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View Full Version : A spoof paper concocted by Science reveals little or no scrutiny at many open-access journals.




fearthereaperx
10-04-2013, 10:49 AM
On 4 July, good news arrived in the inbox of Ocorrafoo Cobange, a biologist at the Wassee Institute of Medicine in Asmara. It was the official letter of acceptance for a paper he had submitted 2 months earlier to the Journal of Natural Pharmaceuticals, describing the anticancer properties of a chemical that Cobange had extracted from a lichen.

In fact, it should have been promptly rejected. Any reviewer with more than a high-school knowledge of chemistry and the ability to understand a basic data plot should have spotted the paper's short-comings immediately. Its experiments are so hopelessly flawed that the results are meaningless.

I know because I wrote the paper. Ocorrafoo Cobange does not exist, nor does the Wassee Institute of Medicine. Over the past 10 months, I have submitted 304 versions of the wonder drug paper to open-access journals. More than half of the journals accepted the paper, failing to notice its fatal flaws. Beyond that headline result, the data from this sting operation reveal the contours of an emerging Wild West in academic publishing.


http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full

CPUd
10-04-2013, 10:52 AM
Have fun:

http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/

angelatc
10-04-2013, 02:54 PM
Bump. Many thanks for posting this. I've seen some published papers that made me wonder if this could be the case with the pay-to-publish models.

This should be in the Science forum, I think. It's too good to be buried in GP.

Petar
10-04-2013, 03:00 PM
The findings sound totally valid, but I think that you also run into similar problems on the other end of the spectrum.

When scientific research is totally centralized then that provides a vehicle for misinformation to be imposed on everyone by a select few who operate free from competition.

I would rather have a lot of competing shitty theories VS one shitty theory with no competition at all.

NorthCarolinaLiberty
10-04-2013, 03:03 PM
Sounds like "Wikipedia." The site itself acknowledged a few years ago that one is every seven edits is vandalism.

BTW, did anybody spot my entirely fake article I composed in response to a poster here?

amy31416
10-04-2013, 03:04 PM
That's awesome. Glad to see it.

That Elsevier accepted it does not surprise me.

mczerone
10-04-2013, 03:28 PM
Good on a reputable (yet not perfect) for taking PEACEFUL, MARKET methods to get a baseline for which of these journals should be ignored. Maybe Journals can strive to be "Science Approved" for not publishing junk work.

And good on them for concluding that the Open-Access model isn't some horrible affront to actual science that needs to be prohibited or regulated by the very "establishment" that already controls the prestigious journals. Too bad they didn't go the next step and explicitly ask for subscriptions if people want to see more of this real investigative journalism from them.

CPUd
10-04-2013, 03:38 PM
http://i.imgur.com/duyJ4SX.jpg

"We have to accept them before we can know what's in them..."

mad cow
10-04-2013, 04:00 PM
So what you are spewing is lichen doesn't cure cancer?You do realize this appeared in a respected,peer reviewed medical journal?

Do you work for Big pHARMa?