Rogue editors
If you ever feel in need of some light entertainment alongside insights into the decline of research integrity and the scientific method, try perusing a website called .
As 51¶ŻÂț has previously described, some fear that papers in peer-reviewed journals â once seen as the most authoritative source of information â are increasingly untrustworthy, because scientistsâ careers these days hinge on their publication tally, incentivising quantity over quality. Retraction Watch documents official retractions of papers â either due to honest errors or outright fraud â often accompanied by wry commentary and the occasional eye-roll.
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Feedback thought we already knew most of the ingenious ways that fraudulent papers could get published, but Retraction Watchâs latest find is a new one on us, involving the phenomenon of ârogue editorsâ. This sees fraudsters impersonating real scientists when they write to a journalâs editor suggesting a special issue on a hot topic that they kindly offer to guest-edit. You can guess what happens next: they accept papers written by their confederates or perhaps even themselves, which could, for instance, be full of gibberish copied and pasted from the internet. These papers artificially inflate someoneâs list of publications.
Victims include the , which suffered the embarrassment of somehow publishing a special issue that included discussions of aerobics, running wear and Latin dancing, and the , which said after an attack that the main problem is the âexponential growth of scientific publications⊠which leads to the publication of a huge background noise of useless and low-level articlesâ.
At last, official confirmation from a journal of something Feedback has long suspected: most scientific papers are useless.
Spaced out
If you think journal editors have a tough life, spare a thought for those multimillionaires who took part in NASAâs first tourist trip to the International Space Station. Possibly stung by such as the fact that each personâs trip will release hundreds of times more carbon than a typical holiday on the Costa del Sol, NASA had been vocal about plans for the tourists to do some useful work on board, such as experiments on human cells and optical lenses.
Awkwardly, at a press conference held when the three men landed back on Earth, one of the main topics was how they had been worked too hard. Not what you might expect from a holiday that cost $55 million a head. âWith the value of hindsight, we were way too aggressive on our schedule,â said Larry Connor, a real estate billionaire from Ohio. One experiment that had been slated to take 2.5 hours ended up taking twice that time, he said.
Another sticking point was how much the real astronautsâ schedule was disrupted by having to hand-hold the tourists. In a review afterwards, safety expert Susan Helms admitted that the touristsâ arrival had a âlarger-than-expected impact on the daily workloadâ of the crew, something they would try to reduce in future trips, according to SpaceNews.
The trip was originally scheduled to last eight days, but was extended to 15 because of bad weather at the landing site â something the tourists said they were thrilled about. We didnât hear how the crew felt. Feedbackâs suggestion: next time, NASA should forget the experiments and let the tourists bring along their butlers.
Define âdefineâ
An unusual outbreak of cross-disciplinary collaboration began on Twitter recently, when that everyone has given up trying to define. In genetics, that word is âgeneâ, in chemistry it is âmoleculeâ, while in medicine it is âhealthâ, according to some who chimed in.
In Feedbackâs experience, for many of these words, the definitions havenât so much been given up on, as become the subject of rancorous debates that have destroyed relationships, careers or even the odd world, metaphorically speaking. If astronomers could have agreed from the start on the definition of âplanetâ, poor old Pluto wouldnât have lost its status so humiliatingly.
Fortunately, there was little rancour visible in this particular debate, although the linguists couldnât agree on their impossible-to-define word. One suggested âwordâ, while another insisted it was, in fact, every word. The big surprise was from ornithology, where someone thought it might be . Who knew?
New word needed
Speaking of words, Feedbackâs proudest achievement is giving the world the term . Now, reader Philippa Sandall â who isnât a shoe-maker â thinks the column and its readers should devise a timely new word to describe the phenomenon of people who expound on controversies despite knowing no more about them than the average person â possibly even less. Feedback is usually stuck next to them at parties.
We need a word that means the exact opposite of expert, but âanti-expertâ is too boring. Sandall proffers ânixpertâ, but is sure that 51¶ŻÂț readers could do better. Suggestions please.
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