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An Elaborate Academic-Journal Hoax

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Re: An Elaborate Academic-Journal Hoax

#31

Post by lukev »

haberman wrote: post #28

This isn't simply a case of poor quality control. Sure, hoax articles have made it through some (largely pay-to-publish) journals in other fields from time to time. And yes those incidents should inspire reflection and correction, as well as a hit to the reputations of such journals. But this is much more. This is about a set of ideas that pass for expert scholarship despite having lost any tethering to to the real w…

If your criteria for publication is what is epistemologically true you are going to find it difficult to publish in any domain except possibly pure mathematics or physics.

Re: An Elaborate Academic-Journal Hoax

#32

Post by hnaccy »

ahelwer wrote: post #12

Most published stuff is irrelevant crap that will never be cited or included in the central canon. This is true even in computer science. Also, as we know from computer security, system design becomes massively more difficult if it requires hardening against malicious actors. The presumption of good faith is a valuable component of any community that shouldn't be abused to score stupid points. For these reasons, Soka…

>The presumption of good faith is a valuable component of any community that shouldn't be abused to score stupid points.

Shouldn't we be concerned with the possibility of undetected bad actors who are abusing it for more nefarious reasons?

Re: An Elaborate Academic-Journal Hoax

#33

Post by blastforses »

lukev wrote: post #2

Representative quote: > "I am so utterly unimpressed," wrote Jacob T. Levy, a political theorist at McGill University, "by the fact that an enterprise that relies on a widespread presumption of not-fraud can be fooled some of the time by three people with Ph.D.s who spend 10 months deliberately trying to defraud it."

The whole point of a peer review system is to detect fraud. If these bullshit papers got published, who knows how many of the other papers are of equal quality.

Re: An Elaborate Academic-Journal Hoax

#34

Post by ModernMech »

malvosenior wrote: post #18
lukev wrote: post #2

Representative quote: > "I am so utterly unimpressed," wrote Jacob T. Levy, a political theorist at McGill University, "by the fact that an enterprise that relies on a widespread presumption of not-fraud can be fooled some of the time by three people with Ph.D.s who spend 10 months deliberately trying to defraud it."

Alternative take: A system designed to detect bad research failed to detect blatant falsehoods, algorithmically generated noise, rabid propaganda and other seemingly easy things to detect. That PhDs worked on this doesn’t mean the system didn’t fail spectacularly.

> doesn’t mean the system didn’t fail spectacularly.

You're mischaracterizing the system; it doesn't end with publication. After publication, the science goes out to a wider audience of scientists who can build on the paper or refute it if they find it's wrong. Sometimes this process can take a long time and many cycles of publicans, but that's just the nature of science.

We have to stop pretending like the peer review process is some kind of magical filter of true science, or that it was ever intended to be as such. That notion leads to the faulty idea that if it's published, it's true. Junk science gets published, even if it's not disingenuous, and that's probably true no matter how great you make the peer review system.

Re: An Elaborate Academic-Journal Hoax

#35

Post by ajshankar »

Apocryphon wrote: post #30
ajshankar wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That paper was accepted as a non-reviewed paper. There was no peer-review process.

Which one? Both that article and this one lists multiple cases where SCIgen-generated papers were waved through: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCIgen#Prominent_results

From the article:

In April of 2005 the team’s submission, “Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy,” was accepted as a non-reviewed paper to the World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI), a conference that Krohn says is known for “being spammy and having loose standards.”

Re: An Elaborate Academic-Journal Hoax

#36

Post by Trombone12 »

currymj wrote: post #11

Can someone comment on whether these are respectable journals or not, within their fields? Every few years someone will do a Sokal-hoax-esque thing in scientific fields, but usually they're just getting a paper into very-low-quality predatory journals that have only a nominal peer review process. I'm wondering if that's what happened here. Do humanities fields even have the same set of incentives leading to a prolife…

Well, they claim to have targeted "top journals" in the field, but it's not like "intersectional gender studies" is a particularly big field.

I looked up two journals they had published in and their articles got less than one citation per year typically ([1]&[2]), not exactly a booming field.

[1]: https://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=145138&tip=sid... [2]: https://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=14798&tip=sid&...

Re: An Elaborate Academic-Journal Hoax

#37

Post by ModernMech »

eindiran wrote: post #10
tinalumfoil wrote: post #3

I've been more disturbed by the response to this than the papers themselves. Saying,well of course we were duped, you really expected the peer review system to not to utterly fail in the presence of a few bad actors? does not inspire my faith in the system.

That's what stuck out to me as well. This quote: "I am so utterly unimpressed," wrote Jacob T. Levy, a political theorist at McGill University, "by the fact that an enterprise that relies on a widespread presumption of not-fraud can be fooled some of the time by three people with Ph.D.s who spend 10 months deliberately trying to defraud it." Isn't the ability to separate out the quality work from the garbage the poin…

> Isn't the ability to separate out the quality work from the garbage the point of the peer review system

The peer review system is just one step in the scientific process. After passing the review it gets published and more scientists see it. They can then tear it down or build on top of it. If it's actually bad science, it probably won't survive long.

Re: An Elaborate Academic-Journal Hoax

#38

Post by malvosenior »

ModernMech wrote: post #34
malvosenior wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternative take: A system designed to detect bad research failed to detect blatant falsehoods, algorithmically generated noise, rabid propaganda and other seemingly easy things to detect. That PhDs worked on this doesn’t mean the system didn’t fail spectacularly.

> doesn’t mean the system didn’t fail spectacularly. You're mischaracterizing the system; it doesn't end with publication. After publication, the science goes out to a wider audience of scientists who can build on the paper or refute it if they find it's wrong. Sometimes this process can take a long time and many cycles of publicans, but that's just the nature of science. We have to stop pretending like the peer revi…

I'm not saying that peer review is the end all be all of truth, but it does serve some purpose. And in this case it didn't provide any value at all.

Re: An Elaborate Academic-Journal Hoax

#39

Post by haberman »

lukev wrote: post #31
haberman wrote: post #28

This isn't simply a case of poor quality control. Sure, hoax articles have made it through some (largely pay-to-publish) journals in other fields from time to time. And yes those incidents should inspire reflection and correction, as well as a hit to the reputations of such journals. But this is much more. This is about a set of ideas that pass for expert scholarship despite having lost any tethering to to the real w…

If your criteria for publication is what is epistemologically true you are going to find it difficult to publish in any domain except possibly pure mathematics or physics.

Social Constructionism and Blank Slatism are theories that can be tested. There is plenty that can be published on these topics that is based in evidence rather than ideology.
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