The state of science

The signal to noise ratio keeps trending away from where it should be... From Tom Spears writing at the Ottawa Citizen:

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

And 'Dr.' Tom's paper:

To uncover bottom-feeding publishers, the simplest way was to submit something that absolutely shouldn�t be published by anyone, anywhere.

First I had to write it.

My short research paper may look normal to outsiders: A lot of big, scientific words with some graphs. Let�s start with the title: �Acidity and aridity: Soil inorganic carbon storage exhibits complex relationship with low-pH soils and myeloablation followed by autologous PBSC infusion.�

Look more closely. The first half is about soil science. Then halfway through it switches to medical terms, myeloablation and PBSC infusion, which relate to treatment of cancer using stem cells.

The reason: I copied and pasted one phrase from a geology paper online, and the rest from a medical one, on hematology.

I wrote the whole paper that way, copying and pasting from soil, then blood, then soil again, and so on. There are a couple of graphs from a paper about Mars. They had squiggly lines and looked cool, so I threw them in.

Footnotes came largely from a paper on wine chemistry. The finished product is completely meaningless.

The university where I claim to work doesn�t exist. Nor do the Nepean Desert or my co-author. Software that catches plagiarism identified 67 per cent of my paper as stolen (and that�s missing some). And geology and blood work don�t mix, even with my invention of seismic platelets.

I submitted the faux science to 18 journals, and waited.

Predators moved in fast. Acceptances started rolling in within 24 hours of my submission, from journals wishing to publish the work of this young geologist at the University of Ottawa-Carleton.

Paging Doctor Sokal, Doctor Alan Sokal to the white courtesy phone please...