Peer Review Failure
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Peer-Reviewed Journal Publishes Gender Studies Hoax Claiming Penises Cause Climate Change
A peer-reviewed academic journal published on Friday a hoax gender studies paper titled, "The Conceptual Penis As A Social Construct."
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If anyone still believes in modern peer review:
Boghossian and Lindsay cited 20 sources, none of they say they read, and five of which are fake papers that were “published” in journals that don’t actually exist.
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The paper ... was “actively written to avoid having any merits whatsoever”
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The "article", however, does paint all of science with a rather broad brush. This is one(1) incidence in an open-access, pay-to-get-published social science journal with an impact factor likely approaching zero(0).
Not suprising of the dailycaller, given that they have Ann Coulter in their ranks.
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@RaceProUK Again, a rather broad brush. Cogent Social Sciences looks to me like those "Publish your own book and instantly become a multi-millionaire author!" services, only that they're advertising peer review on top.
Next up: Diploma mills lessen the worth of a PhD!
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@Rhywden said in Peer Review Failure:
they're advertising peer review on top
Remember, if you're the sort of person who feels that buying peer reviews like that is worthwhile, you are indeed getting reviewed by your actual peers. Just not by the people you want to have as peers. ;)
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@Rhywden But Archaeology suffers from same of the same. Graham Hancock has made a living out of it.
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@lucas1 said in Peer Review Failure:
@Rhywden But Archaeology suffers from same of the same. Graham Hancock has made a living out of it.
His work is viewed as an example of pseudoarchaeology; his work has neither been peer reviewed nor published in academic journals.
Right.
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@Rhywden
Sorry I should have quotedCogent Social Sciences looks to me like those "Publish your own book and instantly become a multi-millionaire author!"
I mean he publishes books about Atlantis or <insert fictional place>. The BBC (Panorama) had a program in the mid 90s about his Atlantis book, they had to have 2 episodes from proper archaeologist debunking it, because it was so misleading. None of it gets peered reviewed and then gets pissed off with archaeologists.
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If we want to actually do a critique of peer review (and social sciences), this here would be a much better way to start:
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@Rhywden said in Peer Review Failure:
If we want to actually do a critique of peer review (and social sciences), this here would be a much better way to start:
This was an interesting article. Towards the end, they mention a paper that proves that listening to The Beatles' "When I'm 64" actually makes someone physically younger, all while using standard psychological study methods. The paper is an interesting read on how to inadvertently manipulate stats.
Also, because I'm a fan and wish they were still writing, here's The Last Psychiatrist when the ESP article first came out:
And so to say that it is a failure of peer review-- like they did with Wakefield-- also misses the point. Bem's peers are in absolutely no position to review this. This study is better reviewed by physicists. Bem himself makes an explicit case for quantum entanglement! So notwithstanding my own rants about peer review,
"Four reviewers made comments on the manuscript," [said the journal's editor] "and these are very trusted people."
Trusted though they may be, they are not experts in the field being studied.
All four decided that the paper met the journal's editorial standards, [the editor] added, even though "there was no mechanism by which we could understand the results."
Exactly. So you should have sent it to the physicists. You know, the ones who work a building over in the same university that you do. That was the whole reason for universities, right?
No, I'm a dummy. The purpose of universities is to suck up Stafford loan money. And the purpose of journals is to mark territory, more money in that, like a corporation that spins off a subsidiary. NO CROSS SCIENTIFIC DISCUSSION ALLOWED IN SCIENCE, EVER, EXCEPT IN SCIENCE, NATURE, AND THE POPULAR PRESS.
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@Rhywden said in Peer Review Failure:
Not suprising of the dailycaller, given that they have Ann Coulter in their ranks.
Do they? My subscription to her articles comes from Human Events.
Also, I've seen this point (about the nature / quality of the journal) mistaken in a few places. I'm sure most people who aren't in the "industry" have no idea about that sort of stuff.
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@boomzilla Yes, but then again, Diploma Mills exist as well. It's "just" a matter of educating people that not all journals are equal.
Then again, given the often horrible reporting on scientific matters, it's probably a lost cause.
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Men behind ‘Conceptual Penis’ hoax say academe trades respectability for ideological crusades | The College Fix
‘Significant crack in the intellectual edifice’…
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Fake but accurate? Inaccurate but authentic? You decide:
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@boomzilla said in Peer Review Failure:
I'm sure most people who aren't in the "industry" have no idea about that sort of stuff.
exactly - the people that matter know whether crap is crap.
the idiot public at large wouldn't know their ass from a hole in the ground on most topics... and that doesn't matter unless the idiot public includes Politicians thinking "i science good" and trying to implement regulations/deregulations based on crap they read in the Daily Caller or see on FOX news.
I'm not saying it's Trump.
But it's Trump
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@darkmatter said in Peer Review Failure:
and that doesn't matter unless the idiot public includes Politicians thinking "i science good" and trying to implement regulations/deregulations based on crap they read in the Daily Caller or see on FOX news.
