Some Science Journals That Claim To Peer Review Papers Do Not Do So (economist.com)

A rising number of journals that claim to review submissions do not bother to do so. Not coincidentally, this seems to be leading some academics to inflate their publication lists with papers that might not pass such scrutiny. The Economist: Experts debate how many journals falsely claim to engage in peer review. Cabells, an analytics firm in Texas, has compiled a blacklist of those which it believes are guilty. According to Kathleen Berryman, who is in charge of this list, the firm employs 65 criteria to determine whether a journal should go on it -- though she is reluctant to go into details. Cabells' list now totals around 8,700 journals, up from a bit over 4,000 a year ago. Another list, which grew to around 12,000 journals, was compiled until recently by Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado. Using Mr Beall's list, Bo-Christer Bjork, an information scientist at the Hanken School of Economics, in Helsinki, estimates that the number of articles published in questionable journals has ballooned from about 53,000 a year in 2010 to more than 400,000 today. He estimates that 6% of academic papers by researchers in America appear in such journals.

Comments

The result of "publish or perish"

[whitesea]

They prey on people whose career depends on the quantity of publications. My friend published a paper that became famous in his area of research overnight. Everybody and their brother cited the paper, even mainstream media mentioned it. His dept chairman said, "We are satisfied with the quality of your papers. It's the quantity that's insufficient."

Re:The result of "publish or perish"

[gl4ss]

well they gave themselves a set of criteria and didn't think further than that.

also with rise of pseudoscience in general, like publishing a paper on how michael jackson was able to do the smooth criminal 45 degree lean.. something that was revealed in making of documentary 20 years+ ago.

it's not looking good. on the upside, good science is as healthy as ever. it's just that there's shitloads of fluff science careers in effect right now and they only count those numbers.

so of course there's more journals to cash in on that. look, 12 000 journals means that they might just as well be fucking blogs. nobodys really reading them and I mean nobody.

scientists shouldn't be publishing shit papers just for numbers. if they can't find out anything new, that should be the criteria.

Re:The result of "publish or perish"

[jma05]

Peter Higgs says he would not have survived in this system.

https://www.theguardian.com/sc...

Re:The result of "publish or perish"

[Anonymous Coward]

As a tenured professor, I can say the papers are just the tip of the iceberg. Academic science, at least in the biomedical sciences, is falling apart due a variety of problems: ponzi schemes with doctoral and postdoctoral training, indirect funds of grants inflating their value to universities as profit margin, cuts from state governments and passing the buck of research funding to the federal government, and a general "widget production" model of science being demanded from administrators and conservative legislative overseers.

I was in a faculty meeting a couple of years ago. A junior faculty member was undergoing annual review, and some of the faculty expressed concern that they were publishing too much in open access journals. These weren't questionable open access journals, though: they were pretty well-established ones that just weren't traditional academic journals. More importantly, the junior faculty member's impact factors, number of citations, etc. were all fine, comparable to any other successful junior faculty at that stage. However, some of the senior faculty felt that the journals weren't prestigious enough. So they created a memo to be circulated around the department, a list of journals, saying "these are journals junior faculty should be publishing in."

The memo was justified in the interest of fairness and clarity, I and I get the intent, but on the face of it is absurd. The focus should be on the quality of the research, not the reputation of the journal. It's as if someone denigrated Lolita as a work of literature because the publisher was of poor reputation.

These lists of predatory journals that float around are useful, and the journals should be criticized. But when you get to this scope of problem, these journals aren't the problem, they're a symptom. What you have now is an oversupply of very talented researchers, an underfunding of science (above and beyond the annual federal research budget, which we shouldn't be so dependent on), a focus on celebrity over substance, superficial indicators of productivity, nepotism... I could go on and on.

Publishing in particular is sort of a house of cards. A rational outside observer would ask what the economic reasons for the current structure are, with such low costs to publishing now on the web. Why do peer-reviewed journals even exist now? Are scientists really paying attention to what they should be? Open access journals are one solution, but if you look at them closely, they probably in aggregate do more harm than good because they are pay-to-publish, which creates huge misincentives.

These sorts of predatory journals are completely predictable, and are the tip of the iceberg. Keep in mind these are journals where there are *obvious* improprieties. Things get even more problematic if you realize that there even more "legitimate" journals that leverage moral greyness or plausible deniability as a way of avoiding these lists.

Most of the time I feel like academic science is in crisis, and even more so every day. There's a huge disparity between how science actually occurs and how people are compensated and recognized.

Re:The result of "publish or perish"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a shame they rely on quantity of papers published instead of quantity of published papers that cite your paper. Though it is understandable to prevent the old situation of "I know it has been 14 years but just one more year of grants and I'll publish something, I promise." Surely there's a balance to be found?

Re: The result of "publish or perish"

[Wycliffe]

The focus should be on the quality of the research, not the reputation of the journal.

The whole publish or perish is caused by them not being willing to judge the quality of the research. They are operating on the philosophy that the higher quantity of papers you publish and the more prestigious the journal, the better the research. They are basically using the journals to "grade" the research.

Re:The result of "publish or perish"

[Anonymous Coward]

"conservative legislative overseers"

How hilarious. Even when you manage to worm your way into an industry that's self-admittedly 99% liberal, you still blame conservatives for your problems.

Re:The result of "publish or perish"

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO UN should start doing the job of science journals and give all data free for everyone.

Re:The result of "publish or perish"

[Applehu Akbar]

Why are you posting this comment AC?

Re: The result of "publish or perish"

[Cinnamon Beige]

The focus should be on the quality of the research, not the reputation of the journal.

The whole publish or perish is caused by them not being willing to judge the quality of the research. They are operating on the philosophy that the higher quantity of papers you publish and the more prestigious the journal, the better the research. They are basically using the journals to "grade" the research.

The concern about the prestige of the journals wouldn't be quite as much of an issue if 'published in a prestigious journal' was strongly and positively correlated with 'is high-quality, important paper.' Prestige seems to correlate more to the name of the journal, right now, which may admittedly be more due to inertia than anything else right now. Used to it had a lot to do with number of citations papers published in them recieve, and open access journals tend to get more because it's just plain less of a pain to get at papers published in there. (Yes, yes, interlibrary loan, but those get processed via snail mail even when what you're getting is a photocopy or even a print-out. When you've only a couple months to get all the papers you need gathered, that's much too much time to spend waiting.) Possibly having it so there's a 'time factor' in figuring out the prestige--so older journals don't have a built-in advantage that may hide a decline in their quality--would help fix this.

The quantity is the bigger issue, because in some fields there simply is an upper limit to how quickly you can produce quality research--especially since there's an emphasis being placed on it also being unique, and 'same study but using a more diverse population' doesn't appear to count.

Re:The result of "publish or perish"

[Anonymous Coward]

good science is as healthy as ever.

Because you say so?

You do realize that this article makes you look like an idiot, right?

Re:The result of "publish or perish"

[thePsychologist]

The memo was justified in the interest of fairness and clarity, I and I get the intent, but on the face of it is absurd. The focus should be on the quality of the research, not the reputation of the journal. It's as if someone denigrated Lolita as a work of literature because the publisher was of poor reputation.

I'm not sure you really got the intent. The reason why science has these flaws is because of senior faculty, and they enforce these ridiculous norms to keep their own reputation. If junior faculty move away from traditional journals and methods of publishing, then senior faculty will lose prestige and their ability to direct the flow of grant money.

Re:The result of "publish or perish"

[The Wild Norseman]

if they can't find out anything new, that should be the criteria.

No, that should be one criteria. It's vital to science for falsifiability as well as replicability as well as originality and it all needs to be published for the world to see.

It's also vital for scientists to actually publish papers that disprove their own theories. In these cases, the "negative" is just as important as the "positive."

At any rate, I'm glad to read of these kinds of discoveries; the fear is that the anti-intellectual, anti-science types will point to this and say, "See!? Science is all a fraud!" I see it as science as a field is doing exactly what it should do -- root out the crap that doesn't follow the scientific method, report it, and continue to contribute to the reputable, actual peer-reviewed journals.

Re:The result of "publish or perish"

[serviscope_minor]

It's also vital for scientists to actually publish papers that disprove their own theories. In these cases, the "negative" is just as important as the "positive."

That doesn't happen directly all that much. It's more common for someone to publish a competing theory (which only disproves the old oe by inference), then the old one slowly falls into obscurity and effectively vanishes.

Re:The result of "publish or perish"

[invalid_user]

Many have responded to your comment but no a single one of them took note of the most crucial point of your lament.

Academic science, at least in the biomedical sciences, is falling apart due a variety of problems: ponzi schemes with doctoral and postdoctoral training

What you have now is an oversupply of very talented researchers

Only researchers know.

Re:The result of "publish or perish"

[terrycarlino]

Academic science is in crisis. One point you did not even mention is the reproducibility problem. Studies are not be reproduced, not only because they cannot be, but also because there is no incentive to even try to reproduce.

Re:The result of "publish or perish"

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn what conservative means, jackass. Don't immediately get triggered when you see a word.

Re:The result of "publish or perish"

[Anonymous Coward]

What journals are not PAY to PUBLISH. Every single journal i have published in (biomed as well) ask for publishing fees! Oh then the university has to PAY a fee to have those journals accessible to the university!

Academia has degraded.

