- “PM to announce emergency action in response to Donald Trump’s tariffs” – The Prime Minister will announce action this week to bolster UK businesses who have been stung by Trump’s 10% tariff on goods imported into America, reports the Mail.
- “Britain risks Greek-style debt crisis from Trump tariffs” – Investors have warned that Trump’s trade war risks plunging Britain into a Greek-style debt crisis, says the Telegraph.
- “Starmer has precious little time to save Britain’s carmakers from oblivion” – Punishing Net Zero targets have left the UK’s auto industry perilously exposed to Trump’s tariffs, warns Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph.
- “Trump’s tariffs have left Reeves in a hole of her own making” – Britain’s economic growth was already flatlining before America triggered its trade war, says Liam Halligan in the Telegraph.
- “Reeves faces legal action over tax raid on care homes” – Care homes are taking Rachel Reeves to court over her National Insurance rise, threatening to blow a £1 billion hole in her wafer-thin budget headroom, reports the Telegraph.
- “‘Bradford isn’t a holiday home hotspot, but I have to pay an extra £2,000 in council tax’” – In the Telegraph, Phil Mandeville rails against a blanket second home tax that’s hitting non-tourist towns like Bradford.
- “Birmingham councillors enjoyed freebies as rubbish piled high” – Labour councillors in Birmingham have been piling up the freebies – as rubbish piles high across the city due to a month-long bin strike, reports the Mail.
- “‘We’re not a third world country, we’re England’: anger rises as Birmingham’s bin strike takes toll on locals” – In the Observer, James Tapper lays bare Birmingham’s bin strike chaos.
- “David Lammy should keep on taking PJs” – MPs should be afforded all the luxuries they desire, including private jets – but they ought to expect to be called out for their hypocrisy, says William Sitwell in the Telegraph.
- “Starmer took things too far over Southport sentencing, says Badenoch” – Kemi Badenoch says that Keir Starmer went too far when he talked up tough sentencing in the wake of the Southport murders, according to the Telegraph.
- “Why Reddit is the new battleground that could swing elections” – Labour, threatened by the digitally savvy Reform, wants to break away from mainstream media to make contact with the scrappy, sceptical social network Reddit, reports Katie Gatens in the Sunday Times.
- “Tories plot to block peerage for former MP who spilled their sex secrets” – Tories have launched a revolt to stop their former chief whip getting a peerage – after he spilled their sex secrets in a tell-all book, says the Sun.
- “MP being probed over ‘sex assault’ at celeb hangout” – An MP is being investigated by cops over claims of a sex assault at celeb hangout the Groucho Club, reports the Sun.
- “Calls to ban wood-burning stoves ‘based on false claims’” – Industry experts say that calls for wood-burning stoves to be banned are based on false claims they produce more harmful emissions than traffic, according to the Mail.
- “The CCC clams up and goes insane” – On Substack, David Turver slams the Climate Change Committee for dodging FOI requests and cooking the numbers on Net Zero.
- “Hospitals have written off more than £250 million owed by foreign patients” – Escalating debts from health tourists – who have had everything from spinal surgery to heart care and cancer treatment – is creating a growing black hole in NHS finances, reports the Mail.
- “£250 million our NHS can’t afford to write off” – The Mail on Sunday argues that the NHS’s £256 million in unpaid foreign treatment costs exposes a glaring failure to charge for non-emergency care.
- “Will Labour’s Lord Covid ever tell us what he knew about Wuhan?” – In the Mail, Ian Birrell slams Lord Vallance as a hypocrite who preaches scientific transparency while stonewalling over his role in suppressing debate about Covid’s origins.
- “Brits should prepare survival kits for Russian sabotage, spies warn” – Security advisers have warned that fears of a plot by Russia to sabotage Britain’s energy pipelines means families should pack a 72-hour “survival kit”, reports the Mail.
- “Tory leader Kemi Badenoch backs Israel’s right to deport Labour MPs” – Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has become embroiled in a furious political row over her support for Israel’s right to refuse entry to two Labour MPs, says the Mail.
