How fake research articles are making you fat
February 10, 2016
Excerpt:
Academic publishers are so evil; they could star as the villain in the next James Bond movie. Don’t believe me? Well, you might if you know that they’ve been known to organise arms trade fa…
The phrase “it’s ‘just’ a placebo effect” is used to wave away inconvenient findings that some alternative therapies work, because we don’t know how they work. But many of us frankly don’t know how any medicine works and this blind one-directional faith is often misguided.
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Academic publishers are so evil; they could star as the villain in the next James Bond movie. Don’t believe me? Well, you might if you know that they’ve been known to organise arms trade fairs. Consequently, scientists are doing their best to move away from these hotbeds of mendacious management of medico manuscripts.
Enter the predator
With obscene profit margins, academic publishing is an attractive industry. The returns are on par with the largest pharmaceutical companies out there, and they do stuff like jack up drug prices to something arbitrarily prohibitive. So of course, your neighbourly charlatan is going to want to get in on the action. Companies have started creating journals that will accept any paper, for a fee. Since the fees are on par with what legitimate publishers (who review the work they publish, although not always) charge, there’s no downside. Write anything, get published. Like that time a dude wrote a paper that contained nothing but ‘Get me off your f**king mailing list’ and an ‘independent reviewer’ rated it excellent. You can see paper now in the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology. Now you’re a published scientist. Not all academics are just unscrupulously publishing anything, though. Very commonly, the journals will pose as real journals - in essence, hijacking the reputation to appear legitimate. Other times, with the sheer number of journals cropping up to cater for niche research areas it can be hard to distinguish the real from the fake.
Fake articles are making you fat (and the implications are terrifying)
Fortunately, some concerned citizens have started tracking hijacked and flat out predatory journals in an effort to expose the frauds. But that doesn’t stop the media from publishing this nonsense without checking the facts. Like that time a researcher intentionally published a fake article the ‘found’ that chocolate makes you lose weight - a tidbit which was subsequently published all over the place. Now? It’s ‘common knowledge’ and I hear people telling me that even today. The implications are terrifying. What number of things do you consider best practice, that could be fake? My advice? Before you decide to take the word of an article? Check the list. Or, do like Rich Gang and:
You know, your brain is tuned to accept lies? Only certain kinds, though. In fact, very often, you’re lying to yourself. In other news, learn how psychics use psychology to screw you. Giving you the dirt on your search for understanding, psychological freedom and ‘the good life’ at The Dirt Psychology.
Ideologies worth choosing at btrmt.