[Qbertino]

As far as I can tell adademia has turned into quite a self-referential naval-gazing afair in recent decades. Point in case: I've finally gone into college and started my BsC Media-CompSci and on my first project I get a stern look for quoting details on RSA from a book from 1998. They told me they're embarrased to quote anything that's older than 5 years and I should never quote a book from 1998. ... WTF? Seriously? Even if it covers elemental basics that haven't changed a single bit since decades ago? Mind you, this is CompSci where you would expect some sort of academic credibility, unlike Sociology or "Gender Studies". Given, CompSci is still miles behind math, physics and engineering, but I still would expect it to me somewhat mature.

This paper-publishing apears to me like some intelectual masturbation academics like to indulge in and not neccesarly something that brings humanity forward.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I still can't shake the feeling that academia has degraded severly and the avantgarde has moved on.

Re:Academia has degraded.

[Anonymous Coward]

What university is this?

Re:Academia has degraded.

[mrvan]

They told me they're embarrased to quote anything that's older than 5 years and I should never quote a book from 1998. ... WTF? Seriously? [..] Mind you, this is CompSci where you would expect some sort of academic credibility, unlike Sociology or "Gender Studies"

I won't make any comments about gender studies, but I would like to point out that sociology and other fields of social science are usually a lot better at keeping track of and citing literature. I've done my PhD in AI but have since moved to social science, and I'm often embarrassed at the quality of literature review / previous work section in comp sci papers: extremely short and superficial and often more aimed at dismissing everything that is done before than at showing the tradition, context, and framework of the ideas presented in the paper.

So, yeah, the teacher was not doing a very good job there, but that reflects on CS much more than on social science.

(also, I often teach my students not to cite a textbook where you could have cited the original papers, unless the argument was actually originally made in the textbook or it is just a matter of explanation or definition. And I also teach students not to just cite the new literature on a topic, but show both where the ideas came from (the seminal / classical articles) and the recent discourse on the topic. It's hard work :-) )

Re:Academia has degraded.

[Anonymous Coward]

> adademia has turned into quite a self-referential naval-gazing afair in recent decades

Well, duh. If you want to solve a cosmology problem, are you going to look at academia or see what some witch doctor in the Amazon is preaching? The problem I see is that there's less critical peer review. You think the Sokal affair would have given people a nice heads-up, but nope. Now you have insane marxists teaching social nonsense to students as if it were fact, and if you critique them negatively you're nazi or something.

Re:Academia has degraded.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are in a two topic bachelor program. That has nothing to do with academia or science. Maybe you are at a low quality college. I don't know. You always cite the paper, book or other publication which introduced a concept first. You cite other papers which contribute to that concept. And if your advisers are telling stupid things. You are a student not a school kid. Study for yourself. BTW there exist many books on good scientific practice. Read one.

Re:Academia has degraded.

[Anonymous Coward]

Given, CompSci is still miles behind math

If you're talking about Computer Science, or C.S., you have been lied to or are confused. Computer Science is Mathematics. It has nothing to do with computers or machines, nor programming them, though that will likely be a lot of what C.S. students see and do.

Re:Academia has degraded.

[Anonymous Coward]

They told me they're embarrased to quote anything that's older than 5 years and I should never quote a book from 1998.

Interesting. My experience from physics is quite the opposite: people tend to cite original papers from the 50s and 60s, even if the original paper is completely unreadable, and it took a decade of derivative works to get the modern understanding. (Personally, I'd rather people cited pedagogical review articles.)

Re:Academia has degraded.

[Cassini2]

References to papers less than 5 years old help your fellow colleagues get tenure, and help your fellow students get Masters Degrees and PhDs.

Older references are essentially sites to influential papers. Those papers were written by influential people that already have tenure. Those people would prefer you help the junior faculty, the Master's and PhD students.

To be a friend, you need to cite the newer research.

BTW: I didn't invent this system.

Re:Academia has degraded.

[serviscope_minor]

oint in case: I've finally gone into college and started my BsC Media-CompSci and on my first project I get a stern look for quoting details on RSA from a book from 1998. They told me they're embarrased to quote anything that's older than 5 years and I should never quote a book from 1998. ... WTF?

I'd agree with the WTF. I've spent a lot of time in academia though and never had that. You might have just got unlucky with an idiot for an adviser.

This paper-publishing apears to me like some intelectual masturbation academics like to indulge in and not neccesarly something that brings humanity forward.

It's something academics are required to do to keep their jobs. The metrics which determine funding (often controlled by the funding bodies who are controlled by the government who are controlled by the politicians) are poor and not only encourage but almost require this kind of churn.

Re:Academia has degraded.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, I shouldn't have cited Principia in my work?

Knowledge...

[Anonymous Coward]

Knowledge is finding out that all of academia is a scam. Publish or perish and self selection biases abound. An academic doctorate is akin to indoctrination in an elite club. One where there are no free thinkers or contrarians allowed; any and all descent will be censured. This begins with grad school admissions, is enforced through faculty advisor cony-ism and is confirmed by tenure.

so?

[superwiz]

The whole theory behind peer review breaks down in a world in which areas of expertise are too narrow.

A study that no one seems to want to do is which fact finding ends up being more accurate? The criminal court system (with its trial system and adversarial review) or quality control system of scientific publications? Most advanced scientific research can only be checked by very few peers. And the only checks they perform is whether they can replicate the results. And even that is not always the standard. They often simply try to see if they can arrive at the same results with a different method. But then they know ahead of time what to expect (based on reputation of those "anonymous" results they are checking). And I put "anonymous" in quotes because if there is only 3 labs in the world which look into a certain area, then lab C knows whether they are checking results from lab A or lab B just by reading their proposals.

Again, no one is checking whether adversarial review produces better more fact-finding accurate results. And yet all the people who rely on grants for their work are against it.

Even commercial scientific research requires adversarial review. This is what drug trials are. Drug companies have to prove that their drugs perform better than placebo and that the drugs do not have a high frequencies of adverse effects. How would we like it if drug companies could put their drugs out on the market as long as they passed peer review? We definitely would think that was a scary proposition. Well, then why do we use such a weak standard for scientific exploration which is funded by public money (and which sometimes drives public policy)?

Re:so?

[godrik]

I publish Computer Science articles frequently. While I am not necessarily happy about how the peer review process works in my field, it often means something else than people expect.

In my opinion the review process verifies two things: Does the result seem correct? Is the paper interesting?

Whether the paper is "interesting" or not is a judgment call. In the context of a conference, I have asked to reject paper that were correct but I could not believe the problem and results would interest a room of 80 people for half an hour.

Whether the result is correct is a much more complicated question. If the paper is theoretical, you should be able to verify it during the peer review process. There are typically 3 reviewers, and that is usually enough to get a clear idea of whether the models and proofs are sound. If a part of the paper is still obscure to the 3 reviewers, then clearly the paper lacks clarity and should be revised before being accepted.

The real problem in CS comes from experimental papers. Because reproducing experimental results is hard and sometimes not possible. Maybe you don't have access to the code (research codes are not always made available). Maybe you don't have access to the data (some data is proprietary and can not be shared). Maybe you don't have access to the machine (I think only Chinese nationals can get access to tianhe-2 for instance; I myself wrote paper about an experimental not-yet-released system). Even if you could reproduce the result, it could take month to reproduce. So in practice, you don't attempt reproduction of most experimental CS paper.
What you do is check for consistency. Does the result make sense? Does the technique provide an output that is coherent with expectation? If it doesn't, is the discrepancy explained in the paper? Is there a clear drawback to the method that is not mentioned in the paper? Do I believe that the paper contains all the information necessary for reproducing the results if I wanted to? That is about the type of things that you check. Some are pushing for including experimental results as supplementary material to experimental papers or to make experimental results more reproducible in general. (See the work of Arnaud Legrand or of Lucas Nussbaum for instance, but many other work on that.) The SC conference has now a reproducibility initiative to help with that.

The adversarial review that you are talking about happens AFTER publication. That is where the review peer review starts. It starts when dozens of master student or PhD student will compare their method to the state of the art. And that is when you will know what will stick and what won't. Because they will make the comparisons to different frameworks, on different machines, on different datasets.

Re: so?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree pretty strongly witht last point. I publish in physics journals, and peer review before publicatuon is weak. The same group of national lab and university profs tend to review everything with the same scope of understanding. In short, they let just about anything go unless is physically impossible so long as you cite their work. However, as you said, the real peer review is after the fact. I take the effort to contact authors and ask questions or speak to them after talks about their work and I've come to know who does good work and who does crap. Reputation is not a publication number nor is the impact factor relevant.

Re: so?

[superwiz]

You might not realize it, but peer review has been pushed as a gold-plated standard for whether scientific research is valid. People say "peer-reviewed" with a hushed breath when talking about scientific conclusions. Imagine if what you suggest is the real review were applied in the cases of drug approvals. If the drugs were allowed on the market until enough doctors voiced opinions on their harm or lack of efficacy, there would be pitchforks out. You are essentially proving that the process is so corrupted (and, therefore, corruptable) as to be inadequate for any fact finding that matters.

The buck ALWAYS stops with YOU.

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer to the age-old question "who watches the watchmen" is: YOU. (So in my case, ME.)