- “Kemi Badenoch defends Israel after Labour MPs refused entry” – Kemi Badenoch has been accused of hypocrisy after she defended Israel’s decision to deny entry to two Labour MPs who were detained by immigration authorities and flown back to the UK, reports the Times.
- “SNP considers shelving Sturgeon pledge to criminalise misogyny” – The SNP may ditch Nicola Sturgeon’s plan to criminalise misogyny, fearing it could ignite fresh culture wars before the Holyrood elections, says the Times.
- “Immigration, demographic change and a Dublin village” – Lucan is a striking, but not unique, example of the huge demographic change Ireland has witnessed over the past 25 years, writes Dr Matt Treacy in Gript.
- “Le Pen compares legal woes to Martin Luther King Jr’s civil rights struggle” – Marine Le Pen has likened a court’s decision to disqualify her from running for president to Martin Luther King Jr’s civil rights struggle, reports the Telegraph.
- “‘France is ready to revolt. The Le Pen affair could be the spark’” – With Marine Le Pen temporarily out of the picture, the leader of the French Left believes he’s the man to bring his country into the future, writes Henry Samuel in the Telegraph.
- “Alternative für Deutschland in historic first pulls dead even with CDU/CSU in latest INSA poll” – Alternative für Deutschland are no longer the second-strongest party in Germany, says Eugyppius on Substack. For the first time ever, they have pulled dead-even with CDU/CSU in a representative poll.
- “New report shows ‘massive’ EU funding for trans NGOs” – A new report has revealed that over €220 million in EU funds have been used to advance “a radical gender identity agenda” over the last decade, including support in the EU for adopting a strategy calling for gender self-ID for children, reports Gript.
- “Israel admits mistakenly shooting dead over a dozen aid workers in Rafah” – The IDF says it mistakenly identified a convoy of aid workers as a threat – following the emergence of a video which proved their ambulances were clearly marked when Israeli troops opened fire on them, according to Sky News.
- “Trump death threat by hardline newspaper divides Iran” – An Iranian state newspaper has issued a death threat against Donald Trump, as fears grow of war between Iran and the US, reports the Telegraph.
- “Anti-Trump protests erupt in all 50 US states” – Crowds of demonstrators gathered across all 50 US states on Saturday in what was expected to be the largest nationwide protest since Donald Trump began his second term, says the Telegraph.
- “Stop ‘catastrophising’ over Trump, urges US hotel giant” – The boss of one of the world’s largest hotel chains has urged the global travel industry to stop “catastrophising” over the impact of Donald Trump on tourism, reports the Telegraph.
- “Musk breaks with Trump on tariffs as he distances from the White House” – The Mail reports that Elon Musk has expressed hope for a future zero-tariff agreement between the US and Europe, as he steps down from his role at the Department of Government Efficiency.
- “Is the Isle of Man the wokest place in Britain?” – From last week, the Isle of Man became the first place in the British Isles to pass legislation that would permit assisted dying, says the Mail.
- “‘Wear a wig and you can compete against women. No one checks hormone levels’” – In the Telegraph, Oliver Brown reports on American fencer Stephanie Turner, who sparked global headlines by refusing to compete against a transgender opponent.
- “Conservative woman hits entitled trans person with brutal truth” – A clash between conservative commentator Arynne Wexler and a biologically male trans woman has reignited the culture war online following her blunt remark about bathroom etiquette, reports the Mail.
- “Met Police bans loud noises and spinning images in presentations” – Scotland Yard has issued guidance banning loud noises during presentations, in case they trigger a heart attack, says the Mail.
- “Looks like the French people want democracy” – A video on X shows a massive protest in France, as a huge crowd demonstrates against Marine Le Pen being banned from running for President in 2027.
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Looks like they have a good career ahead of them advising SAGE, the CDC, or Greta Thunberg.
Green hypocrisy hurts the poorest
https://unherd.com/2022/02/green-hypocrisy-hurts-the-poorest/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups%5B0%5D=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=9f42731ecd
The West’s war on energy is crippling Africa
BY JOEL KOTKIN
Don’t get complacent. Let’s keep getting the message out with our friendly resistance.