Nah, they'll do fine based on that stuff. Also:
@darkmatter said in Peer Review Failure:
exactly - the people that matter know whether crap is crap.
If this is true then they are very dishonest people.
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@boomzilla said in Peer Review Failure:
If this is true then they are very dishonest people.
the published study in question was a pay-for-peer-review... of course they're dishonest.
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@darkmatter said in Peer Review Failure:
@boomzilla said in Peer Review Failure:
If this is true then they are very dishonest people.
the published study in question was a pay-for-peer-review... of course they're dishonest.
I assumed the people at the journal weren't "the people that matter," but maybe I misunderstood you. Peer review is a very low bar for "not crap."
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@boomzilla i think i'm misunderstanding you.... or maybe you think a lot of dumb people are who I think matter? I don't know if that particular journals reviewers matter or not, but they were paid off to do it so it's irrelevant whether they matter - they're dishonest either way.
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@darkmatter said in Peer Review Failure:
@boomzilla i think i'm misunderstanding you.... or maybe you think a lot of dumb people are who I think matter?
Yes and no, respectively, though I'm much more certain of the former.
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Computer generated fake papers have been published in journals before
How three MIT students fooled the world of scientific journals
A decade ago, three MIT students created a program that randomly generates nonsensical computer-science papers. Since then, researchers have been using the tool to expose conferences with low submission standards for academic papers.
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@darkmatter said in Peer Review Failure:
but they were paid off to do it so it's irrelevant whether they matter - they're dishonest either way.
Hence it was properly reviewed by peers!
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@wharrgarbl said in Peer Review Failure:
Computer generated fake papers have been published in journals before
And other similar fake papers date back to at least 20 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
(see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scholarly_publishing_hoaxes)
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This "guy" is something else:
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/02/21/down-the-rabbit-hole-with-alireza-heidari
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@boomzilla said in Peer Review Failure:
This "guy" is something else:
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/02/21/down-the-rabbit-hole-with-alireza-heidari
GOD DAMN IT FBM- oh wait
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@boomzilla said in Peer Review Failure:
https://twitter.com/RealPeerReview/status/906589686608654336
That could be a journal of some really interesting research in sociology and psychology.
I said could.
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@boomzilla I'd swear that was the output of a Markov chain (and not a very well trained one, at that). I find it hard to believe Sage Publication is a legitimate journal publisher. They claim to be the 5th largest in the world (which says exactly nothing about their quality) and claim to publish the "market leading" journals in several fields, but if they publish utter crap like this...
Also, their web site is crap. If you go to their "about" page, you are immediately redirected to a page containing a form in which to set your location, which pops up a dialog containing a form to set your location. The box has both an X to dismiss it and a "Close" link. Clicking either does, in fact, dismiss the dialog, but if you didn't actually set your location, it immediately redirects to the same page you're already on (somehow pushing it onto your navigation stack again), which pops up the dialog again.
Since it is impossible to find out anything about the company without specifying your location, I looked at the choices available in the drop-down box. I now live here:
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@hardwaregeek said in Peer Review Failure:
I find it hard to believe Sage Publication is a legitimate journal publisher. They claim to be the 5th largest in the world (which says exactly nothing about their quality) and claim to publish the "market leading" journals in several fields, but if they publish utter crap like this...
I googled them a bit because I think I got spam from one of their journals earlier today (I deleted it with extreme prejudice -- it wasn't related to anything I do, so whatever).
It seems they are a publication house in the style of Elsevier or Wiley or whatever(that may be damning enough, but alas), meaning they host a bunch of different journals/publications . The journal itself is responsible for reviewing (and rejecting) submissions; the publication house isn't really involved in that part. They only (maybe) provide services like hosting a submission & reviewing system, perhaps doing some layouting and editing in the end, and putting the "publications" online.
The journal in question is called "Qualitative Inquiry", and you really want to be blaming them and their editorial team (and the reviewers), assuming that the name of the journal didn't already scare you away. FWIW, the editorial board is listed here.
So, eh, who knows. Sage publications may be a shitty company (it's a publication house, so that's fairly likely), but the specific blame here falls to the actual journal.
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@cvi s/fairly likely/absolutely guaranteed/g
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@benjamin-hall Well ... yeah.
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@boomzilla said in Peer Review Failure:
https://twitter.com/RealPeerReview/status/983472298027094017
“Does bag exist because we are able to conceive of it?” “Does bag have Buddha nature?”
Ontological 
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@dkf
But what if the bag identifies as a duck?
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@luhmann said in Peer Review Failure:
@dkf
But what if the bag identifies as a duck?If it identifies as @Lorne-Kates, then we're in business!
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@luhmann You can put the 🥑 in the 👜, but you can’t put the 👜 in the 🥑.
Graham Hancock - Wikipedia
Daryl Bem Proved ESP Is Real. Which Means Science Is Broken.
This Dog Sits on Seven Editorial Boards