The only alternative is blind trust. If that is not good enough, you need enough *personal* observation, to gain some reliability.
Even if you read an actually peer-reviewed statistically solid double-blind study ..., to you it is merely "anecdotal evidence". You didn't do a study on the reliability of the source, the peers, the device you read it on, etc. All you know is that there are sentences there in front of you, stating certain observations, certain conclusions, and that certain peers reviewed it. Unless you check them, they could all be completely made up.

Which of course won't happen, since it would be impossible to live, if you first had to make a study about everything, before you accept you own birth ... or that juming from a skyscraper pretty much guarantees that you will die.

But trusting in peer review was always blatantly sketchy to me.

Re:The buck ALWAYS stops with YOU.

[LynnwoodRooster]

If a researcher will not share their data and their methods, it doesn't matter WHERE it was published it should be highly suspect if not outright discounted. Back when I was in university (mid 80s) you had to show your work, show your data, show your experiment setup, and show the link between all of it or you'd get zero credit. Even if your experiment failed, you'd still get credit because you showed what you did and what data you collected.

More and more it's simply "we used a process like this, and we had this result, but we cannot share the data and actual process because it's proprietary and worth money but trust us - it's good!" Nope. Science is a process and requires disclosure of data and process so that your experiment can be done, exactly, by others. Science is skeptical by nature - NO ONE should accept the result of a study or paper unless there is sufficient data and process shared that would allow you to replicate if you so choose. The scientist should, on hearing any claim, think "OK, that's interesting - now what data is there and can I replicate their results?" - if not, it's not science.

Re: The buck ALWAYS stops with YOU.

[Anonymous Coward]

In principal, I agree with you, but then how do you deal with research involving data that shouldnâ(TM)t be shared because it would legitimately violate privacy rights and the protections that information should be given?

Re: The buck ALWAYS stops with YOU.

[LynnwoodRooster]

You shouldn't publish at that point. If you cannot share your data, then you cannot - legitimately - make a scientific claim any stronger than "trust me". Not all research needs to be published, and that would be a perfect solution for data that needs to be kept private. However, if a researcher wants to publish then they should expect to share everything - otherwise how can anyone trust their research?

Re: The buck ALWAYS stops with YOU.

[godrik]

I am not sure I agree with that perspective. Publishing is a mode of communication. It is not meant to be the Truth (TM). Publications are, at least nowadays in my opinion, a way of saying: "I have something worth sharing". Now that something you shared is more valuable if it comes with complete results, analysis, experimental settings, etc. But it does not have to have everything in there to be valuable.

I do not trust a research because I have all the data. I trust research when it makes sense, and I (or one of my student or colleague I trust) can reproduce it or come to a strong conviction. Because I can not trust raw results as they could be completely doctored.

Publishing papers is about communicating with your peers. Peer review before publication is about making sure nothing blatantly false is being presented which wastes everyones time. The real peer review starts after publication when armies of grad student start working on reproduction and comparison.

Re: The buck ALWAYS stops with YOU.

[Anonymous Coward]

Privacy rights and protections were sorted out decades ago. Publishing with personally-identifying data can be grounds for a paper to be withdrawn so anonymising data is the expected norm in many fields.

The bigger problem is for researchers who haven't finished producing papers from their data. Sometimes collecting good data takes a huge amount of work. If there are still papers that can be written about the data, a researcher may refuse to release the data in order to prevent others writing those papers.

Re:The buck ALWAYS stops with YOU.

[serviscope_minor]

If a researcher will not share their data and their methods,

It always makes me chuckle when someone says this. I take it you're a aoftware guy? For the point of this explanation I hope so, and a lot of us here are, so I'll assume you are.

Imagine you had a 23 year old programmer fresh out of school. Actually forget that imagine you had a 23 year old STEM grad who did something like physics or engineering. They're smart, did a little programming on the course and probably self taught to learn a bit more.

They have zero software engineering experience. Zero experience in building large systems, zero experience in building reliable software, no idea about unit tests, version control or release management. They have yet to experience the pitfalls of doing things like hardcoding paths because they've never shared their software with anyone.

Now consider that they're in a lap where their adviser has zero software experience either (what with being a scientist not a professional software person). Layer on top of that that the system positively discourages all the best practices because they need to get the result out fast as a one off then move on to the next result.

Now let that student loose on a pretty large project, say a year's worth of work.

That, the code is the "show me what you did" bit for a large part of it. I've been there on both sides. sharing tha tis not nearly as useful as you might expect.

Re:The buck ALWAYS stops with YOU.

[nitehawk214]

This is not my problem, it is your problem. If you are too embarrassed about how you wen't about your research to share it, you should not be publishing.

Re:The buck ALWAYS stops with YOU.

[serviscope_minor]

I love random aggressiveness.

This is not my problem, it is your problem.

I'm telling you a fact: 99% of academic code is written precisely what you'd expect from the training, experience and incentives of the people writing it. Chances it works on the student's machine until the next update. Good luck getting it run elsewhere. I have downloaded "released" software which I was utterly unable to get running despite considerable effort.

"Show the code" is kind of useless if the code doesn't run.

If you are too embarrassed about how you wen't about your research to share it, you should not be publishing.

It seems like you're substituting random anger for actually thinking or knowing anything about the situation. As it happens I don't count myself among that 99% what with currently being a software engineer (and not currently a publishing academic).

Re:The buck ALWAYS stops with YOU.

[Areyoukiddingme]

I'm telling you a fact: 99% of academic code is written precisely what you'd expect from the training, experience and incentives of the people writing it. Chances it works on the student's machine until the next update. Good luck getting it run elsewhere. I have downloaded "released" software which I was utterly unable to get running despite considerable effort.

"Show the code" is kind of useless if the code doesn't run.

Knowing about that problem seems valuable to me. Isn't that a failure of reproducibility? Plenty of non-software people have written software with defects in it and not even known it. Having the software at least run on even one other machine seems like the absolute bare minimum before the paper is even acceptable. "Not experts" at writing code is no longer an acceptable excuse. The work product depends on the code. Even if the authors of the code aren't experts, their work is utterly dependent on their ability to write that code correctly. If the result is such a shambles that no one can even run it outside of the original environment, that's a pretty firm indicator that it probably doesn't run correctly even in the original environment.

Re:The buck ALWAYS stops with YOU.

[serviscope_minor]

Knowing about that problem seems valuable to me. Isn't that a failure of reproducibility?

A bit? I mean yes kind of. No on said reproducing was easy, and technically it's possibly with hand-holding from the student (probably), which of course only works if the stuent is still in contact with the world.

It's an imprefect system.

Plenty of non-software people have written software with defects in it and not even known it. Having the software at least run on even one other machine seems like the absolute bare minimum before the paper is even acceptable.

Sure, the trouble is every extra step costs money and no one's paying for that. People (i.e. the PI's boss) give no credit, so any time spent on such things can harm the PI's future employment chances.

Not experts" at writing code is no longer an acceptable excuse.

No, more not experts at software engineering. Some of those people write numerics code which neither of us could follow, I'd wager. But they don't have a clue about things like release management or even version control.

If the result is such a shambles that no one can even run it outside of the original environment, that's a pretty firm indicator that it probably doesn't run correctly even in the original environment.

Maybe? Possibly? The authors are generally adept within the very narrow domain of the bit they need to do (the analysis). All the ancilliary stuff can be exceptionally brittle however, like dependence on specific sub-versions of packages (which it may not be obvious how to install) and obscure configurations, very precise layouts of brittle formats, precise file naming schemes and so on.

If software engineering was easy they wouldn't pay us to do it.

Re:The buck ALWAYS stops with YOU.

[LynnwoodRooster]

Hardware guy here. I do software for fun, but I do REAL engineering - tangible stuff. Software is relatively easy - it's either zero or one. Hardware is hard - you live between the zero and one, and work with gradients of results. It's why we can't just "compile clean once!" and we're done - we need to build a few hundred - or thousand - items, collect the data distribution of performance metrics, do the analysis, and determine what corrective actions are needed. We live - THRIVE - on statistics and data and sharing it.

If I went to my client and said "we have the FAI and CpK reports for the first off-tool part and trust me - it looks GREAT!" and didn't provide the data, I'd be fired on the spot. I have to provide the data, the methodology, and the conclusions before it's accepted. If there's a failure, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars of parts on the line, and weeks to rework tooling. So it has to be checked.

Likewise for science. If you cannot share your data and methodology, then don't publish in journals. It's not science.

Re:The buck ALWAYS stops with YOU.

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have done some pretty trivial software, or you are just talking from your ass.

Re:The buck ALWAYS stops with YOU.

[nitehawk214]

Hey, I know all about write-only code. I have written plenty of it. I don't know why you are substituting anger for "I don't agree with you."

But I don't publish papers on the results of my code. I do have to go through code review and if I can't explain it to my peers, or it doesn't get accepted. (Unless, of course, a manager is having a panic heart-attack and has to have the fix right now, damn the review system!)

Ok, let's destroy their reputation ..

[burni2]

.. by publishing elusive works written by a text generator, it was done before, and worked, so when they try it again destroy them with "fire and fury".

Re:Ok, let's destroy their reputation ..

[jouassou]

Are you suggesting we publish a ton of fake papers to hurt their reputation? That's a horrible idea. These predatory journals charge per publication, so you'd just be funding them and thus making their scam more successful. In addition, these are definitely low-tier journals anyway, so I doubt there's much reputation left to hurt.