Tuesday 15th February 2pm to 3pm
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(by Sandhurst Memorial Park Car Park)
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‘rook how many papers I lote, now give me that vely lesponsiber job so I can indoctlinate your Blitish youth about the grories of China’
Of course, writing it in this way is merely for dramatic effect, not to offend the good Chinese in China and across the world.
It is meant as a criticism of the very obvious strategy of the Chinese ruling party to spread Communist ideology, a soft invasion.
*EDIT and it isn’t restricted to China, of course. ICL is just as guilty.
Have you seen some of the product reviews on Amazon?
But if you point out they are very clumsy ‘Chinglish’ your own review is blocked.
I believe you misspelled ‘the grolies of China’.
The real concern should be that this is the tip of a mega iceberg in supposed science.
Ferguson et Al are 110% certain that this is not the case..
Day-job hat on here, I was involved in running a student programming competition last year where we asked them to create automated celebrity gossip content by scraping headlines, content and images from existing[*] sources, performing sentiment analysis, and stitching it back together with custom or open source language generators.
Over the course of a long weekend, most teams were able to produce something that churned out superficially plausible looking stories. Sure, there were some absolute “nonsensical” howlers in there, and we had a good laugh at those. But it wouldn’t have taken much more training to weed out the worst of the non sequiturs comparing apples to boob jobs.
So I’m not at all surprised to see this being applied to publishing “academic” papers, given the perverse incentives now on offer to churn out sheer quantity over any sort of quality.
[*] Note that I don’t say “real”.
[UPDATE] https://retractionwatch.com does a great job of tracking the seedier side of science and academia. Be warned that you might not like some of the recent retractions and challenges concerning ivermectin, but that’s rather the point of science: the more you’re inclined to believe something, the harder you should challenge it.
Who remembers the Random Bullshit Generator?
(ps. It’s now called “the media”)
It was only viable until ‘news’ morphed into bullshit, followed shortly by ‘government announcements’.
Science only exists because it’s more often wrong than right. Otherwise, there would be no need for experiments, one would simply hypothesise, then publish.
From billwoods at Off Guardian:
I’m having trouble picking the best one of 3 here:
Breathing too much
Shaking duvets
Whistles
It’s funny but also incredibly sinister, especially the refs whistle one as it specifically says ignore the link to vaccination. It’s really quite chilling to know these people exist and will stop at nothing to spread their propaganda.
It’s Living that is the problem. If you go in living for too long, eventually your heart just stops.
Solution?
Kill yourself early?
Just keep getting your boosters.
The’ve already got that covered.
The problem is clearly possessing a body of some sort. But we have a two-fold solution. Current mass experimental medical interventions are causing infertility and death. This stops reincarnation and starts decarnation.
Hold on a sec, I’ll whip up an ’emergency vaccine’
Authorised.
Don’t have a heart. Many people have proved you can get to very lofty positions without one. In fact in certain quarters it appears to be a necessary qualification for the job. An acceptable alternative is to have one made of stone.
As an aside, I run several web sites under a different name…. As the WebMaster, I track incomming connections to find out which sites are linking to mine – they are likely to be covering items which are of interest to me.
Over the last year or two I have noticed odd connections coming into my sites. I get a connection from an odd random address, look it up, and find that it is a jumble of random text with my web-site adress embeded in it. And someone, or something. has clicked on that link.
I suspect that this is some kind of scam for raising the Google ranking of sites – people can pay money to get such a rise – but I can’t fathom out how it works…..
On the face of it, that would improve the ranking of YOUR sites.
That used to be the case and gave rise to the phenomenon of link spamming in comments, but I seem to recall that the Chocolate Factory changed their algorithms to penalise that method of site promotion.
I want to thank Mike for giving me the chance to review this and I think it is an impressive, well researched, significant article with no obvious factual errors. That doesn’t mean I agree with his conclusions. Peer review could be greatly improved but it is far from useless.
I don’t think of peer review as a guarantee of quality research but the chances of it being done well are good enough to make it an important sign of a paper worth taking seriously. A lot depends on the journal. If you are asked to do a peer review for Nature you tend to take it seriously. There are, of course, other controls. After papers are published they continue to be subject to critical comment and, as we all know, are sometimes retracted. On the other side if a paper has not been reviewed then it might be high quality but it merits even more scepticism.
