Fake Science

[xoxoxoBruce]

Fake Science? Well more like dishonest, or capitalism infected science. I figure it'll probably get worse as faith, trust, and interest in science erodes, and Funding becomes death matches in the thunderdome.

Hoss Cartwright, a former editor of the International Journal of Agricultural Innovations and Research, had a good excuse for missing the 5th World Congress on Virology last year: He doesn’t exist.

Burkhard Morgenstern, a professor of bioinformatics at the University of Göttingen, dreamt him up, and built a nice little scientific career for him. He wrote Cartwright a Curriculum Vitae, describing his doctorate in Studies of Dunnowhat, his rigorous postdoctoral work at Some Shitty Place in the Middle of Nowhere, and his experience as Senior Cattle Manager at the Ponderosa Institute for Bovine Research.

Cartwright never published a single research paper, but he was appointed to the editorial boards of five journals. Apparently, no one involved in the application processes remembered the television show Bonanza, or the giant but amiable cowboy named “Hoss” who was played by actor Dan Blocker. Despite Cartwright’s questionable credentials, he was invited to speak at several meetings such as the 5th World Congress on Virology—typically a mark of recognition as an expert.

The reason Morgenstern did this is he was spammed to distraction by the phony journals. So the first time he created a character who sounded plausible. It was shockingly successful which led him to Hoss, the most ridiculous character he could think of. Sadly his worst fears were realized.

link

[sexobon]

Well, Adam Cartwright went on to become Trapper John M.D.: so, anything's possible.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by sexobon

Well, Adam Cartwright went on to become Trapper John M.D.: so, anything's possible.

Unfortunately, this is the most surprising thing in this thread.

[Gravdigr]

capitalism infected science

I like that phrase.

[Undertoad]

I thought this would be about the three scientists who submitted 20 ridiculously fake papers to scientific journals and got 7 of them peer-reviewed and published.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I thought this would be about the three scientists who submitted 20 ridiculously fake papers to scientific journals and got 7 of them peer-reviewed and published

... by journals that were fake science journals.

[slang]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I thought this would be about the three scientists who submitted 20 ridiculously fake papers to scientific journals and got 7 of them peer-reviewed and published.

The Rubin Report also just covered this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97FuO-hEhQo

It's long but understanding how everything fell together is both funny and disturbing.

Peer review isn't what is used to be.

[Clodfobble]

I'll just leave this here.
https://ideas.ted.com/why-you-think-...mpression=true


TL;DR - it's not about teaching people to have more rigorous logic/deduction/"left-brain" skills. It's about shifting them from one emotional state to another.

[xoxoxoBruce]

That can't be true 'cause she's just a chick.

[Undertoad]

Watched that earlier... their discussion of the dog park rape paper was hilarious

tw's objection is half on point, and I think they should have addressed it. These are shitty journals.

The point of the researchers should not be that all science is in question, but that there are serious problems with those particular sciences where these journals reside. Nobody is submitting fake papers to the New England Journal of Medicine, the targets are journals called Sexuality and Culture and Journal of Feminist Philosophy. The "soft" sciences have gotten less scientific over time. This is a push back against that.

[Clodfobble]

Part of the problem, again, is that these entire concepts aren't traditionally "scientific" because they are trying to explain the behavior of humans who often behave in untestable, unpredictable, complex ways. We want to insist, for example, that psychiatry is (at least somewhat) more rigorous and thus valid than sociology, but usually it's not:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...rs-have-names/

Any science based on the symptoms, outward behavior, and self-reporting of its subjects will always be hand-waving at best. We don't have to ask the bacteria why it infected us, only how to kill it--which means it's a little disingenuous for those folks to mock the people who are trying to answer much harder and more sophisticated questions for their lack of answers. It's like, "Well, *I* can add, so why can't *you* prove string theory?"

[Undertoad]

N.B. my "watched that" ref's the Rubin Report item, can't watch the TED talk yet

[Clodfobble]

Ah--it's actually a written thing, not a video.

[Clodfobble]

(As for me, I'm not saying the dog rape paper was a good one--from what I remember, the "evidence" was moderately impressive if taken at face value, it's just that they made up the evidence and no one asked for sources.)

[slang]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

(As for me, I'm not saying the dog rape paper was a good one--from what I remember, the "evidence" was moderately impressive if taken at face value, it's just that they made up the evidence and no one asked for sources.)

The problem, as Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay point out on RR, is that these types of papers are published and the thesis becomes a "laundered" idea. It MUST be true, it's was published in [select your choice of institution]

Then it flies around a variety of other sources and eventually becomes fact. Fact that policy is based on.

Now, one might make the argument that it's only the fly by night pseudo science types that publish these laundered ideas but years ago Duke University was duped into publishing a hoax piece now called the sokal affair