Just cut it up into multiple papers. ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Like a TV series on a slow drip ... stretching one episode's worth of content to a whole season. (Case in point: Better Call Saul.)

Your friend is more like Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (the recent[ly cancelled] show): Amazing, awesome, filling one with glee, and with such an intense pace, that it is rejected by the majority of utter 'tards out there.

But hey... We're officially living in am idiocracy [PDF].

So, anyone peer review their criteria?

[CrimsonAvenger]

So, a company that decides whether you peer review properly won't tell anyone their criteria for doing so?

Why do I suspect that buying whatever they sell is part of the criteria for deciding that your pub peer-reviews properly?

A list please.

[bluegutang]

Exactly which papers allow you to publish papers without peer review?

Not that it matters, but I will be facing a tenure committee soon...

Re:A list please.

[nitehawk214]

Exactly which papers allow you to publish papers without peer review?

Not that it matters, but I will be facing a tenure committee soon...

Ones you have to pay a fee to publish in.

Re:A list please.

[bluegutang]

Depending on the fee, it is likely worth it.

"though she is reluctant to go into details."

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't we all.

I publish all my research on the internet.

[Anonymous Coward]

To be specific: on reddit.

The advantage is that I only need to put in the article title and still get tons and tons of peer review comments and suggestions.

TRUE Peer review: Accept NO substitute... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Your software is just fine - well written, functional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine by mmell February 17, 2017

(APK's work), I've flat out said it's good by BronsCon February 11 2016

his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant August 10 2015

his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg September 25 2015

I like your host file system by Karmashock September 09 2015

I do use APK's host file on all my systems at home by OrangeTide December 01 2017

I personally use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a genius called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017

* Best part's the Linux 64-bit model's faster/more efficient (does 2x the work in 1/2 the time)

APK

P.S.=> Enjoy a faster/safer/more reliable internet... apk

Re:TRUE Peer review: Accept NO substitute... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Actual reviews of his product are shown below, rather than just the snippets he wants you to see. He has a history of becoming unreasonably angry when asked to admit that the quotes include criticisms in addition to positive comments about his software: https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12256612&cid=56827650. Now on to the actual comments...

https://science.slashdot.org/story/16/02/11/1926214/interviews-ask-author-and-programmer-andy-nicholls-about-r

I've never tried to belittle your work, I've flat out said it's good; I was merely pointing out that it also builds upon the work of others. That in no way takes away from the work you have done. What I have, however, done is to point out that you and your behavior patterns (for example, the way you lash out at people over a joke) are toxic, and that reflects on your work. Take the advice and, as you once told me, quit putting words in my mouth.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/08/10/136226/study-ad-blocker-use-jumps-41-percent

You shouldn't respond to APK guy with your actual account. Now he is going to stalk you. On a related note, his hosts program is actually pretty good, however his methods of forum hijacking are a little eh.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/09/24/1919238/mozilla-fixed-a-14-year-old-bug-in-firefox-now-adblock-plus-uses-less-memory

The worst is, his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources. Too bad APK doesn't get that different people have different needs and there's no such thing as "one size fits all".

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/02/16/192232/cloudflare-puts-pirate-sites-on-new-ip-addresses-avoids-cogent-blockade

I'm fairly certain that I've been downmodded for giving your software a fair shot (and, in fact, posting an overall favorable impression of it), rather than the content of that informal review.

Your software is just fine - well written, functional. Your claims that it's practically the cure for all the internet's woes are over-the-top and make you seem rather like the current POTUS. Your bellicose and acerbic posts, combined with your repeatedly posting straight binspam have given you a reputation here which even a calm, reasonable analysis cannot overcome. Your own reaction to this thread are a prime example.

I've long known that host files can solve certain problems - and nowadays, those problems are becoming more and more common. Your Host File Engine does make the task of managing a local host file on one Windows desktop easier - but that's all it does and your attitude and your bellicose, fanatical posts make it impossible to determine or even say that here. You've successfully increased the signal/noise ratio beyond the tolerance of nearly everyone here.

I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine. Have fun languishing in your self-imposed obscurity. Nearly all Slashdot users know who you are and won't even give a second thought to anything you write, suggest or say. I have, and now I'm paying the price for it. Downmod away, mods! I've said what is required and been heard by the intended recipient of my message.

What FAR surpasses Win32/64 reviewed model?

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject & APK Hosts File Engine 2.0++ 64-bit for Linux h t t p : / / a p k . i t - m a t e . c o . u k / A P K H o s t s F i l e E n g i n e F o r L i n u x . z i p (remove spaces between characters & download).

Yields more security/speed/reliability/anonymity vs. any SINGLE solution (99% of threats = hostnames vs. IP address that most firewalls use) more efficiently/FASTER + NATIVELY 4 less!

(Vs. "Bolt on 'MoAr' illogic-logic" competitors slowing you, hosts speed you up 2 ways (adblocks + hardcodes u spend most time @) vs. competition loaded w/ bugs (DNS/AntiVir) + their overheads (messagepass ('souled-out' to advertiser addons) + filtering drivers) & their complexity leads to exploitation).

* ONLY 1 of its kind in GUI on Linux/BSD!

APK

P.S.=> Much better vs. Windows model in speed & efficiency + new "merge" feature... apk

Re: What FAR surpasses Win32/64 reviewed model?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your offtopic spam is not welcome here. Leave.

Publish, then Profit

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm seeing more article published by professors who have a side company. The purpose of the paper is just publicity to get people to invest in the company to commercialize the idea. Best of all, there's no downside, since the university funds the academic lab, and the graduate students and post-docs work for free; that is, from government grants.

Re:Publish, then Profit

[careysub]

These days usually the University itself is also a profit-participant, owning the intellectual property.

After the 13th Rule of Acquisition is "Anything worth doing is worth doing for money."

Practical Considerations

[Roger W Moore]

The memo was justified in the interest of fairness and clarity, I and I get the intent, but on the face of it is absurd. The focus should be on the quality of the research, not the reputation of the journal.

Agreed but the problem is how do you fairly evaluate a colleagues research at a global level when you do not work in that area? Given the need to do this high quality, peer-reviewed journals make sense since, if your colleague can get his/her work published in one then clearly the rest of their field also think their research is high quality.

Academia part of Society

[Roger W Moore]

Perhaps the citation age limit is part of the field since I know that my CS colleagues rarely publish papers and instead focus on conferences because they claim it is rare to have a research topic that is still cutting edge by the time it has gone through the writing, review and publication process which can take up to a year. Certainly it does not apply in physics - I cited papers all the way back to 1932 in my thesis and 1963 for papers.

As for degrading, we are part of society and as society moves away from meritocratic ideals such as equality of opportunity in favour of equality of outcomes it has an impact on all aspects of society, including academia.

Re:Academia part of Society

[invalid_user]

In theoretical CS, (except for the results that are immediately applicable to specific field), many papers are first cited 5~6 years after their publication. Reasons:
1. Theory is hard. Few can do.
2. Breakthroughs are hard to come by.

Re: This just in

[Anonymous Coward]

Some peer-reviewed papers get censored so fake news can report Popular Science fiction.
https://benthamopen.com/DOWNLOAD-PDF/TOCPJ-2-7/

No ethics here

[Anonymous Coward]

Collapse of society.

on the industry of indolence

[epine]

I recently read George Dyson's book on the founding of the IAS.

The intellectual and academic caliber of people fleeing Germany (and nearby regions potentially subject to German influence) was unbelievable, yet the cowboy-era administrative end-runs to secure stipends for many of these people were off the charts.

Then America had its middle-class golden era between 1950 and 1980. If I've learned anything from my recent return to the history books it's this: this is the least economically normative period of the last 400 years. Short of handing Stalin the keys to the hydrogen bomb years earlier than he should have got them, it was a pretty amazing time for an empire unlike any that came before it.

Not so long ago, 10% of the population went off to university. Now 41% of women in Canada attain a bachelor's degree or higher. This is associated with an inevitable pressure to make the filters of meritocracy ever more fine-grained. So, of necessity, academia invents a cascade of credentialism mountain ranges. But there isn't enough legitimate signal to make this work, so we're forced to invent credentialist hoops.

Zoom all the way up to the TARP bailout of 2008. There's a large group of economists who think this was too large/unnecessarily/ineffective, another large group who think it was too small/absolutely essential/effective so far as it went (with maybe a sliver of fence-sitters eating porridge at the perfect temperature).

Prospective judgement is counterfactual. Retrospective judgement is counterfactual. In none of these matters are we afforded a virtual mulligan to run the simulation again.

If you're not Einstein, you're probably facing some kind of peer-group proxy measure, with the intervals between the scythe are having contracted from leap years to stutter-step quarters (who can summon the effort to leap any more, when the relentless ankle-blades never let up?)

Goodbye Erdos number two. Hello author position number 997 on a single published paper.

Meritocracy is this weird nodable concept. Sure sounds like a good idea (especially after a long stretch where things are anything but meritocratic). But merit turns out to be a terribly, terribly hard thing to implement well in practice, with acceptable consequence.

On TARP, we never achieved a retrospective standard of merit, all we got was two lousy, tribal camps locked into an egocentric crowing competition. I mention TARP mainly because the stakes here are in the trillion dollar range. Surely if incentive porn FTW, this would be the ultimate case study concerning the collective human incentive to get the individual incentives sorted out.

