court respects science,administration does not interfere with academics,and advocates peer review.The first-instance judgment may be a landmark event for China.

Reputation-based secure spectrum situation fusion in distributed cognitive radio networks

In distributed cognitive radio （CR） network, the cooperative spectrum situation sensing based on consensus scheme may be disrupted by spectrum sensing data falsification （SSDF） attacks. In this paper, a secure spectrum situation fusion scheme based on reputation is proposed to counter attacks. The neighboring nodes of secondary users （SUs） get the corresponding dynamic trust value according to their behavior, which restrict the impact of the malicious behavior on the premise to ensure information interaction of normal nodes. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the consensus fusion scheme based on reputation has better performance than the existing algorithm which eliminates the neighboring node with the biggest deviation value from mean value. It demonstrates that the proposed scheme not only achieves better convergence properties but also has higher detection probability than the existing scheme in the process of spectrum situation fusion.

Weight sequential log-likelihood ratio detect algorithm with malicious users removing

Due to the openness of the cognitive radio network, spectrum sensing data falsification （SSDF） can attack the spectrum sensing easily, while there is no effective algorithm proposed in current research work, so this paper introduces the malicious users removing to the weight sequential probability radio test （WSPRT）. The terminals＇ weight is weighted by the accuracy of their spectrum sensing information, which can also be used to detect the malicious user. If one terminal owns a low weight, it can be treated as malicious user, and should be removed from the aggregation center. Simulation results show that the improved WSPRT can achieve higher performance compared with the other two conventional sequential detection methods under different number of malicious users.

On the Security of Information Dissemination in the Internet-of-Vehicles

Internet of Vehicles（IoV） is regarded as an emerging paradigm for connected vehicles to exchange their information with other vehicles using vehicle-to-vehicle（V2V） communications by forming a vehicular ad hoc networks（VANETs）, with roadside units using vehicle-to-roadside（V2R） communications. IoV offers several benefits such as road safety, traffic efficiency, and infotainment by forwarding up-to-date traffic information about upcoming traffic. For instance, IoV is regarded as a technology that could help reduce the number of deaths caused by road accidents, and reduce fuel costs and travel time on the road. Vehicles could rapidly learn about the road condition and promptly respond and notify drivers for making informed decisions. However, malicious users in IoV may mislead the whole communications and create chaos on the road. Data falsification attack is one of the main security issues in IoV where vehicles rely on information received from other peers/vehicles. In this paper,we present data falsification attack detection using hashes for enhancing network security and performance by adapting contention window size to forward accurate information to the neighboring vehicles in a timely manner（to improve throughput while reducing end-to-end delay）. We also present clustering approach to reduce travel time in case of traffic congestion. Performance of the proposed approach is evaluated using numerical results obtained from simulations. We found that the proposed adaptive approach prevents IoV from data falsification attacks and provides higher throughput with lower delay.

Refined analysis and a hierarchical multi-task learning approach for loan fraud detection

Fraud problems in loan application assessment cause significant losses for finance companies worldwide, and much research has focused on machine learning methods to improve the efficacy of fraud detection in some financial domains. However, diverse information falsification in individual fraud remains one of the most challenging problems in loan applications. To this end, we conducted an empirical study to explore the relationships between various fraud types and analyzed the factors influencing information fabrication. Weak relationships exist among different falsification types, and some essential factors play the same roles in different fraud types. In contrast, others have various or opposing effects on these types of frauds. Based on this finding, we propose a novel hierarchical multi-task learning approach to refine fraud-detection systems. Specifically, we first developed a hierarchical fraud category method to break down this problem into several subtasks according to the information types falsified by customers, reducing fraud identification's difficulty. Second, a heterogeneous network with a meta-path-based random walk and heterogeneous skip-gram model can solve the representation learning problem owing to the sophisticated relationships among the applicants' information. Furthermore, the final subtasks can be predicted using a multi-task learning approach with two prediction layers. The first layer provides the probabilities of general fraud categories as auxiliary information for the second layer, which is for specific subtask prediction. Finally, we conducted extensive experiments based on a real-world dataset to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

A Study on the Model of Fact‑Finding in Criminal Investigation

Fact‑finding,as the foundation of a judicial decision,has been an important consideration in China’s judicial reform.This study introduces the theory of evidence‑based information and falsification methods in the fact‑finding procedure of criminal investigations and proposes a paradigm for fact‑finding using combined pairs of approaches:individual evidence examination and global analysis,the objective basis and subjective perception of fact‑finders,and methods of verification and falsification.The working procedure of the paradigm is illustrated with the objective of making a contribution to the improvement of the existing model of fact‑finding in the criminal justice process.

How to be a better scientist:Lessons from scientific philosophy,the historical development of science,and past errors within exercise physiology

What is science?While a simple question,the answer is complex.Science is a process involving human behaviour,and due to the human influence,science is often not pursued correctly.In fact,one can argue that we still do not know what the“correct”pursuit of science should entail.This is because science remains a work in progress,differs for different questions,and we often are not aware of the mistakes made until years,or decades,later.Such mistakes are common,regardless of the discipline.Within exercise physiology,mistakes have been frequent and led to eventual corrections;the replacement of the post-exercise rate of oxygen consumption(VO_(2))debt concept with that of excess post-exercise VO_(2);the invalidation of the cellular production of lactic acid;improvements to maximal heart rate estimation;and on-going debate over the Central Governor Model.Improved training and education in the historical development of science and the contributions from scientific philosophy are important in providing an understanding of science,and more importantly,how to pursue“better”vs.“inferior”forms of science.The writings of Popper and Kuhn are core to enhanced understanding of how to improve the quality of science pursued.Unfortunately,quality education and training in the historical and philosophical development of science remain poor in most countries.Until inadequate educational training is overcome,there is sustained risk for the pursuit of science to remain inadequate,which in turn has a potential widespread detriment to humanity and the planet we live on.