Journalists find fake science news agencies: DEFCON - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: tpowell1830
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2018, 12:12:48 am
content: These German journalists investigate several fake science journals in which the subject matters are presented as peer reviewed scientific papers. Some of the papers are political or medical papers touting cancer cures. The journals in question are listed and the journalists have some anecdotal evidence presented that show that the papers are not reviewed at all.This is partly why the current world is so sick. I thought that I would spread the word starting here.The video is 2 hours long, but very revealing.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2018, 12:43:21 am
content: Fake journals take advantage of academics, who are often desperate to 'publish papers' because they are often used in a quite brain-dead manner to get a quick metric on how capable they supposedly are.The thing that sucks is, suppose their paper is actually genuine research that has merit. As far as I know, for obvious reasons, legitimate journals only want to publish research that hasn't been published before somewhere else, and will never publish a paper once its been.. So they lose twice.There is a whole spectrum of these kinds of publications. I am sure we all have gotten invitations to submit our personal data, bios to various "Whos who" pubs.. even when we realistically had no good reason to be in them.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 31, 2018, 12:51:40 am
content: I get emails from these "journals" all the time.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2018, 01:19:40 am
content: There is a research team in Germany that has made a project of checking the academic credentials of German politicians and other public figures who take extreme points of view while claiming to have degrees and qualifications that they did not in fact have. This has led to a number of high profile resignations.

author: tpowell1830
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2018, 02:35:58 am
content: The state of journalism has reached an all time low. There are no entities that can hold their feet to the fire for producing BS. It seems that the so-called news agencies are just propaganda and sales organizations today.I rarely look at the news anymore, whereas, at one time, I watched it religiously every day so that I was informed.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2018, 07:56:55 am
content: Who trolls the trollers?https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdfhttps://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/scigen/etc.Academics have a vested interest in this, and do a bit of "pen testing" in this way (in case it wasn't obvious from the video above). A lot of these journals will gleefully accept gibberish papers, and other fairly apparent predatory or greedy behavior.(A hard-science proponent might make a joke about the quality of softer-science articles even in apparently well-renowned journals, and their similarity to such generated text... but I digress)Tim

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2018, 10:14:06 pm
content: The untold story is the difficulty for would be scientists of finding good stable jobs and the rising level of competition for them.The sciences and academia in the past offered a sort of a refuge from the worst aspects of the corporate world, but now things are much changed.Another distressing aspect of our modern world is the use of AI to filter out (censor) media of all kinds. the effect of this is to create a haze - or lets call it a low pass filter, for knowledge.. through which only content lacking any unique detail passes, IF it is formatted in a certain manner.. It can be total BS, as was demonstrated. That doesn't matter.Its scary how little many people know about the world around us - due to this.

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2018, 05:16:51 pm
content: I should think the largest source of fake science news is the mainstream news media which increasingly can't even write and speak in grammatically correct sentences. Actually knowing anything about anything at all is considered too much trouble. "I'll just look it up if I need to know." Problem is, if you know nothing, you can't understand anything. Consider the reaction of primitive people to Polaroid pictures.A professor of an intro journalism class required students to read and comment on a certain number of print articles each week. The students went to the dean's office to complain about this draconian requirement.We are living through the collapse of civilization as portrayed in the Tower of Babel story in the Bible. It is not likely to have a happy ending.

author: Benta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2018, 06:30:57 pm
content: The problem for the mainstream media is home-made.At some point, a consensus appeared that "balanced reporting" was the way to go.This meant that extremist or plain insane viewpoints were given the same space in the news as rational opinions. Whether it was a fear of litigation or just intellectual laziness I don't know.But the result is in plain view.

author: Cyberdragon
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 02, 2018, 04:15:01 pm
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on October 31, 2018, 07:56:55 amInteresting read on the making of McNuggets. Except they forgot the word "paste".

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 02, 2018, 06:47:27 pm
content: In my opinion closed peer review should go the way of closed patent review. Just rubber stamp at first and throw it out there.I think an open peer review system with meta-moderation could improve on the status quo. With numeric scoring in addition to the reviews where reviewers get some kind of social credit (maybe raises visibility of their own papers, but also allow pseudonymous reviewing). With meta-reviews and personal weighting of scores of reviewers based on your meta-reviews in a web of trust kind of way, so if you trust a reviewer you also increase your trust of reviewers he trusts.There would be some gaming of course, there always is ... spamming, abusing rules for invalidation or reducing of impact of reviews by publishing a tweaked paper etc etc. Just gotta deal with it best you can. Numeric scores are a bit gauche, but it's necessary for the meta-review system. Final determination of the impact of an author could still be done through citations, Nobel prizes, conferences etc.

