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Interestingly, one of the comments on the article makes this exact point ("Is this actually harmful to the scientific community?" "No one in the real world of s
by OmarShehata 3y ago
Interestingly, one of the comments on the article makes this exact point ("Is this actually harmful to the scientific community?" "No one in the real world of scientific progress is getting fooled by a Mad Libs paper in a Mad Libs conference proceeding.")
The real harm here may be moreso outside of the scientific community. Consider why they are paying to get these articles published in the first place. I thought this was well articulated in another comment there:
"These papers are the tools by which fraudsters advance up the acaddemic ladder. As a result, billions of public money get diverted to fund this fakers rather than actual science and scientists.
On top of that, all these fake papers poison the waters and confuse decision makers and the public all over the world, resulting in bad policies that cause more harm."
- andy99 3y agoThe issue is that the audience of legit scholarship is neither the public nor "decision makers" nor academic administrators. It's other researchers. The system works fine (more or less) for actual scholars working on advancing their fields. It's just that a scam industry has been built up for the benefit of the other various stakeholders who actually have no business relying on communications that are not meant for them.
- D13Fd 3y ago> These papers are the tools by which fraudsters advance up the acaddemic ladder. As a result, billions of public money get diverted to fund this fakers rather than actual science and scientists. That sounds pretty clearly harmful to the scientific community.
- bell-cot 3y agoReaction I: It'd be a piss-poor excuse for an academic department that could somehow fail to notice that a candidate's or employee's published works included such crap. Reaction II: Yeah, there probably are quite a few piss-poor academic departments in this world...
- InSteady 3y agoProbably just an incidental effect, but it also provides easy fodder for people who have a major incentive (political, economic) to undermine scientific research as an institution, and sow doubt about any and all research that is harmful to their agenda.