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Wow! There are multiple wars against science, exploiting "science". There seems to be a strong need for some service that can flag fake news, fake research, e

Wow! There are multiple wars against science, exploiting "science". There seems to be a strong need for some service that can flag fake news, fake research, etc. in facebook, google and others. The government which funds the vast majority of scientific research should insist that real research is freely accessible not in these gated journals that are ridiculously expensive (as much as $25k/year for a single subscription)...so that there was an easy way to access real scientific research. Incidentally a similar stunt was pulled with a humanities journal several years ago and the gibberish paper got published...but this was in something a lot more like a real journal.

beaconstudios 9y ago
I believe you're referring to the Sokal affair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
a_bonobo 9y ago
But who gets to say what's fake news and fake journals, who gets to be the gatekeeper? A few years ago the Beall-list added the Frontiers journals to its list of predatory journals, which generated quite the backlash: http://www.nature.com/news/backlash-after-frontiers-journals-added-to-list-of-questionable-publishers-1.18639 http://www.nature.com/news/backlash-after-frontiers-journals... There is quite a bit of 'regular' research published in Frontiers and they do have peer review, but also a lot of crap (a similar point can be raised for Nature's new Scientific Reports, but also for PLOS ONE, which all cost money to publish in). The border between 'predatory' and just 'kinda crappy' journal is hard to set. The big difference between most predatory OA journals and Frontiers is that Frontiers at least responds to criticism. Edit: Some similar criticism on Nature Scientific Reports: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/06/15/more-on-scientific-reports-and-on-faked-papers http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/06/15/mor... and for PLOS ONE: http://www.omnesres.com/blog/plosone/ http://www.omnesres.com/blog/plosone/
- palunon 9y ago
  >who gets to say what's fake news and fake journals, who gets to be the gatekeeper? That's not how reputation works. There isn't a single institution who gets to say "This is good science, but this isn't", but scientists as a body can. An institution can of course choose its own standard regarding specific journals, but it cannot impose them unto others.
weq 9y ago
U understand that the government has been printing fake science for years now? NIDA is the perfect example. Only science that fits the governments narrative is allowed to be funded and published. Its just instead of influencing policy used to target people they deem threats, these guys simply trolling big pharam and the bureaucratic machine it has manifested. So essentially the fake journels are selling ad space & resume fillers.

beaconstudios 9y ago

I believe you're referring to the Sokal affair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

a_bonobo 9y ago

But who gets to say what's fake news and fake journals, who gets to be the gatekeeper? A few years ago the Beall-list added the Frontiers journals to its list of predatory journals, which generated quite the backlash: http://www.nature.com/news/backlash-after-frontiers-journals-added-to-list-of-questionable-publishers-1.18639 http://www.nature.com/news/backlash-after-frontiers-journals... There is quite a bit of 'regular' research published in Frontiers and they do have peer review, but also a lot of crap (a similar point can be raised for Nature's new Scientific Reports, but also for PLOS ONE, which all cost money to publish in). The border between 'predatory' and just 'kinda crappy' journal is hard to set. The big difference between most predatory OA journals and Frontiers is that Frontiers at least responds to criticism. Edit: Some similar criticism on Nature Scientific Reports: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/06/15/more-on-scientific-reports-and-on-faked-papers http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/06/15/mor... and for PLOS ONE: http://www.omnesres.com/blog/plosone/ http://www.omnesres.com/blog/plosone/

palunon 9y ago
>who gets to say what's fake news and fake journals, who gets to be the gatekeeper? That's not how reputation works. There isn't a single institution who gets to say "This is good science, but this isn't", but scientists as a body can. An institution can of course choose its own standard regarding specific journals, but it cannot impose them unto others.

weq 9y ago

U understand that the government has been printing fake science for years now? NIDA is the perfect example. Only science that fits the governments narrative is allowed to be funded and published. Its just instead of influencing policy used to target people they deem threats, these guys simply trolling big pharam and the bureaucratic machine it has manifested. So essentially the fake journels are selling ad space & resume fillers.