A dude was banned from 💙 sky because he scraped other people's nature photos. Dude basically pirates other people's nature photos into their feed & monetized it in X. Seeing a lot of parallels with 90% of meta studies... So are authors of meta studies effectively scrapers? Asking for a friend. - ThreadSky

reinhart-kurt.bsky.social • 188 days ago

A dude was banned from 💙 sky because he scraped other people's nature photos. Dude basically pirates other people's nature photos into their feed & monetized it in X.

Seeing a lot of parallels with 90% of meta studies... So are authors of meta studies effectively scrapers? Asking for a friend.

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bluegreentami.bsky.social•188 days ago

Meta studies have added value because they can show if there’s a general trend among many studies (which often conflict with each other). The meta studies I’ve read have been useful overviews of topics, and then I still read individual studies as well. I don’t think it’s the same as scraping.

reinhart-kurt.bsky.social•186 days ago

True meta-studies can add scholarship but probably more so in medical than ecological fields. Meta-eco studies often add marginal scholarship beyond original works, bin heterogeneous studies, etc. It is no surprise that these papers are routinely debated/debunked.

reinhart-kurt.bsky.social•186 days ago

Some meta-studies are written by people with no first hand knowledge of how to actually do the experiments they are synthesizing and can't tell good vs bad studies apart (e.g. pseudoreplicated).

New approaches are needed like-
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecm.1628

reinhart-kurt.bsky.social•186 days ago

Scraping data is legal bc data are public domain. But is scraping data fair use?

Ex/ they monetize the data (e.g. bonuses/pub, amass citations). While those that did the original research aren't included or even properly cited--meta-studies cite the original sources in supplement not the paper.

reinhart-kurt.bsky.social•188 days ago

Content Scapers info-

catsruleanyway.bsky.social•188 days ago

Seems to me AI doing this? Plus Google had a project to scan every book in the world during its early days (so content now digital and usable).

explorerdawn1.bsky.social•188 days ago

Disgusting

penhart.bsky.social•188 days ago

The difference is the motive.

louisschipper.bsky.social•186 days ago

Never quite thought about meta analysis quite like this. I suppose it is about intent. Are they searching for cites or novel insight? The good ones are very helpful but you have to wonder when different meta-analysis disagree whether proper methodology is being applied.

bethpenrose.bsky.social•188 days ago

Personally, I think meta analyses are a little less like fleecing people than what you describe, as long as the synthesis shows new insights (and all the data are properly attributed). Research is expensive, and if we can save resources by using existing data, that's a good thing, right?

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