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 02, 2018, 06:53:38 pm
content: Quote from: tpowell1830 on October 31, 2018, 12:12:48 amLet's not get into any conspiracies, OK?Fake, predatory journals where you (the researcher) pay for the publication of your article and then random BS gets published without any review are neither nothing new nor is that limited to medicine.This is an old news, search for "predatory publishing" or "predatory journals". Most academics know about this and are very careful about where they publish - there are things like impact factors and ratings to consider or the publication "doesn't count" for their career, or, even worse, it could be a pretty ruinous blow for their professional reputation.These pseudo-journals thrive on the stupid system of how scientific abilities are evaluated - if you want an academic job, you must publish, publish, publish. You have probably heard the "publish or perish" maxim - it is literally like that, if you don't have enough publications of a certain level in a certain period your funding is cut and you will be eventually fired.So that is putting extreme pressure on young researchers, especially grad students, postdocs, young researchers without tenure and/or trying for a tenured job to publish papers at all costs. Btw, these are the people doing all the actual science work - the tenured prof that nominally publishes 20+ papers a year rarely ventures into the lab themselves anymore, they get authorship as a matter of course on the papers by their underlings. The prof's job is literally management and funding applications.It is also physically impossible to actually produce enough research in a year to publish more than 2-3 significant papers, especially in experimentation-heavy disciplines (e.g. that medicine). And that doesn't include the fact that it often takes 6 months to a year to "shepherd" a accepted paper through the publishing process, with major journals like Nature it can be even longer than that. The reviews before acceptance/rejection can take up to 6 months themselves.The result of all this are watered down "filler" papers (the same thing is published 3-4 times in different venues with only cosmetic changes), doctored studies, research misconduct and un-reviewed papers in predatory journals that prey on the people desperate to not lose their livelihood.

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 02, 2018, 07:06:04 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on November 02, 2018, 06:47:27 pmThat's not that easy. Would you send a paper to a review by a major journal when you can see that your major "competitor" is on the review/editorial board? And I mean competitor literally - in many cases you are competing for the same sources of funding, for example.There is also another thing - it is much easier to be honest and to say that a paper is crap when:a) You don't know who the author is (would you say that to a paper by a famous professor and risk your career, even though they seem to be wrong?)b) They don't know who you are (so there is no risk of retribution - yes, people can bethatpetty).You wouldn't believe the kind of backstabbing and nastiness that is going on in the academic world. When money and jobs are at stake, people resort to dirty games. The double blind closed reviews are meant to combat this to a degree.I have done my share of both paper writing and reviewing and I definitely prefer the double blind system than some system that would give more weight to a petulant professor that is being wrong than a postdoc who is correct but doesn't have the "social score" to compete there because they simply aren't in the game long enough yet.Also keep in mind that the actual reviews are often delegated to the grad students, postdocs and such junior staffers, the professor will rarely review everything themselves. There is simply too much of it (well known researchers are commonly sitting on the program committees/editorial boards of some 20-40+ conferences and journals, if you get only 2-3 papers to review from each, well, you get the idea ...), it takes a long time (e.g. a 20 pages of a journal paper that isn't 100% within your field of work can take you a week or two!) and these people have other things to do. So it lands on some grad student's desk - they do the work, the professor signs off on it and done. It is a perfectly accepted practice and often not even disclosed (sometimes the publisher requires disclosing who has done the actual review but most often not - and there is no way to check it anyway). And there goes your reviewer's score ...The current model is certainly not ideal but we don't have a better solution yet. Beware of trying to bring "solutions" to something you don't fully understand how it works.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 02, 2018, 08:03:33 pm
content: Quote from: janoc on November 02, 2018, 07:06:04 pmIn a small field everyone knows who's who regardless simply from subject matter and citations.QuoteYour reviews are public and meta-moderated ... you will impact your own reputation by being petty. You can review pseudonymously, but without a reputation that will have next to no impact. You can build a reputation for a pseudonym, but at that point you have something to protect again.QuoteAny anonymity in peer review is always going to be severely slanted, you have little clue who the exact reviewer is ... they have lots of clues who you are.Any AI expert could whip up an author identifier with ridiculously high recognition rates for "anonymized" papers, it's false security.

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 02, 2018, 09:14:30 pm
content: This WASET organisation has been known for a while an an organizer of fake conferences and a predatory publisher. However, the presenters of this talk try to turn that into a validation of the Guardian's climate change propaganda, claiming that WASET are a vehicle for 'climate denial.'There doesn't seem to be any, ahem, peer-reviewed evidence to back up this claim.On the contrary, it is documented that WASET has hosted a number of fake conferences on renewable energy.Never be so naive as to assume that a whistleblower isnecessarilyone of the Good Guys. They too may have a questionable motive. Especially if they're blowing the whistle on something that's already well known in science circles, but which (they probably hope) the public hasn't heard of.As for example in this 2014 article:https://ottawacitizen.com/technology/science/science-and-the-death-of-peer-review