“Climate change” and the Climategate emails demonstrate clearly that peer review no longer works and is now in many cases “pal review”. Online review is surely the way forward.
Climategate is the result of quoting emails out of context and misunderstanding them. I have lost count of the enquiries that have cleared the participants. See https://skepticalscience.com/Climategate-CRU-emails-hacked.htm
This page also discusses specific quotes that are supposed to be damning. E.g.
The most quoted email is from Phil Jones discussing paleo-data used to reconstruct past temperatures (emphasis mine):
“Mike’s Nature trick” refers to a technique (aka “trick of the trade”) used in a paper published in Nature by lead author Michael Mann (Mann 1998). The “trick” is the technique of plotting recent instrumental data along with the reconstructed data. This places recent global warming trends in the context of temperature changes over longer time scales.
The most common misconception regarding this email is the assumption that “decline” refers to declining temperatures. It actually refers to a decline in the reliability of tree rings to reflect temperatures after 1960. This is known as the “divergence problem” where tree ring proxies diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960. The divergence problem is discussed in the peer reviewed literature as early as 1995, suggesting a change in the sensitivity of tree growth to temperature in recent decades (Briffa 1998). It is also examined more recently in Wilmking 2008 which explores techniques in eliminating the divergence problem. So when you look at Phil Jone’s email in the context of the science discussed, it is not the schemings of a climate conspiracy but technical discussions of data handling techniques available in the peer reviewed literature
The problem with Michael Mann’s trick is that he devised a technique for correlating temperature records with tree rings pre-1960 which gave him the result he wanted (consistent low temperatures, eliminating the medieval warm period); but he then insisted that the same technique can no longer be trusted post-1960, because the technique fails to generate temperatures corresponding to post-1960 thermometer measurements.
Can you not see the problem with this? If Mann’s technique doesn’t work against accurate temperature records from recent decades, then it has no credibility at all when used to infer temperatures in the pre-thermometer age.
His insistence that temperatures were uniformly low in the pre-industrial age has no credibility. It goes against all the anecdotal and archaeological evidence from medieval times which suggested warmer temperatures. And with that goes all evidence that modern temperatures are a unique aberration.
Mann’s hokey stick only ‘demonstrated’ the MWP didn’t occur in North America, the evidence for it in Europe is irrefutable.
Even were that the case, it demonstrates that not only can mankind exist in higher temperatures, it flourishes. Most of Europe’s Cathedrals were built during that period, which was only possible because favourable growing seasons released men from subsistence survival and allowed them to seek gainful employment building said Cathedrals.
It’s also demonstrable that during every warm period in history, mankind has progressed with entire societies like the Minoan and Roman failing as temperatures fell.
Where would mankind be today were we all enjoying the temperatures the Romans were.
It’s also food for thought that as many predict a cooling planet over the next few hundred years, global society seems to be falling apart.
His “trick” may or may not be sound. The point is that nothing was being hidden. The e-mail did not expose any kind of fraud or conspiracy. The technique was well-known and there was no reason to suppose he was going to pretend he wasn’t using it.
If you don’t like it, there are many other papers now that have superseded Mann’s papers and come to similar conclusions.
How did I know that link was to skepticalscience?
The subject under discussion is fraudulent scientific practices and right on cue you begin posting John Cook’s nonsense.
“Nothing was being hidden”
The creator of Hockey Stick temperature graph used in the 2001 IPCC report was American Professor Michael Mann; whereas the creator of the temperature charts used in previous IPCC reports, which showed the MWP and Little Ice Age, was Canadian scientist Dr.Tim Ball. Following the Climatgate scandal of 2009, where Mann was shown to be manipulating research, Ball said Mann should be locked up for misrepresenting data.
Mann sued Ball for libel. The case dragged on for eight years, cost millions of dollars, took a toll on 80 year old Dr Ball’s health and finally concluded on 22th August 2019. Only two outcomes were possible. The court would vindicate Professor Mann’s scientific findings, and Dr Ball would be found guilty of libel and be made to pay all the costs plus damages; or Dr. Ball had correctly stated that Professor Mann had manipulated data and Mann would be instructed to pay Ball’s costs.
