Application of Benford's law: a valuable tool for detecting scientific papers with fabricated data? : A  case study using proven falsified articles against a comparison group.

CONCLUSION: All 12 of the known falsified articles violated Benford-Newcomb's law, which indicated that this analysis had a high sensitivity. The low specificity of the assessment may be explained by the assumptions made about the articles identified for comparison. Violations of Benford-Newcomb's law about the frequencies of the leading digits cannot serve as proof of falsification but they may provide a basis for deeper discussions between the editor and author about a submitted work. PMID: 28653153 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Der Anaesthesist - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Anaesthesist Source Type: research