Science Magazine "Sting Operation" Catches Predatory Journals In the Act 194
sciencehabit writes "A sting operation orchestrated by Science's contributing news correspondent John Bohannon exposes the dark side of open-access publishing. Bohannon created a spoof scientific report, authored by made-up researchers from institutions that don't actually exist, and submitted it to 304 peer-reviewed, open-access journals around the world. His hoax paper claimed that a particular molecule slowed the growth of cancer cells, and it was riddled with obvious errors and contradictions. Unfortunately, despite the paper's flaws, more open-access journals accepted it for publication (157) than rejected it (98). In fact, only 36 of the journals solicited responded with substantive comments that recognized the report's scientific problems. The article reveals a 'Wild West' landscape that's emerging in academic publishing, where journals and their editorial staffs aren't necessarily who or what they claim to be."
Mediocrity in Academics (Score:5, Informative)
Even as an undergrad I was pressured to publish. I didn't have the time nor the resources to do anything meaningful but my professors all said that I had to publish to even consider going to graduate school. They said that pretty much no matter what I do, even if its not novel or valuable to the academic community there will be a journal that will publish it. That's the current state of academics now.
Lets be clear: I'm not talking about MIT or Berkley. I'm talking about the thousands of research institutions across the country that while also doing amazing research, churn out Masters and PhDs like a printing mill. When you dilute the pool of researchers there is going to be subpar research. When there is a glut of subpar research there will be journals that see the business opportunity and publish anything you pay them to publish. This is not new.
Re:Science is the new religion (Score:2, Informative)
On the contrary, I think the genuine quest for knowledge is an amazingly worthwhile thing. However, science has become a method for the "practitioners" and "priests" to exert social, economic, and institutional influence by swaying the beliefs of those who are not educated enough or informed enough to differentiate between genuine knowledge and blind dogma.
You have no idea what you are talking about. A paper published anywhere is just correspondence. It is intended for scientific community. That's all.
If you can't tell a boson from a photon, or you don't know what HDL actually is beyond the talking points you see on TV, then journals are NOT INTENDED FOR YOUR CONSUMPTION. It is like reading latest materials research while you don't know how to join two 2x4s together without using fasteners or glues. And journalists are just as bad or worse than general public.
If you want to listen to real knowledge, to real conclusions, then ONLY deal with scientific consensus. Organizations like IPCC are there to present a consensus and that's what they do. If you start reading individual papers, you will not know what they are talking about and you may not even know what research is simply wrong because you are not in that field.
If you really really really want to read journals, then only stick to reviews or reviews of reviews that present a consensus, not original research. Original research is useless unless it is repeated, studied and understood. And most of papers are just that - research that may or may not be valid that may or may not have any immediate application.
We've gotten better at engineering, and worse at knowledge. Go ahead. Mod me as flamebait.
They go hand-in-hand. You can't get better at engineering without getting better at science. And if you try to diminish science, then the end result will be the same as Roman Empire.
Finally, if you try to understand science based on some blog entries by random people about some papers, then you are completely lost. What you are reading is religion, and not science.
several valid pushbacks from this article (Score:5, Informative)
This article is being widely panned as lacking controls, published without any critical review, and driven by self-interest from a traditional publisher with the most to lose from Open Access taking off (as it is). Some have gone so far to assert it's an over-reach for how badly it was done, and will make Science as a journal look partisan.
For example, quick scan brought up these three scathing responses:
Mike Eisen (HHMI Berkeley Professor)
http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1439 [michaeleisen.org]
Peter Suber (Author of the book "Open Access", Director of the Harvard Open Access Project, Faculty Fellow at the Berkman Center)
https://plus.google.com/u/0/109377556796183035206/posts/CRHeCAtQqGq [google.com]
Mike Taylor (programmer with Index Data and a research associate at the department of earth sciences, University of Bristol)
http://svpow.com/2013/10/03/john-bohannons-peer-review-sting-against-science/ [svpow.com]
I'm sure this will heat up some much needed debate about poor quality journals and the failings of peer review, but with the lack of any controls at all, it says basically nothing about open access as a model for publishing.
Re:Click (Score:4, Informative)
It depends. What impact will publishing a paper have on your career? If âoepublishingâ 10 papers is the difference between a associate professorship and a full professorship, $15,000 is cheap.
One might ask how valuable fake papers are â" and it turns out they can be worth quite a bit.
http://www.economist.com/news/china/21586845-flawed-system-judging-research-leading-academic-fraud-looks-good-paper [economist.com]
Re:Controls? (Score:3, Informative)
The Wikipedia Bio In Full (Score:4, Informative)
I've never heard of this person John Bohannon.
John Bohannon [wikipedia.org] is a biologist, science journalist, and dancer based at Harvard University. He writes for Science Magazine, Discover Magazine, and Wired Magazine, and frequently reports on the intersections of science and war. After embedding in southern Afghanistan in 2010, he was the first journalist to convince the US military to voluntarily release civilian casualty data. He received a Reuters environmental journalism award in 2006 for his reporting on collaborative research in Gaza. He was also involved in some controversy over an article he wrote critiquing the Lancet survey of Iraq War Casualties.
At Science Magazine, Bohannon also adopts the ''Gonzo Scientist'' persona, where he ''takes a look at the intersections among science, culture, and art -- and, in true gonzo style, doesn't shrink from making himself a part of the story. The stories include original art and accompanying multimedia features.'' As the Gonzo Scientist, Bohannon's research on whether humans can tell the difference between pate and dog food led to Stephen Colbert eating cat food on the Colbert Report.
Bohannon is probably best known for creating the Dance Your PhD competition, in which scientists from all around the world interpret their doctoral dissertations in dance form. Slate Magazine ran a profile on Bohannon and the competition in 2011. He performed with the Black Label Movement dance troupe at TEDx Brussels in November 2011, where he satirized Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal by modestly proposing that Powerpoint software be replaced by live dancers. Bohannon then went on to perform with Black Label Movement at TED 2012 in Long Beach.
Advisory Board - John Bohannon [lifeboat.com]
While visiting the Harvard University Program in Ethics and Health, he is working on two areas of research: 1) torture --- in particular the complicity of scientific and medical workers in torture, and 2) ethical problems involved with obtaining global health data, stemming from his journalistic coverage of the controversial attempts to estimate the health and mortality of the Iraqi population since the US-led invasion.
After completing a Ph.D. in molecular biology at the University of Oxford in 2002, John focused on bioethics as a Fulbright fellow (2003 --- 2004) in Berlin.
Re:Controls? (Score:5, Informative)
There is a certain amount of irony in someone attempting to prove that open access journals publish bad science through the use of bad science. I read the article, and his only mention of testing closed publications is in his conclusion, quoting a colleague who suggested just such a step. He discounts this by restating his thesis (that open access journals are more numerous and publish more papers than closed ones) before shifting topics.
Re:Click (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Click (Score:5, Informative)
What would you like to control for?
The null hypothesis is that the journals have sufficiently good review processes to avoid publishing papers with obvious and fatal flaws. If you submit a paper with obvious and fatal flaws and it is published, that hypothesis is not true. It's proof by counter-example, and no control is required for it to be valid.