———

I found these two books exceptionally interesting to read back to back:

* Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy â" 2012
* Coming Apart â" 2012

Same publication year, same thematic material, anode vs. cathode political perspective, but ultimately the same message: implementing meritocracy is far harder than it looks.

Basically the problem here boils down to not enough lions. Actual survival was once a pretty good proxy measure on who had it together, and who didn't. (Until the fated day came where your—former—best friend hid your Nikes.) Problem: the objective measure of the lion cull was a just a tad morally blind.

One of the problems with incentive porn is the notion that incentive gradients should be pervasive and perpetual: don't go to university, struggle to pay the rent; don't graduate at the top of your class, struggle to pay your student loans. Etc.

The other model is that you mill around aimlessly (sort of) until something clicks, and then you go off on a mad tear, when there's clearly something special you feel that you can achieve. If you succeed, you get perks (recognition, fancy jobs, fancy peers). If not, you're simply cast back into the milling pond.

A UBI is one way to provide a giant milling pond of opportunity.

It would surely

Re:on the industry of indolence

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for saying in 39 paragraphs that which could have been said in 9.

Re:on the industry of indolence

[smallfries]

Thanks for this - the most interesting thing I've read on slashdot in over a decade. The only point that I don't think that you covered is that as society moves further into specialized roles there are many people who simply do not rise above the threshold in any particular specialty - the statistics behind this are quite simple. Yet we need to maintain these "unproductive" people specifically so that we have a broad enough pool to avoid over-fitting what we focus on.

There is a precise methodology they could use

[Applehu Akbar]

The article is paywalled, so we know little about how this finding was made, but let's test each journal by submitting several plausible but fake papers to it. Peer review would then be rated on how many of the falsies are caught.

The pee review

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading the paper on the toilet. If the paper works as paper is supposed to, its accepted.

Our /. PEERS said otherwise in review...

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: ... of my work Jealous "Lil' Jowie" you do-nothing zero "ne'er-do-well" offtopic unidentifiable stalker https://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12269474&cid=56838194/ hahahaha - you FAIL as always on several grounds troll - it's ALL "your kind" (the INFERIOR ones, the DEFICIENTS) KNOW how to do in this life & once again, it shows with YOU PROVING IT for me!

* You WISH you were me (definitely seeing as how many times you've IMPERSONATED me too, lol) but you "NOT-MEN" wannabes can't be, ever (you're doomed to failure as your fate).

Lastly - Don't TRY to give me orders whimp - you do NOT run OR own this place (nor would I care IF you did, I'd still do as I wish when I wish - ask Whipslash/Logan Abbott (lol)) - & you CERTAINLY do not run or OWN me but I PWN YOU CONSTANTLY! Against "your kind" (who can't even STAND BEHIND THEIR OWN WORDS no less)?? I don't even have to TRY win - you defeat YOURSELVES for me!

APK

P.S.=> Going to "RaGe-OuT" in "FruStRaTiOn" there, "Lil' JOWIE" & DOWNMOD BOMB me? Go ahead (or did I exhaust you of your PUNY effete nullifiable 'weapon' as always the past few days already?) - I'll just REPOST & get you to DANCE to MY TUNE as always, INFERIOR one, lol... apk

Re:Our /. PEERS said otherwise in review...

[Anonymous Coward]

Spamming retard APK is mad that someone told the truth about him.

Yet every one of 'em likes or uses my work or...

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject, no denying it & they may not like ME personally & I don't care. Non-sequitur. My work's good & they use/like it, period.

* You INFERIOR one/DEFICIENTS don't seem to be able to MANAGE THAT YOURSELVES & it's why I can always laugh @ you asking this 1 simple question I am going to ask you now (just to see you "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!" vs. it):

QUESTION What have YOU done personally yourself BY YOURSELF & your OWN code (not OpenSORES) that's better & had folks speak good of it, especially our PEERS on /. reviewing it?

FUNNY HOW YOU ALSO AVOID CERTAIN OTHERS WHO REVIEWED MY WORK eh? Not - Selective BULLSHIT from you that STILL FAILS as they all like or use OR SPEAK WELL OF my work.

APK

P.S.=> Answer that (you won't - you don't have SHIT to show for yourself EXCEPT being JEALOUS of me you low-brow IMBECILE incapable of GOOD work (hell, work @ all, especially that others like & use)) - prove me wrong (you can't)... apk

Obligatory potholer54 reference

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we trust peer-reviewed papers?

See also: coercitive citation

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anonymously to avoid legal problems by disclosing the following information.

Not only fake journals are a problem. Supposedly "serious" journals with a corrupt editor using a coercive citation scheme are also an important issue. Coercive citation is typically used to increase the metrics of the journal, but I have seen at least one case in which it is used to increase the metrics of the Journal Editor (!)

Specific example: Springer's Journal of Supercomputing is edited by infamous Hamid Arabnia. Yes, this is the same folk that used to run the WorldComp conference series in Vegas, which is now rebranded as CSCE after it was widespread that they accepted any crap as long as you paid for registration.

Well, I submitted some years ago a real research paper to this Journal of Supercomputing. It was serious research, not top-level, but reasonable. Reviews were reasonable, but H. Arabnia requested to add citations to FOUR of his own personal papers, completely unrelated with our submission, in order to accept the paper. We didn't add any (and the paper was eventually accepted), but we could check that he did this routinely: you can check for example this paper, in which authors cite TEN unrelated papers from the editor of this journal. I don't blame the authors: in many cases, they badly need the publication and agree to the coercive mechanism.

You can also check H. Arabnia's Google Scholar page, with a very high h-index value. However, this page also allows you to check the citations of the papers. If you check the 88 citations to this paper from 1995, you can see that it was almost unnoticed for twenty years, and suddenly it resurged in 2015... with ALL citations coming from the Journal of Supercomputing, which he edits!!

The funny fact: The journal of Supercomputing has a JCR impact factor of 1.326 in the last (2016) list, being in the second quartile (Q2) of its category. Let's see the update, coming in a few days/weeks. According to the rankings, this should be a respected journal, but it happens to be the playground of this clown, abusing it to increase his own metrics.

Re:See also: coercitive citation

[invalid_user]

Can someone please mod this up? I can confirm that this is a common practice by many today... but who can blame them? The only lesson is that citation count is no longer trustworthy. Also, Google Scholar now counts blog posts as papers, and web links as citations.

(I have mod points but can't moderate since I have coomented on this article)

Re: Yet every one of 'em likes or uses my work or.

[Anonymous Coward]

The software I create isn't of general interest. A lot of my work is done on high performance computing systems with thousands of cores. And I publish my work in real peer-reviewed journals like Monthly Weather Review instead of predatory open access "journals".

Your first paragraph is a reasonable statement about people liking your work even if they don't like you. I've said all that I need to say here. Be well.

Only ones that don't like ME (or my work)?

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: Are webmasters & advertisers (as I block their ads that infect/track/slow folks), INFERIOR competitors (DNS/Antivir (full of bugs & moving part complexity leading to exploit), Browser addons (inefficient OR 'souled-out' to NOT do the 1 job they have & I do FAR MORE than any single 1 of them does by FAR, for less, @ kernelmode speed/precedence MINUS the messagepass overhead) even FIREWALLS (filter driver overhead & MOST only work on IP addresses but MOST THREATS use hostnames) & provide functions I do (most only in part & heavier/slower/more moving parts for exploit as noted per each above)) OR lastly malware makers (as I block them from infesting folks).

* THEN there's the ones that TRY "attack me" 1st & I shut them down PUBLICLY under FAKE NAMES (for their FAKE LIES of so-called "lives"), often the same person under MULTIPLE SOCKPUPPET GUISES (yes, it goes on here, I have literal proof of it) & 1 by 1 until they don't HAVE THAT OPTION anymore (as I record their technical defeats vs. me) so that you see what you do now:

They attempt to 'attack me' (yet they're helping me & are too STUPID to realize it when they post folks like & USE my work speaking well of it) as UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous cowards (see the group above - I'd GUARANTEE they are 1 of the above - After all - I Give folks what they want & need for FREE - they wouldn't ATTACK me for that, but those noted above CERTAINLY would in fear of me... no questions asked).

APK

P.S.=> Ordinarily, I'd ask you prove it (but seems reasonable you're in weather predication/prediction based on just what I've heard) BUT you haven't been a jerk to me so, there you are, a CIVIL reply from me (but the idiots that LITERALLY STALK/IMPERSONATE/MODBOMB me, I will NEVER be "nice" to - I don't treat those attacking me w/ nice - I treat them how they are TREATING me & DESTROY them with their own stupidity (very easy on every single one of 'em, every time))... apk

Re:Only ones that don't like ME (or my work)?

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to think that you and your silly program actually matter to anyone.

Most of us are simply not interested, and have grown quite weary of you shoving it in our faces all the time.

That fact that you behave like the worst sort of bully--attacking people then claiming, when they respond, that they're attacking you--doesn't endear you to many, either.

We're sorry your father beat you even harder for crying when he beat you, but it's not our problem, it's yours and you should get some help to overcome that and move on.

Re:Only ones that don't like ME (or my work)?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget, the Chinese copied him. And Google. They even stole his initials, because no-one has ever had the initials APK before.