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 02, 2018, 09:20:32 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on November 02, 2018, 08:03:33 pmUnless you are working in field where everyone can fit into one auditorium this isn't really the case. Furthermore, you will know a few key names in your field but do you really know all their postdocs, grad students, research fellows, etc. ? All these are also publishing papers.Quote from: Marco on November 02, 2018, 08:03:33 pmYou don't understand (and likely haven't worked in academia neither).I am not speaking about tit for tat retribution by "tanking" some paper of yours if you give a bad review to mine (even though that happens too).I am speaking about e.g. making sure your grant application will not pass because now I am sitting (or a friend of mine is) on some review committee (who do you think is reviewing for example the EU funding applications? Right, the scientists from the same field). Or calling your professor/dean/rector to complain about you being unacceptably rude. Guess what happens to the poor grad students or postdoc in such case. Keep in mind that grad students/postdocs are mostly treated as disposable - there are always more candidates around than you can accept.Or if I want to be really nasty, I could make sure your PhD student will have a hell of a time defending their thesis where I happen to sit on the committee/be invited to write a review of it. (if they fail, you will have a problem as their advisor because you have obviously done your job poorly supervising them).All of these (and worse) things happen on a routine basis. E.g. when it came to funding or publishing, we (as grad students) knew that it was pointless to try to apply or submit papers to certain places because they had people our professor was feuding with on board. You will never be told the reason for the rejection (or you will get some BS reason) but your projects will get mysteriously rejected while objectively worse stuff from elsewhere passes. Sometimes it was possible to "fool" this by putting people from a different institution as first authors.Quote from: Marco on November 02, 2018, 08:03:33 pmYou haven't done much reviewing, I guess. Yes, sometimes you can figure out who the authors of the paper are. Most often not unless you go all out and search for who has done and published similar work in the past. Nobody is going to do that, especially if the paper is not directly in your field of work where you tend to know who is working on what. People have better things to do with their time. Reviewing papers is seen as a necessary evil that you are doing on your own time (reviewers don't get paid a dime for this and don't get any credit neither) and you want to get it off your back as fast as you can while still trying to do a semi-reasonable job.It also depends on the venue/journal - e.g. anonymized references are a common thing. You are also not supposed to cite your own work, it is considered "tooting your own horn" and a bad form except if it is required to give context.Quote from: Marco on November 02, 2018, 08:03:33 pmIt isnotsupposed to be secure! Heck, a lot of conferences and publications don't even use the double blind format (which is pretty bad, IMO, but that's another debate) or review and accept papers for publication based only on abstracts (which is, frankly, ridiculous, but it is common in humanities).The idea behind the double blind closed review is to give the reviewer a reasonable anonymity so that they don't feel they have to self-censor and at the same time give the author a chance to correct any problems based on the feedback without a fear of public embarrassment (everyone makes blunders). Nothing more. It is not meant to be a license to be a dick because nobody can figure out who you are - at the very least the program committee that has assigned you the review has that information.BTW, for example in physics and mathematics it is common to publish pre-prints - researchers used to send working copies of their papers to colleagues elsewhere for comments before trying to formally have them published. These days it is commonly done onArxiv.org, for example. I find that and the associated debates around the papers much more productive and valuable than any sort of a scoring system based on opaque, arbitrary metrics.Of course, the pre-print system isn't going to work for everyone neither. It works in mathematics and physics because the people there don't tend to work on highly competitive stuff where publishing a pre-print could get a competitor a boost to e.g. bring a new drug to the market before you do.

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 02, 2018, 09:22:03 pm
content: Quote from: IanMacdonald on November 02, 2018, 09:14:30 pmIf you think that climate change is a "propaganda" by some UK newspaper, I am really sorry for you, mate.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 02, 2018, 09:40:22 pm
content: Quote from: janoc on November 02, 2018, 09:20:32 pmThe arbitrary and opaque metrics in play there are all reputation based, just because there's no numbers put to it doesn't mean they aren't in play. How to get visibility in the first place and get people to even debate you ... that's the problem. Gotta be someone to get others to seriously look at the paper. That still comes from peer reviewed journals, conferences and to a small extent mentors pushing you on others.Also there need to be scores, since the employers want scores.

author: tpowell1830
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 02, 2018, 10:09:23 pm
content: Quote from: janoc on November 02, 2018, 06:53:38 pmI really don't know where you got the idea that I was creating a conspiracy? I only made a statement of opinion.

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 02, 2018, 10:13:30 pm
content: Quote from: janoc on November 02, 2018, 09:22:03 pmNobody said that climate changeispropaganda. Propaganda is a distortion of known facts to suit a political agenda. The whole basis of propaganda is the false argument that, 'Since the original premise is correct, our political agenda must also be correct.'An example would be the Leftist propaganda that since democracies are usually run by corrupt business interests, that justifies the imposition of a Communist-style government to steer us all onto the right track of saving the planet from our own greed. The original premise is correct, that democracies do tend to have a fair amount of corruption. However the solution they propose is a false one, because the overwhelming evidence from World history is that Communist governments tend to be infinitelymorecorrupt than democracies, and in particular that their environmental records tend to be appallingly bad.

author: tpowell1830
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 08:17:03 pm
content: I think the political climate change here needs to end. Moderator please close this thread.