PubCows - Obviously horseshit journal articles and the journals that publish them

[Sage In All Fields]

I just came across the attached retracted journal article that was being passed around by in COVID-5G-tard circles, here's the retraction notice: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32746604/

After a thorough investigation the Editor-in-Chief has retracted this article as it showed evidence of substantial manipulation of the peer review.

It includes gems such as:

Inductors interact with external electromagnetic waves, move and produce some extra waves within the cells.

Skin cells are in close connection with nerve fibers. These fibers in the nervous system play the role of wires which carry some electrical currents; these currents produce some electromagnetic waves.

As well as this diagram:

There's also the example of the Bogdanoff Affair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair

The controversy began in 2002, with an allegation that the twins, celebrities in France for hosting science-themed TV shows, had obtained PhDs with nonsensical work.

Since the big bang happened everywhere, no matter which way a pendulum swings, the plane in which it swings can be said to "intersect the big bang".

However, Baez pointed out, this statement does not in fact concern the Big Bang, and is entirely equivalent to the following:

No matter which way a pendulum swings, there is some point on the plane in which it swings.

Yet this rephrasing is itself equivalent to the statement

Any plane contains a point.

I think journals might be be interesting unexplored Lolcow territory for the more acoustic of you

 

[Observerer]

This is a great idea, I have seen some stupid shit published, especially by journals specializing in the humanities.

 

[Barry Scott]

I thought this thread was going to be about alcoholic personal lolcows who are regulars at local pubs kiwis have been to.

 

[Least Concern]

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-real-fake-hoodwinks-journals.html http://archive.md/NwiK8

Three US researchers have pulled off a sophisticated hoax by publishing fake research with ridiculous conclusions in sociology journals to expose what they see as ideological bias and a lack of rigorous vetting at these publications.

Seven of the 20 fake articles written by the trio were accepted by journals after being approved by peer-review committees tasked with checking the authors' research.

A faux study claiming that "Dog parks are Petri dishes for canine 'rape culture'" by one "Helen Wilson" was published in May in the journal Gender, Place and Culture.

The article suggests that training men like dogs could reduce cases of sexual abuse.

Sokal affair - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Sokal affair, also called the Sokal hoax, was a demonstrative scholarly hoax performed by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies. The submission was an experiment to test the journal's intellectual rigor, and specifically to investigate whether "a leading North American journal of cultural studies—whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross—[would] publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions."

The article, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", was published in the journal's spring/summer 1996 "Science Wars" issue. It proposed that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. At that time, the journal did not practice academic peer review and it did not submit the article for outside expert review by a physicist. Three weeks after its publication in May 1996, Sokal revealed in the magazine Lingua Franca that the article was a hoax.

 

[Sage In All Fields]

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-real-fake-hoodwinks-journals.html http://archive.md/NwiK8

>Dog parks are Petri dishes for canine 'rape culture'
>sophisticated hoax

 

[Bins]

For anyone heading to or in college

(b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions."

also applies to college professors really really well.

 

[Chongqing]

Great post, OP.

 

[GrumbleBum2]

The predatory publishers must be making some cash from academic speds, if the sheer volume of spam is anything to go by. I quite like some of the garbled shit published for $$ in conferences located in a 3rd-rate Mumbai flop house, though.

 

[Leonard Helplessness]

This is a great idea, I have seen some stupid shit published, especially by journals specializing in the humanities.

I think at one point some troll got a "scientific paper" published that was just a chapter of Mein Kampf with all references to jews replaced with references to TERFS or some shit.

 

[ducktales4gameboy]

I fucking love paper trolling.

For anyone who hasn't seen it already SciGen is a classic gift that keeps on giving.

 

[Sage In All Fields]

I fucking love paper trolling.

For anyone who hasn't seen it already SciGen is a classic gift that keeps on giving.

I think the most amazing thing about this is that they support CVS

 

[Zvantastika]

I think journals might be be interesting unexplored Lolcow territory for the more acoustic of you

Oh boy do I have tons of stories and examples of these ones. Not to mention the stupid shit being presented at conferences, those ones would make some people cry or throw chairs, maybe both.

There are plenty of truly retarded shit being published but it's allowed for many reasons, most of them being political as you would expect. The sad thing is that it is happening everywhere, including engieering and there is next to nothing we can do about it.

 

[GenociderSyo]

Found these two articles when i got curious about the research that exists in gaming.

Rape Culture and Horror in Starcraft and Warcraft

FEMALE GAMERS, SYLVANAS WINDRUNNER, AND SEXISM

 

[Zelos Wilder]

I was really hoping this would be a thread for laughingstocks you find at bars.

 

[Sage In All Fields]

The sad thing is that it is happening everywhere, including engieering and there is next to nothing we can do about it.

Well you can use Scihub until they inevitably go bankrupt

 

[GrumbleBum2]

I fucking love paper trolling.

For anyone who hasn't seen it already SciGen is a classic gift that keeps on giving.

Ok that’s fucking awesome.

 

[Kosher Dill]

How much of this stuff is being published in reputable journals though? It's a well-known problem that the publish-or-perish culture has spawned a legion of "publication mill" journals - often with legitimate-sounding scientific names - that will accept literally anything.

Take the journal that published the COVID/5G paper:

Journal of Biological Regulators & Homeostatic Agents (IF 1.397) is a peer-reviewed journal published every 2 months. The journal publishes original papers describing research in the fields of experimental and clinical medicine, molecular biology, biochemistry, regulatory molecules, cellular immunology and pharmacology.

And yet if you look up the journal's recent output:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=%22J%20Biol%20Regul%20Homeost%20Agents%22%5Bjour%5D

Counter to the description you see all kinds of random stuff like dentistry, opthalmology, nephrology, and so on. And it's populated entirely by Chinese and Italians (two notorious sources of paper spam)

It all seems a bit fishy to me, let's say.
Genuine "Sokal incidents" where nonsense slips past gatekeepers are fairly rare, outside of the "studies" fields where nonsense is the name of the game.

 

[Sage In All Fields]

How much of this stuff is being published in reputable journals though?

"Obviously horseshit journal articles and the journals that publish them"
I don't see any reason to cut off a good source of lulz

 

[Sage In All Fields]

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/01/15/another-scam-paper-published-in-a-scientific-journal/

 

[stupidpieceofshit]

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/01/15/another-scam-paper-published-in-a-scientific-journal/

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I need to remember this next time I come across one of those "STEM IS THE ONLY WAY DEFUND LIBERAL ARTS" people.
Sure the Liberal Arts spawned a lot of issues in Academia lately, but STEM is just as infected (Comp sci and Mathematics as huge examples).