It all look an awful lot like full blown NPD. Grandiose sense of self-worth, inability to acknowledge let alone address criticism and anything or anyone that tries to hold him to account triggers a rage response, complete with decreased coherence and eventually threats of violence. His interactions are all win/loss scenarios and he has to 'win' at all costs. I think this might be all he has left to generate any sense of self-worth.

Your 'daddy beats you' is sadly likely to be true, if not literally, then metaphorically.

Reading much older posts on Slashdot, or on other forums even further back, he's always had an odd use of language but his modern posts border on the illiterate. I'm not sure if there's some other cognitive problems, or if the lack of social interaction over time has simply led to an atrophying of his ability to communicate.

I'm reminded of the decline of HomelessInLaJolla (Steven Baumeister) who posted from recently after he became permanently homeless through to ceasing after having become a complete crank. The lack of real social interaction seemed to take its toll - perhaps exacerbating existing problems, but I'm not sure that even 'normal' people wouldn't be a little less sane after years of ostracisation.

I'd love to see him get help. He is or at least was reasonably intelligent. It would be fantastic to see him happier and able to work on things that generate real respect or gratitude, rather than clinging to his decades old 'win' and engaging in behaviour that results in exactly the opposite of what he needs.

Projecting you're retarded & mad I see

[Anonymous Coward]

Projecting you're retarded & mad I see. Mad you can't control/own me, but I "pwn" you daily, easily, since you're of low intelligence. I do what I want & when I want, where I want & you + "your kind" can't stop me.

* ... & I lmao EVER SINGLE TIME I do... why?

See, I KNOW EXACTLY WHO YOU ARE/WHAT YOU REPRESENT -> https://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12269474&cid=56839410/ & always HAVE, & you know it... anyone can determine that much, doesn't take somekind of "sleuth" after all.

APK

P.S.=> RoTfLmAo @ u (you can't PAY for this kind of entertainment @ YOUR expense, UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous simpleton worm)... apk

People know what's reputable

[SoftwareArtist]

Scientists know which journals are reputable. In any field, there are maybe a half dozen or a dozen journals that most papers get published in. Everyone knows what they are. And then there's a hundred wannabe journals with intentionally similar names that exist just to make money. No one reads them, and no one reputable publishes in them. If you look at someone's publication list and see a lot of papers in journals you've never heard of, you immediately know to be suspicious.

Re:People know what's reputable

[invalid_user]

Problem is that they have the citation counts... because there are so many of them citing each other's trivial results.

Peer Review as Censorship

[Paul Fernhout]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2...
"David Noble: ... And again, going back to your first question, the purpose of peer review is prior censorship and I believe very strongly that if people want to criticize something that you write or I write, they have every right to do that AFTER itâ(TM)s published not before itâ(TM)s published. To me thatâ(TM)s the critical issue."

Search on "peer review is censorship" for similar opinion pieces.

This is not to defend any journals being misleading though...

Re:Peer Review as Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Peer review is supposed to be a technical evaluation. It has often become a means to silence unwanted voices.

The same thing is true of Slashdot moderation. I will never take a number after seeing someone modded to -1 troll with an informative post because he said something "wrong" on a different article. Someone else copied that -1 troll post, pasted it under a different name, and it was +5 informative within minutes.

LOL! You "speak for everyone"? No

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: U don't & u prove I matter to u even saying that + registered users say diff. vs. u https://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12269474&cid=56838194/ you UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous JEALOUS "Lil' Jowie" (lol, makes me laugh @ you & "your kind" EVERYTIME I say it - bet it "Burns you up" since it's TRUE about you).

* Don't YOU dare, scumbag punk, EVER tell me how I behave when YOU SLINK AROUND like the "not-man" you are STALKING ME behind your pussy UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts there, "Lil' Jealous JOWIE" (lmao)!

Worst part is, shitbags like YOU try to "put your devils" into me from the PRIVATE HELL you created out of your wasted DO-NOTHING "ne'er-do-well" existence - but it doesn't work - you can't & I just LMAO @ u, since I know what you are - wastes, lol!

APK

P.S.=> You TRY "bully me" since do nothing ZERO pussies like YOU got punked your entire WASTED lives - but you can't online (where "your kind", disgusting 'weezils' THINK they can "get away w/ it" - wrong) - I'm TOO STRONG for a pusscake like YOU punk & you're SUCH A WASTE OF LIFE it's not funny - why don't you try put some of that WASTED energy of yours into writing SOMETHING FOLKS LIKE & USE as I have done? Oh, that's right - you're SUCH a waste you waste time doing what you do to me vs. doing CONSTRUCTIVE things... apk

Re:Yet every one of 'em likes or uses my work or..

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no need for someone to demonstrate their work in order to criticise someone else's claims or to ask for proof of the assertions they make.

Your constant demands for same are a logical fallacy of the form of an 'ad hominem' attack.

Your list of endorsements are taken out of context. This is an other informal logical fallacy.

Your claim of others being selective in what they address is classic projection, and while I link to 'Rational Wiki' for that last, which is hardly authoritative, I do so because of their words on projection and internet arguments which is particularly apt in this situation.

Please stop.

Your bs = "CRY of the 'Wild "ne'er-do-well'", lol

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject - unquestionably. I AM taking it "to the man" ('not-man' clearly in your case) when you give me shit? PROVE you do better vs. mere your HOTAIR BLOWHARD cheap talk & cutdowns directed MY way!

Anny FOOL can talk, very FEW DO (very few create something even our /. PEERS like & use as I have https://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12269474&cid=56838194/ that YOU & "your kind" CLEARLY can't - lol!)

* It's called ME calling YOU (& "your kind") OUT in the street for your bullshit! ... & what do YOU & "your kind" do? WHAT YOU ALWAYS DO - You "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!", because you HAVE to - you're WASTE OF LIFE w/ ZERO to show for yourselves vs. me (prove otherwise, you can't).

Don't even TRY your forums "ILLOGIC-LOGIC" on me DOLT - I actually took Philosophy of logic during my CS degreework!

APK

P.S.=> The endorsements of my work I quoted (thanks for admitting they are indeed, that) & its quality + efficacy ARE FACT, immutable - your "forums ILLOGIC-LOGIC" can't prove folks who said them DID NOT SAY WHAT I QUOTED (they did, no disputing it) & they MAY not like ME personally but I could care less - I care they enjoy + use my work & it's quality + efficacy (which "your kind", wastes, CLEARLY aren't CAPABLE OF you JEALOUS "Lil' Jowie" mere FLIMSY "ne'er-do-well" DO-NOTHING lazy little ZERO - prove otherwise (you can't))... apk

RoTfLmAo: NPD = Cry of the "Ne'er-do-well"!

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject wannabe "SiDeWaLk-ShRiNk of /." you WISH you could have NPD but are UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous STALKING DO-NOTHING "ne'er-do-well" LAZY troll instead (YOUR FAULT not mine).

Who did it 1st? China OR ME http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/26/boffins_supercharge_the_hosts_file_to_save_users_plagued_by_dns_outages/ ??

ANSWER = ME

MY hosts engine (1st of its kind in GUI on Linux & inferiorly IMITATED 15 times I know of in Windows) = ONLY 1 doing hardcodes where you spend MOST TIME online PROTECTING vs. DNS down/redirect poisoned/dns tracking + SPEEDS YOU UP beyond adblocking (+ blocks malware))

* QUESTION: YOU did better? China didn't. They do less!

(ANSWER: NO - You're JEALOUS "Lil' Jowie" STALKING ME constantly under UNIDENTIFIABLE ac posts as a BRAVE/PRODUCTIVE (not) guy you are "standing behind his words"(not))

APK

P.S.=> China STEALS (US industrial/military tech) ending up "INFERIOR IMITATION = SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY" "Made in China BS"

Re:RoTfLmAo: NPD = Cry of the "Ne'er-do-well"!

[Anonymous Coward]

you WISH you could have NPD

This makes as much sense as claiming that people are jealous of you. You're a lonely old crank whose last 'success' was a piece of shareware he wrote 20+ years ago. I'd rather chew my arm off than be you.

China ...

That you think what you did and what they did are similar shows how little you understand. Or your desperation for any kind of validation.

imitated ...

All your software does is download, merge, sort and output. It's a trivial concept. No one is copying it when the implement something similar. That the other two host managers on Malwarebytes are described as 'useful' and yours isn't gives a pretty clear idea about which is better - theirs or yours. And given that I've never had the author of Hostman spam me, call me names or similar, if I even need a host file manager I'll use it.

Hell, you know what ...
There, I've gone to the Hostman site, found the 'donate link' and donated ~AU$5.70 (3.5Euro) to abelhadigital.com. I've never used their software and probably never will, but they aren't spamming this forum; they aren't toxically NPD. In short, I'm donating money because they aren't you.

stalking ...

Classic NPD projection. You're the toxic piece of work that follows people to other threads to rant about making them run, or beating them or whatever else you need to make yourself feel good.

I challenged you to show 3 areas where China's implementation is similar to yours. Like all such things you can't answer, you ignored it and attacked me.
You can't because the only thing in common is that you both write to the host file. You have no idea what China is doing or why. All you are capable of is seeing 'host file' and you frantically copy it to your spank bank.

If your software was any good you wouldn't need to spam forums. If your ideas were so amazing that China and Google copy them, then you'd be a highly sought after consultant, not an internet crank. You're trapped in a fantasy of competence and relevance which would be fine if you didn't need external validation. Given that you are neither relevant nor competent, this leads to this sort of interaction.