Shorty after the Supreme Court of British Columbia issued its ruling, Dr Ball emailed the following message to Anthony Watts of the ‘What’s Up With That?’ website:
“Hi Anthony, Michael Mann’s case against me was dismissed this morning by the BC Supreme Court and they awarded me [court] costs. Tim Ball.”
Mann lost the case because he consistently refused to comply with the court direction to hand over the data he used to compile the disputed Hockey Stick graph – which has been relied upon by the UN’s IPCC and western governments as crucial evidence for the science of ‘man-made global warming.’
Real scientific advancement requires open access to data sets, so that sceptics (who play a vital role in science) can see if a proposed theory is based on accurate data using reproducible processes. Because Mann has consistently refused to reveal all his data sources, and thus render it open to critical analysis, his findings, and the resultant graph, remain unproven – and that isn’t how science is supposed to work.
There are of course other descriptions of why the case was dismissed. But in any case it has little to do with the climategate e-mails.
LOL
You blew it the moment you mentioned skepticalscience.
A blog, dressed as a scientific website, dreamed up by a professional cartoonist who enjoys dressing as a Nazi, and who concocted a “study” demonstrating 97% of scientists agreed that mankind was causing climate change, when on proper analysis the number was 0.3%.
You could try addressing the content of what was written.
I did:
“The subject under discussion is fraudulent scientific practices and right on cue you begin posting John Cook’s nonsense.”
I mean the content of the material in my link. It is not as though John Cook was the only person making these points.
Am I allowed to say bollox on here?
All I can see here is that MTF has simply quoted from ( the link to )
a known Climate Change Propaganda website – a forerunner of the odious fact checkers. I have kept a full copy of the climate gate emails and a significant number cannot be explained by anything other than conspiracy.
I am sure you know that there are many other people and groups making similar points – including of course Steve Mosher who at the time was a sceptic and was the person who originally selected which e-mails would be most damaging.
Perhaps you could provide a couple of examples of emails that cannot be explained by anything other than conspiracy?
I think the email in question is actually this one:
i.e. they are stating clearly that they will manipulate the peer review process to keep dissenting voices out.
There’s a long discussion of the context surrounding the ClimateGate emails here. They argue quite persuasively that the emails weren’t really taken out of context. For example, in this email Michael Mann states quite clearly that he has data that he wants suppressed in order to stop people who disagree with his over-arching aims:
Thanks for that – lots of reading there.
I have always mistrusted Ross McKitrick since he demonstrated an amazing lack of understanding of averages for someone with his credentials. However, I will play the ball not the man and look at the discussion in detail.
Is there anything involving medical research on this earth which has not now been corrupted by Fauci and GAVI?
That may have been the case back in the mists of time, but these days peer review is little more than a circle jerk. It is also a highly effective way of protecting your academic turf and all that goes with it by preventing competing theories and perspectives from ever reaching the light of day, irrespective of their potential validity.
‘A thick Lynne Truss could cock up in Russia’
Oooops!!!! sorry that is a genuine paper wot was rit in January
‘A pentangular study of the enforcement of Covid 19 restrictions in Wales, with particular referwnce to bouncy castles’, by Yu Hoo Annie..
Or
A pentangular study of bouncy castles with particular reference to the enforcement of Covid 19 restrictions in Wales
by WHO flung dung
That ‘science’ is broken irreparably will not surprise readers here. But this is arguably the comedy end of the spectrum. “Ooh, look, a journal approved and printed word soup from the CCP. How funny that all these editors and clever profs didn’t notice, just waved it through. Not to worry, I don’t suppose many deaths were occasioned by these multiple derelictions of duty.”
However… Robert F Kennedy’s book The Real Anthony Fauci lays out in great detail the eye-poppingly corrupt interaction between academia and big pharma. If you want to observe this truth exemplified in just one early section of the book, in fact in one devastating phone call transcript look at Chapter One Part III Ivermectin (see pages 46-52) in which the transcript of a phone call between Dr Tess Lawrie and Liverpool Uni virologist & WHO researcher Andrew Hill is reported. Just read the four page transcript.
