A scientific study by Maggie Simpson and Edna Krabappel and Kim Jong Fun was accepted for publication by two journals.
Obviously, none of these fictional characters actually wrote the paper titled, “Fuzzy, Homogeneous Configurations.” Rather, it's a nonsensical text, submitted by engineer Alex Smolyanitsky in an effort to expose a pair of scientific journals—
The Journal of Computational Intelligence and the
Aperito Journal of NanoScience Technology, reports Joseph Stromberg. (1)
These outlets both belong to a world of predatory journals that spam thousands of scientists, offering to publish their work—whatever it is—for a fee without actually conducting peer review.
When Smolyanitsky was contacted by them, he submitted the paper, which has a totally incoherent, science-esque text written by a random text generator. Example sentence—we removed a 8-petabyte tape drive from our peer-to-peer cluster to prove provably 'fuzzy' symmetrie's influence on the work of Japanese mad scientist Karthik Lakshminarayanan.
One journal
(Aperiot) immediately accepted it, while the other took a month before accepting (perhaps as part of an effort to fake peer review), but has since published it—and now keeps sending Smolyanitsky an invoice of $459. (1)
The fact that these journals would accept such a paper is absurd, and the Simpsons' connection is pretty funny. But it's also a troubling sign of a bigger problem in science publishing.
This isn't the only instance in recent times where nonsensical papers have been published.
Last April, Tom Spears, a reporter for the
Ottawa Citizen, wrote an entirely incoherent paper on soils, cancer treatment, and Mars, and got it accepted by 8 of 18 online for-profit journals. (1)
John Bohannon had two of his deliberately worthless papers accepted. One, about a new cancer drug, included worthless graphs and an utter disregard for the scientific method. In addition, it was written by fake authors, from a fake university in Africa, and as a final flourish was changed through Google Translation into French and back to English. He submitted 304 versions of the paper to open-access journals. More than half of the journals accepted the paper, failing to notice its fatal flaws. (2)
Bohannon's second paper reported that people on a low-carb diet lost weight 10 percent faster if they ate a chocolate bar every day. Not only does chocolate accelerate weight loss, the study found, but it leads to healthier cholesterol levels and overall increased well-being. (3)
The study was submitted to 20 journals and was ultimately published by the International Archives of Medicine. Backed with a very helpful news release, the team sent word out about the study and swiftly news outlets began to cover the research. (4)
It made the front page of
Bild, Europe's largest daily newspaper. From there, it ricocheted around the Internet and beyond, making news in more than 20 countries and half a dozen languages. It was discussed on television news shows and appeared in a number of magazines.
The results were meaningless, and the health claims that the media blasted out to millions of people around the world were utterly unfounded. The article was designed to help demonstrate just how easy it is to turn bad science into big headlines behind diet fads. Another objective was to reveal the corruption of diet research media.
Unfortunately, as this study proves, sometimes the lure of an eye-catching headline and provocative findings can be enough to distract from shortcomings that can be obscured by numbers, symbols and highly specific language.
These examples should serve as a cautionary tale both to readers and reporters, reminding us all to be extra discerning when it comes to evaluating the worth of studies that appear in the news.
Perhaps more troublesome, in February 2014 a pair of science publishers (Springer and IEEE) retracted more than 120 papers, some of which were pure nonsense but had made it into their published conference proceedings. Both these publishers are generally seen as reliable—showing how far the problem of substandard quality control goes. (1)
And on the subject of retractions, Retraction Watch reported they counted more than 270 retractions this year. More than half occurred because authors or editors compromised the peer-review process in some way—most egregiously, some authors faked email addresses for peer reviewers and gave their own papers a green light. (5)
Another issue of concern is press releases.
Petroc Sumner and his colleagues found that much of the exaggeration in mainstream media coverage of health research- statements that went beyond findings in the academic paper- was already present in the press release sent out to journalists by the academic institution itself. (6)
They identified all 462 press releases on health research from 20 leading UK universities over one year. They traced 688 associated news stories and the original academic papers that reported the scientific findings. Finally, they assessed the press releases and the news articles for exaggeration, defined as claims going beyond those in the peer reviewed paper.
Over a third of press releases contained exaggerated advice, causal claims, or inference to humans. When press releases contained exaggeration, 58% to 86% of derived news stories contained similar exaggeration, compared with exaggeration rates of 10% to 18% in news articles when the press releases were not exaggerated.
The HealthNewsReview website in the United States offers ongoing critical appraisal of mainstream media coverage on treatments and tests. A published summary of its first 500 appraisals found that most news articles failed to satisfactorily discuss the quality of the evidence or to quantify the absolute magnitude of benefits and harm. (7)
Projects in Canada (8) and Australia (9) reported similar findings.
Ben Goldacre reports: 58% of press releases from US research institutions failed to include caveats about important methodological shortcomings in the research that was being promoted; and a cohort study of five major medical journals found that lower quality press releases were associated with lower quality news coverage. (10)
This is not a peripheral matter. Evidence suggests that media coverage can have an effect on the uptake of treatments and services, and even on subsequent academic citations. Academics should be made accountable for exaggerations in press releases about their own work.
Jack Dini
Livermore, CA
References
1. Joseph Stromberg, “A paper by Maggie Simpson and Edna Krabappel ws accepted by two scientific journals,” vox.com, December 7, 2014
2. “Fake research paper accepted into hundreds of online journals,” democraticunderground.com, October 4, 2013
3. John Bohannon, “I fooled millions into thinking chocolate helps weight loss. Here's how,” io9.com, May 27, 2015
4. James McIntosh, “Slimming chocolate study fools the world's media,” medicinenewstoday.com, June 3, 2015
5. Adam Narcus et al., “Top 10 retractions of 2015,” the-scientist.com, December 23, 20156.
6. Petroc Sumner et al., “The association between exaggeration in health related science news and academic press releases: retrospective observational study,” BMJ, 2014:349:g7015
7. G. Schwitzer, “How do US journalists cover treatments, tests, products, and procedures? An evaluation of 500 stories,” PloS Med, 2008:5;e95
8. A. Cassels et al., “Drugs in the news: an analysis of Canadian newspaper coverage of new prescription drugs,” CMAJ, 2003; 168:1133-7
9. D. E. Smith et al., “Monitoring the quality of meidcal news reporting: early experience with media doctors,” Med J. Aust. 2005: 183: 190-3
10. Ben Goldacre, “Preventing bad reporting on health research,” bmj.com/content/349, December 10, 2014