APK. NPD means never having to admit you are wrong. Or answer an uncomortable question. And it means you're awesome and the world copies you and wants to be you

What peer review means

[sjbe]

Agreed but the problem is how do you fairly evaluate a colleagues research at a global level when you do not work in that area?

You ask someone who does work in that area. I think that would be obvious. Merely having a paper published in a "prestigious" journal will not answer the question of whether they do good work in general or whether the specific work in question is actually valuable. Even the best journals with the highest reputations sometimes publish some shit science unintentionally. What determines the credibility of research is the quality of the work that builds from it.

If you really want to evaluate the work of a researcher you need to evaluate number of citations, and the quality of those citations. Influential and important works tend to have a lot of citations and the works based on them tend to be influential as well. Simply publishing a lot or being published in a particular journal doesn't really mean anything.

Given the need to do this high quality, peer-reviewed journals make sense since, if your colleague can get his/her work published in one then clearly the rest of their field also think their research is high quality.

Not sure how you could draw that conclusion. All it tells you is that a few "peers" felt the paper was potentially worthwhile. Maybe not even that much depending on how seriously they took their job. It doesn't mean they've done a deep dive to corroborate the research. Peer review does not mean the rest of the field respects their work.

Re:What peer review means

[Roger W Moore]

You ask someone who does work in that area.

That's practical for tenure and promotion but for every annual evaluation? Really? You'd suggest getting an external referee (since colleagues in the department may be biased one way or the other) for evaluations? As for getting it wrong how can you be any more certain that this external referee is likely to do a better job than those selected by a reputable journal?

All it tells you is that a few "peers" felt the paper was potentially worthwhile....It doesn't mean they've done a deep dive to corroborate the research.

True, but your suggested method has one peer decide. Having a few peers decide with those peers changing from one paper to the next seems like a much fairer system. As for corroborating the research depending on the field that can take years and be a major research effort itself. This is fine for major research awards but is not typically the standard required for annual evaluations e.g. Higgs had to wait from 1964 to 2012 for our discovery of the Higgs boson before he got his Nobel but you can hardly make him wait that long for an annual evaluation!

Who has time to peer review anonymously?

[deiksac]

As my GF works in research, we occassionally discuss topics like this. In the Economist article there is a group mentioned asking for a more transparent review process - sounds very reasonable. Another thing is - if you participate in the peer review process, this should get you merit similart to publishing a paper. Peer review done right requires time and if done anonymously there is not so much incentive for you to do so since you are already too busy producing all the papers the system requires from you.

Re:Your bs = "CRY of the 'Wild "ne'er-do-well'", l

[Anonymous Coward]

PROVE you do better

ad hominem

even our /. PEERS like & use

quoting out of context

your forums "ILLOGIC-LOGIC" on me DOLT

This is pretty basic stuff that you seem to be having trouble with

I actually took Philosophy of logic during my CS degreework!

... and seem to have no idea about the difference between formal and informal logic. You may have taken the class, but you clearly neither understood it nor remember it.

...[some rant and name calling including made up words] ...

Why would anyone use software from something as toxic as you?

APK = NPD. APKs software is 'small' but not 'useful'. Just ask Malwarebytes. That's an immutable 'FACT'

LOL! The HOWLING of a 'Wild "ne'er-do-well'"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject (*snicker*) & "NPD" bullshit IS the HOWL of the injured do-nothing LAZY undereducated unskilled bs artist JEALOUS "Lil' Jowie" zero "ne'er-do-well", RoTfLmAo...

Unquesitonable fact/truth & you HELP PROVE IT FOR ME with zero to show for yourself when you got CALLED OUT after you took adhominem potshots @ me first, hahaha!

HOWEVER: I rather FAIRLY gave you the opportunity to SHOW YOU'VE DONE AS WELL or BETTER than I & you can't... lol!

* Hence my subject line & your "HOWL of the WILD "ne'er-do-well" (lmao) bullshit...

(You try PUT ME DOWN & yet YOU DON'T HAVE SHIT TO SHOW FOR YOURSELF? Please - Bwaaahahahahaha...)

APK

P.S.=> I'm SURE that's about ALL you've ever had & HAD to ENDURE taking shots @ others who DEFINTELY do "ad hominem" taking it to the MAN (fuck it when you take ad hominem pot shots @ me fool FIRST) CALLING YOU OUT & seeing you (*chortle*) do your by now PATENTED "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!" hehehehe, & w/ ZERO of anything good you can show for yourself as I can (in others speaking WELL of my works, NOT your non-existent BLOWHARD "hotair", windbag, lol)... apk

Re:LOL! The HOWLING of a 'Wild "ne'er-do-well'"

[Anonymous Coward]

...[blah, blah, blah, name calling, insults etc.]...

The usual collection of informal fallacies - mostly ad hominems, and projection.

Demanding that critics produce a work of their own shifts the subject away from your work or your claims. Then you get to play judge over whether their work is sufficient to allow them to criticise you. I've seen you play this game and, of course, their work is never enough because you shift the goalposts, evade challenges etc. It's all just a way of trying to deflect criticism, and is a very common pattern of behaviour for people with NPD. While you argue over their work, your work isn't being critiqued, and that's all you care about.

In informal logic, demanding someone meet some standard before you address their criticism is an ad hominem. You are avoiding the argument by attacking the credentials or credibility of the person making them. It's about the second lowest form of counter-argument, just up from name calling - something else you do.

This is basic reasoning and argument. Every time you post your ridiculous 'show me what you've done', especially when you've just been called on it, is simply proof that you have no ability to actually deal with criticism and that you ignore anything you can't deny or dismiss.

APK. When denial and dismissal don't work, just ignore anything you don't like and repeat the same phrases you've already been told are fallacious. Remember, the person who posts most, wins!

The SCREECH of a WOUNDED "ne'er-do-well", lol

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject (*snicker*) & "NPD" bullshit IS the SCREECHING of an injured do-nothing LAZY undereducated unskilled bs artist JEALOUS "Lil' Jowie" zero "ne'er-do-well", RoTfLmAo...

Unquestionable fact/truth & you HELP PROVE IT FOR ME with zero to show for yourself when you got CALLED OUT after you took adhominem potshots @ me first, hahaha!

HOWEVER: I rather FAIRLY gave you the opportunity to SHOW YOU'VE DONE AS WELL or BETTER than I & you can't... lol!

* Hence my subject line & your "HOWL of the WILD "ne'er-do-well" (lmao) bullshit...

(You try PUT ME DOWN & yet YOU DON'T HAVE SHIT TO SHOW FOR YOURSELF? Please - Bwaaahahahahaha...)

APK

P.S.=> I'm SURE that's about ALL you've ever had & HAD to ENDURE taking shots @ others who DEFINTELY do "ad hominem" taking it to the MAN (fuck it when you take ad hominem pot shots @ me fool FIRST) CALLING YOU OUT & seeing you (*chortle*) do your by now PATENTED "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!" hehehehe, & w/ ZERO of anything good you can show for yourself as I can (in others speaking WELL of my works, NOT your non-existent BLOWHARD "hotair", windbag, lol)... apk

Re:The SCREECH of a WOUNDED "ne'er-do-well", lol

[Anonymous Coward]

... [the usual insults, some projection, ignoring anything that hits too close to home] ...

Yes, yes. I've dared to question your genius. Your NPD is showing.

the opportunity to SHOW YOU'VE DONE AS WELL

You can keep saying the same thing again and again, but it's still an ad hominem

You try PUT ME DOWN

I would be happy to simply argue the central point/s of your posts. But you refuse. Anything that questions your assertions receives an attack - like this. You don't reason, you rant. And when I have the time and inclination I'll call you on it. And, because you refuse to acknowledge anything that you can't deny or dismiss, I'll keep adding a bold line to my posts to remind you of the times you've made a mistake. Anything you have the grace to admit or acknowledge I won't touch. Just the stuff you ignore.

I have no idea what you are trying to say in your PS. Your english has degenerated even further than usual. Try working with punctuation.

APK. He took formal logic in college which means he doesn't make informal logical mistakes. Just ask him

Evaluation

[sjbe]

That's practical for tenure and promotion but for every annual evaluation?

If you've asked once it's not like a lot will have changed in the last 12 months publication-wise. The work to check recent performance should be fairly minimal by comparison. And if that is too much work for an evaluation then the manager is either lazy or incompetent.

You'd suggest getting an external referee (since colleagues in the department may be biased one way or the other) for evaluations?

If you don't know what you are evaluating then absolutely yes. If you and I are both physicists then there is a good chance I know enough to properly evaluate your work. If we are in different fields then chances are you will need to ask others for their opinions. I do this all the time when evaluating my employees. If I want to know how someone is doing in a specific job that I don't know the details about, I ask their manager or someone who works with them about their work (obliquely if necessary) and how good they are.

As for getting it wrong how can you be any more certain that this external referee is likely to do a better job than those selected by a reputable journal?

The journals do not evaluate the body of work of someone. They just evaluate one document. That can provide some information but it's not remotely enough to evaluate the quality of someone's work. Likewise having lots of publications does provide any indication of quality of work. It's "easy" to get a lot of shit work published. Just looking at publication numbers and which journal without checking deeper is just being criminally lazy. It's the equivalent of a journalist watching twitter feeds and reporting that as investigative journalism.