You may think that Andrew Hill’s explanation of being ‘in a tricky situation’ is an extraordinary statement. Its inappropriate banality is breathtaking.
How many thousands more ‘scientists’ have found themselves in such ‘tricky situations’ in the last 2 years? Have these ‘tricky situations’ resulted in thousands of deaths?
Almost certainly.
I’m reading Kennedy’s book at the moment. It’s grim stuff, and the reactions to the snippets I read aloud to Mrs Dee only confirm that they’ve Killed Science.
What happened to ‘peer review’?
Just a guess: Bought out by Gates (like everything else to do with medical science and regulation)?
I’m surprised that Billy didn’t buy all copies of the RFK Jr. book and have some nazis burn them for him.
It’s just great to see real Progress in action, and the Typewriting Chimps can now return to their true vocation of writing, inter alia, Barbara Cartland bodice-rippers, politicians’ speeches and Imperial predictions.
RIP Academia.
Academia is a bad joke. Literally.
Chinese fake papers are only pointing out the vacuity of much of academic research. In this they are merely facetious dry humour.
When truth seeking gives way to the three Ps: politicisation, political correctness, and projection, this is the logical outcome. Money making and identity politics are not conducive to objectivity and rigour either.
Peter James Thomas is not only the Editor-in-Chief of the Springer Nature journal, among other things, he is also the creative director of Medicine Unboxed.
This is a quote from handwiki.org that tells of the eureka moment that led to the setting up of this “not-for-profit”:
What a word salad of total BS.
Imagine you went to your local garage to get new brake pads fitted on your car. You tell the garage owner what you want, and he announces to you that his staff have enough technical expertise to fit the correct brake pads on your car, and that they have the ethical judgement to realise the pads they fit will have to be capable of stopping the vehicle as and when the driver wants it to stop.
The owner then goes on to tell you that his staff understands the car experience; they know that you’ll want your vehicle back in working order. Then he informs you that his staff also have enough empathy to not bash in the side panels on your vehicle, or smear the interior with grease, as they fit the new brakes.
The owner then finishes off by telling you that the people that will be working on your car are all professional mechanical engineers, and, for good measure, he also informs you that they are wise.
I think that any reasonable motorist would be very suspicious of this garage owner, and by implication, his staff. And go looking elsewhere to get their vehicle serviced.
As regards not-for-profits like Medicine Unboxed and Springer Nature journal, Left-wing rags like the Guardian and BBC latch onto the inane research articles published in them, and use them to spin BS to their gullible readers and viewers. What better way to build-up trust in Big Pharma than for the likes of the Guardian to publish quasi medical articles with links to the Springer Nature journal?
Search Google for this journal and the top result is this:
“Springer Nature is the publisher of the world’s most influential journals and a pioneer in the field of open research. … Across our three platforms we publish thousands of articles that help the research community to advance discovery for all of us”.
The Guardian can spin fatuous yarns to its slackjawed readers with nuggets of gold like this:
And link it to the above search result to back up their lying proselytising.
When the slackjawed Guardian readers are then advised to run along and get their umpteen COVID-19 booster shots, they do so on the recommendation of the right-on Guardian with the back-up of the worlds’ most prestigious journal, and the belief they are doing their bit for the arts and humanities. For the gullible, the arts and humanities makes the acceptance of the COVID-19 booster shots a full-on virtue signalling event – what Guardian reader or BBC viewer would not see themselves as highly gifted creative types and protectors of all that is good and beautiful?
As for Peter James Thomas, when you see a middle-aged man with a teenybopper haircut be very careful of his ethics. When a man this age can’t see that a teenybopper haircut makes him look a fool, then he probably is a fool. As for non-profits, they are most likely the most profitable businesses anyone could start. Gates and Soros pump billions into them each year.
Thanks for that, Fireweasel – you brightened tonight’s imprisonment Downunder!
(No restaurants or entertainment venues for the wicked ones …)
Unless you’re halfway through life and have a teenybopper haircut. This haircut automatically denotes the wearer to have had all the gene therapy shots and booster backups.
And that you are a big fan of Bill Gates, and eternally grateful to Gates for being there to give you financial and societal status when your talent could not.
