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Science Journals Caught Publishing Fake Research For Cash (vice.com)
Tuesday a Canadian journalist described his newest victory in his war on fake-science journals. An anonymous reader writes:
In 2014, journalist Tom Spears intentionally wrote "the world's worst science research paper...a mess of plagiarism and meaningless garble" -- then got it accepted by eight different journals. ("I copied and pasted one phrase from a geology paper online, and the rest from a medical one, on hematology...and so on. There are a couple of graphs from a paper about Mars...") He did it to expose journals which follow the publish-for-a-fee model, "a fast-growing business that sucks money out of research, undermines genuine scientific knowledge, and provides fake credentials for the desperate."
But earlier this year, one such operation actually purchased two prominent Canadian medical journals, and one critic warns they're "on a buying spree, snatching up legitimate scholarly journals and publishers, incorporating them into its mega-fleet of bogus, exploitative, and low-quality publications.â So this summer, Spears explains to Vice, "I got this request to write for what looked like a fake journal -- of ethics. Something about that attracted me... one morning in late August when I woke up early I made extra coffee and banged out some drivel and sent it to them."
He's now publicizing the fact that this formerly-respectable journal is currently featuring his submission, which was "mostly plagiarized from Aristotle, with every fourth or fifth word changed so that anti-plagiarism software won't catch it. But the result is meaningless. Some sentences don't have verbs..."
But earlier this year, one such operation actually purchased two prominent Canadian medical journals, and one critic warns they're "on a buying spree, snatching up legitimate scholarly journals and publishers, incorporating them into its mega-fleet of bogus, exploitative, and low-quality publications.â So this summer, Spears explains to Vice, "I got this request to write for what looked like a fake journal -- of ethics. Something about that attracted me... one morning in late August when I woke up early I made extra coffee and banged out some drivel and sent it to them."
He's now publicizing the fact that this formerly-respectable journal is currently featuring his submission, which was "mostly plagiarized from Aristotle, with every fourth or fifth word changed so that anti-plagiarism software won't catch it. But the result is meaningless. Some sentences don't have verbs..."
Try that with real science journals and see how far you get.
Say...: The Analyst, Analytica Chimica Acta, Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry, Polyhedron, Acta Physica Polonica, Molecular Physics, Applied Optics...
The problem here is what the media defines as "science". They don't really know what they are talking about.
Like any scientist would take something called the "Journal of Clinical Research & Bioethics" seriously. Ha! You can tell by the name it is bogus and has nothing to do with real science.
So you're saying we need to destroy the planet in order to "prove" that we're destroying the planet to your satisfaction?
That seems a bit counter-productive.
You've claimed repeatedly that something better can be done. I used to work in science and published a reasonable number of papers (and have reviewed considerably more). How much journals suck and how to make them better is a really popular pub topic among scientists.
Turns out it's really hard and there are no easy solutions. So, instead of telling us how things ought to be better actually make a suggestion. Otherwise it's just abstract complaining about how things aren't good enough.
SJW n. One who posts facts.