Nowadays, publishing in legitimate scientific journals is more and more difficult. It has become a commercial practice controlled by gigantic publishers with profit margins which exceed those of a large multinational. These publishers sell scientific papers, essential for our knowledge and our health, like a common commodity at outrageous profits. In these circumstances, researchers find themselves alone facing these monsters, knowing that they must publish the results of their research at an infernal rate in order to be hired, subsidized and promoted. Being new in the field , Phd students suffer more than anyone when it comes to deal with these challenges, not only financial ones but also with publishing process which is complex and slow, because large publishers accept a fraction of the studies submitted, after long months of evaluation.
A graph helps visualize a large amount of data, but it can also be misleading. But cheating is not the same as lying because the graph can deceive the reader without the conscious intervention of its designer: a deceitful graph can be built by accumulating errors or approximations. However, some people may be suspected of violating the duties of ethical conduct. Visual manipulation: How concerned are you about the Zika virus? I chose this graphic which is produced by a local news station NBC 2 in Florida in 2016 , they surveyed its viewers concerning their reflections on the Zika virus. It’s obvious that they really wanted to make this graph appear as if people weren't worried about Zika virus. We can see that the percentages and the graph heights don't match which presents a kind of visual manipulation. False correlations: As we all know correlation can be measured by the Pearson coefficient r which detects the presence or absence of a linear relations