Some of those papers make more sense than a Chris Whitty slide show.
As the holder of a PhD in heterogeneous execution body scheduling and VR technology, I find this article extremely insulting.
Pantocratic syllogism refractologies synchopate covid-19 cisgender strategies!
You have confirmed what I have long suspected.
Lol! (Lollard oralities…. you get the picture ;-))
There are two ways to expose bullshit, by not publishing it in the first place or by retracting it if it does get published, if it does get published then retracted, good journals would not use those reviewers again.In that manner useless journals are exposed and relegated.
I’ve peer reviewed many articles in my time, and I took it seriously, but these examples are so egregiously ridiculous, the only right reaction is to put the journal and its editor on the shit list. Hell’s bells guys in what world would Personal and Ubiquitous Computing be regarded as a trusted journal? Hence this article’s title is suspect it does not matter if the publisher of a rubbish journal retracts 24 or 10000 Scientific Papers for Being “Nonsensical”, it would arguably matter if they do not retract the rubbish, the journal is already on the shit list for publishing such rubbish. But by retracting, they show a willingness to raise their game, the best journals are the best because of their willingness to expose bullshit.
I wouldn’t be too sure that they’re fake. I have seem many MSc dissertations that read along the same lines.
Plenty of government policy documents read much the same.
The way this works is that some new postdoc or postgrad, without much experience, will receive a flattering e-mail invitation to an editorial committee of an “up-and-coming journal”. Many accept and then the ‘journal’ never troubles them again. There is little to no actual editorial process or peer review. It’s just a list of some minor, early-career academics that were easily buttered up by unsolicited e-mail but which carries the name and reputation of their host institutions.
In the 1990s a parallel phenomenon of “fake conferences” started up but it was entirely motivated by people wanting to fill empty hotels. They’d find a hot-topic like bird-flu, cold-fusion, AI or graphene, put together an ‘organising committee’ sucker list as above, and then advertise the conference to sell hotel rooms. These things still exist with variations on a theme:
https://www.technologynetworks.com/tn/articles/inside-a-fake-conference-a-journey-into-predatory-science-321619
Then again peer review doesn’t work because few people attempt to reproduce the work as part of the review process. Peer review, even when done by capable scientists is largely a test of plausibility. It is merely a ‘sniff test’.
Even if they had the time and resources, there’s the so-called reproducibility crisis:
“More than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/533452a
If that wasn’t enough there’s the Bogdanov affair, the Sokal affair etc. etc.
Scientists are just human beings and you will find amongst them, the full spectrum of human failings including liars, frauds, egotists and thick layers of self-importance and self-delusion. You won’t find it in everyone or even in some people all the time but the failings are there as in any other profession like lawyers or airline pilots.
Science isn’t dead but it is heavily compromised. The emergence of the “noble liars” as Bret Weinstein has called them is just the latest spasm in the corpus, if you pardon the pun.
Great comment! Interesting to hear how this process works. Thank you for the article link.
Does this include all the trash which the UN climate lies are based?
I tried looking at the research of Alan Chamberlain, University of Nottingham (the first UK academic on the list) (https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/computerscience/people/alan.chamberlain). Lots of big research fumding but very few of the links work, he often is not named on those that do, and the titles make no more sense than the above papers.
Yes, good point. I should probably stress this more in these articles – the auto-generated papers get through at such high rates because there are so many papers written (presumably) by real Western academics that are meandering nonsensical gibberish as well. The abstract to the first paper of the guy you just linked (so, first paper of first UK editor) says:
This reads like a joke paper, or something that might be auto-generated, even though it’s probably not (the grammar here is OK). But what has this got to do with computer science? What does studying the “unremarkable” even mean? Scientific research is ultimately meant to be applied by people outside the academy but who on earth would read this abstract and then think, this is a paper I simply must purchase?
‘Peer Review’ – Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet.
“Peer review to the public is portrayed as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller, but we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong”
Big Pharma has immense resources to game the system. Big Pharma creates its own journals, with editorial teams and ‘peer reviewers’ to push their products. Naive real researchers may be encouraged to publish in the same journals to give them greater credence.