Blinded by scientific gobbledygook


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Bad chemistry: How fake research journals are scamming the science community

 

OTTAWA ? I have just written the world?s worst science research paper: More than incompetent, it?s a mess of plagiarism and meaningless garble.
 
 
Now science publishers around the world are clamouring to publish it.
 
They will distribute it globally and pretend it is real research, for a fee.
 
It?s untrue? And parts are plagiarized? They?re fine with that.
 
Welcome to the world of science scams, a fast-growing business that sucks money out of research, undermines genuine scientific knowledge, and provides fake credentials for the desperate.
 
And even veteran scientists and universities are unaware of how deep the problem runs.
 
When scientists make discoveries, they publish their results in academic journals. The journals review the discovery with independent experts, and if everything checks out they publish the work. This boosts the reputations, and the job prospects, of the study?s authors.
 
Many journals now publish only online. And some of these, nicknamed predatory journals, offer fast, cut-rate service to young researchers under pressure to publish who have trouble getting accepted by the big science journals.
 
In academia, there?s a debate over whether the predators are of a lower-than-desired quality. But the Citizen?s experiment indicates much more: that many are pure con artists on the same level as the Nigerian banker who wants to give you $100 million.
 
Last year, science writer John Bohannon sent out a paperwith subtle scientific errors and showed that predatory journals were oftenfailing to catch them. The Citizen covered his sting, published in Sciencemagazine.
 
Estimates of their numbers range from hundreds to thousands.
 
To uncover bottom-feeding publishers, the simplest way was to submit something that absolutely shouldn?t be published by anyone, anywhere.
 
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Part of what I was talking about in the Big Bang thread. The media eats these up, then gets another story cycle out of the retractions etc. Pretty soon the populace just tunes out, assuming most everything they hear is junk science and not worth their interest.

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Is it wrong that I find this hilarious?

 

Nope!  I showed this to a professional chemist friend of mine, and he laughed his butt off.  He also said, once he'd stopped laughing, that it was "rather frightening".

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Part of what I was talking about in the Big Bang thread. The media eats these up, then gets another story cycle out of the retractions etc. Pretty soon the populace just tunes out, assuming most everything they hear is junk science and not worth their interest.

 

 

I agree mainstream media has a lot to answer for. News outlets are always far to quick to exaggerate or over simplify complicated scientific discoveries or ideas for the sake of filling in timeslots in the news. They also have a tendency to make up or repeat made-up ideas or words (missing-link, god particle, etc.).

 

This is different because it is scientific scams. Journals willing to print rubbish for a fee.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Publishing on a noname journal? I won't say that they deserve to get scammed because they don't, but you'll be far better off publishing on a crappy blog than tieing your reputation to that of an unknown journal.

Do people not do any kind of research on the reputation of a journal before submitting?

Media might fall for that crap, but then they also fall for Twitter hoaxes.

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