True, but your suggested method has one peer decide.

Who said anything about one? If you want to know someone's reputation in a field you will have to get a sample size greater than one.

Re:Evaluation

[Roger W Moore]

Who said anything about one? If you want to know someone's reputation in a field you will have to get a sample size greater than one.

I think you have an extremely unrealistic view of how willing people are going to be to respond if they are bombarded by the number of requests to review someone that will be required if every single year every faculty member has to have multiple external referees to evaluate them. Additionally, if they are only evaluating the work for that one year it is hard to see how they will manage to come up with anything significantly different from what you would obtain from reviewing that same person's publications for the year. On longer timescales, you might have a point - which is why we use external referees for tenure and promotion - but on an annual basis I think you are being extremely unrealistic.

Hypocrite your failed attacks are ad hominem

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: Show you have our /. peers speak well of your work (that doesn't exist) as they do mine https://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12269474&cid=56838194/ - you can't.

* It's not my fault you are a failure with nothing to show for yourself. It's yours...

APK

P.S.=> LOL, & all you have is your "NPD" (which is TRULY the HOWL of the INJURED "ne'er-do-well" DO NOTHING you are STALKING me in JEALOUS "Lil' Jowie" effete failure of your wasted zero so-called 'life')... apk

Re:Hypocrite your failed attacks are ad hominem

[Anonymous Coward]

Show you have ...

It's still an ad-hominem, APK. I'm still not going to do it. You can demand it as much as you like, all it shows it that you have no capacity to even vary your responses. You're little more than a script, responding the same way to the same input.

Want me to stop mocking your NPD? Try doing something no NPD person can do and actually respond to criticism in a fashion other than ignoring or denying it.

APK. Keeps making the same, tired, demands that you 'prove' you are better than he is. It's not science. It's NPD

No fallacy to show you're a "ne'er-do-well"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: I let you prove it. Show you have our /. peers speak well of your work (doesn't exist)> They do mine https://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12269474&cid=56838194/ - you can't.

* It's not my fault you are a failure with nothing to show for yourself. It's yours... & you're a hypocrite attacking ME (rather than my points) ala ad hominem (& you fail @ it as you obviously failed at all else in your wasted life).

Stalking me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts != accomplishment on your end, "ne'er-do-well" - it's PURE failure as you can't even stand behind your words.

APK

P.S.=> LOL, & all you have is your "NPD" (which is TRULY the HOWL of the INJURED "ne'er-do-well" DO NOTHING you are STALKING me in JEALOUS "Lil' Jowie" effete failure of your wasted zero so-called 'life')... apk

Re:No fallacy to show you're a "ne'er-do-well"

[Anonymous Coward]

*laugh*
You can't read, can you?

Every time you post your ridiculous 'show me what you've done', especially when you've just been called on it, is simply proof that you have no ability to actually deal with criticism and that you ignore anything you can't deny or dismiss.

Thank you for proving my point, yet again. Goodbye APK. We'll 'chat' again in another thread, no doubt.

APK. Functionally illiterate. Can't write english. Can't (or won't) read. Still doesn't understand what an informal fallacy is

Nothing New Here

[dcw3]

Peer has been broken for quite a while, and there are many articles on why. The basic issue is that there's no money in reviewing papers, and it doesn't help anyone with their own career growth.

Projecting U can't read Mr. 'Phallussy'

[Anonymous Coward]

You give me crap & "howl of the injured 'ne'er-do-well"" NPD bs do nothings jealous of those who DO do use trying to cut me down & my ware folks like & use here saying it's good I call you out you little UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous STALKER "ne'er-do-well" DO-NOTHING f'ing LOSER you are (& you KNOW it + FEAR me (why else HIDE behind anonymous & being unidentifiable otherwise then like you DO pussy?)).

You TRY "preach" ad-hominem to ME? Bitch I got a B+ in it in collegiate academia during my CS degreework during the 60 cr. hr. associates end early on - did you?? That BROKE DOWN pretty fast w/ you & you are a HYPOCRITE attacking ME that way w/ your misuse of LOGIC via your "FORUMS 'Illogic-Logic'" bs, lol!

U.R. the "Phallusy" (lmao), not I & you "dismiss" providing factual proof of what I ask you for - why? You don't have SHIT to show for your wasted life self.

APK

P.S.=> I call you out on the 1 THING that NEVER FAILS me vs. DO-NOTHING LAZY whimp LOSERS like you when you try that - & I know YOU & "your kind" the "not-men" weezils will HAVE to run - why? I know you've WASTED YOUR TIME in this life & are undereducated + unskilled in 1 OF THE VERY THINGS /.'s about - The ART & SCIENCE of computing which YOUR LAME chickenshit NO INTEGRITY anonymous stalking me ass has ZERO of (& zero to show for your wasted "so-called 'life'" to your credit/name - PROVE otherwise (you can't)) - so "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!" as always, shoo pest... apk

Re:Projecting U can't read Mr. 'Phallussy'

[Anonymous Coward]

*laugh*
Wow, I can almost see the spittle. Your english gets worse as you get more enraged. Calm down. You're going to burst something. ... and you still don't know the difference between informal and formal logic, do you?

For all you claims about education and Science you haven't the faintest idea about reasoning, debate, argument or the scientific process.

You make a claim and anyone can challenge or criticise it. That's science.

Demanding that someone prove that they have done more or better than you is a distraction. It's displacement. It's an attempt to avoid having to deal with Criticism. That's classic NPD.

APK. NPD is more than just grandiose claims. It's a defence built to protect against a sense of worthlessness so profound it denies it exists. Anything that might expose that core is furiously ignored or denied. When that fails - rage.

WTF? U did it 1st to me: Anyone can look above

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject (fact as you STALK me by UNIDENTIFIABLE chickenshit anonymous) & ad hominem = "to the man" & you ATTACKED ME not points I make in my hosts engine posts either (U LOSE dumbo liar right there alone) & I AM TAKING IT "to the 'not-man'" in YOU for sure, calling YOU OUT for trying to put me down personally (ad hominem) vs. proving my points I state in my hosts post WRONG (you're not well-versed enough in computing to do THAT to begin with on your part & there ARE no errors in what I state (& you know it, totally unassailable, so you don't TRY to, instead goading/trying to 'gaslight' me as WEEZIL's like YOU have to resort to being losers)).

NPD? LMAO @ U wannabe "SiDeWaLk-ShRiNk of /." - where are YOUR professional credentials + DEGREES certifying YOU, Dr. Quack (lol) UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous nobody + JOB experience in the psychiatric field & a FORMAL EXAMINATION of myself in a PROFESSIONAL psychiatric setting for YOU TO MAKE YOUR "Insta-PROGNOSIS" jerk?

None of them have you (yoda talk, lol) - which means you are LIBELING me & breaking the GOLDWATER LAW moron!

APK

P.S.=> Your pitiful w/ your "forums 'ILLOGIC-LOGIC'" attempts FAILING & doing ad hominem to me w/ your "HOWL of the wounded DO-NOTHING "ne'er-do-well"" w/ ZERO to show for youself vs. me getting PRAISE for my work & its efficacy + QUALITY by our /. PEERS while you don't even have a POT to PISS in much less this I do https://science.slashdot.org/c... you pitiful loser STALKING me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts vs. doing useful of service to others things I do... apk

You have no clue on Science/Debate

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no clue on Science/Debate: Proof (which I can show & you can't) are SOLID results https://science.slashdot.org/c... you'll NEVER have UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous "ne'er-do-well" bs artist you are vs. our /. PEERS liking & using my EXCELLENT multiplatform ware (that got even BETTER by far improving) - real results loser.

Scientific HYPOTHESIS ALONE = BS (you) & even THEORY demands a proof - you have NEITHER but I have more in ACTUAL WORKING GOOD PRODUCT!

APK

P.S.=> Keep on doing your CRY of the WOUNDED "ne'er-do-well" NPD bullshit snowflakes use when they can't DEFEAT an acual DOER like myself vs. your wasted LIFE hiding behind UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous bullshit troll posts - fine by me, keep not being MY worthy COMPETITION holding yourself down wasting your time in your OBVIOUSLY do-NOTHING zero WASTED life, lol... apk

You can't win w/ ZERO RESULTS loser

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no clue on Science/Debate: Proof (which I can show & you can't) are SOLID results https://science.slashdot.org/c... you'll NEVER have UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous "ne'er-do-well" bs artist you are vs. our /. PEERS liking & using my EXCELLENT multiplatform ware (that got even BETTER by far improving) - real results loser.

Scientific HYPOTHESIS ALONE = BS (you) & even THEORY demands a proof - you have NEITHER but I have more in ACTUAL WORKING GOOD PRODUCT!

There's REAL WORLD working (me) vs. HOTAIR Windbag BLOWHARD bullshit (you).

APK

P.S.=> Keep on doing your CRY of the WOUNDED "ne'er-do-well" NPD bullshit snowflakes use when they can't DEFEAT an acual DOER like myself vs. your wasted LIFE hiding behind UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous bullshit troll posts - fine by me, keep not being MY worthy COMPETITION holding yourself down wasting your time in your OBVIOUSLY do-NOTHING zero WASTED life, lol... apk