Another cluster of fake scientific papers has been discovered, this time primarily about electronic medical devices and software. A group of three researchers has published an exposé of papers in which ordinary terms like artificial intelligence and facial recognition are replaced with bizarre alternatives auto-generated from a thesaurus. This appears to be an attempt to hide plagiarism, AI-driven paper auto-generation and/or “paper mill” activity, in which companies generate forged research and sell it to (pseudo-)scientists who want to get promoted.
| GENUINE TERM | AUTO-GENERATED REPLACEMENT |
|---|---|
| Big data | Colossal information |
| Facial recognition | Facial acknowledgement |
| Artificial intelligence | Counterfeit consciousness |
| Deep neural network | Profound neural organization |
| Cloud computing | Haze figuring |
| Signal to noise | Flag commotion |
| Random value | Irregular esteem |
Often these papers originate in China, where the CCP has mandated that every single medical doctor must publish research papers to get promoted (i.e. in their non-existent spare time). If you’re new to this topic, my previous article on Photoshopped images and impossible numbers in scientific papers provides some background along with an entertaining begging letter from a Chinese doctor who got busted.
Most of the bad science covered on the Daily Sceptic is of the intellectually dishonest kind: an absurd assumption here, ignored evidence over there. Sometimes professors – like those at Imperial College London – turn out to be incapable of using computers correctly and are presenting internal data corruption in their models as ‘evidence’, a problem I wrote about in my first article for this site. While these papers are extremely serious for public trust in science, especially given the huge impact they have had, there are even worse problems lurking in the depths of the literature. The biggest is probably 100% fake papers that report on non-existent experiments, often in obscure areas of Alzheimer’s research or oncology.
Corrupt journals and their explanations
In their article (an unpublished pre-print), Cabanac, Labbé and Magazinov zoom in on a journal called “Microprocessors and microsystems“, published since 1976 by Elsevier. They document a sudden step-change in the quantity of papers being published around the end of 2019, with another massive jump at the start of 2021.
While even famous journals like Nature frequently publish intellectually dishonest nonsense, corrupt scientists seem to focus on finding especially weakly run journals and entirely subverting them. This allows them to publish papers in which the language doesn’t even make grammatical sense, let alone display intellectual rigour. Many of the papers feature not only bizarre substitutions but also plagiarised text, stolen images and of course the inevitable Photoshops.
Exactly how this process occurs is unclear because one of the most problematic aspects of the fake science phenomenon is that when asked to investigate, journals and authors invariably try to BS their way out of it. For example, last time the excuse presented by the NHS for a clearly Photoshopped image was that the patient had “worn the same shirt”, even though literally anyone could see that claim was false. And so it is again. This time the excuse we’re presented with is that:
“Unfortunately, due to a configuration error in the editorial system, the Editor in Chief or designated Handling Editor did not receive these papers for approval, as per the journal’s standard workflow. This configuration error was a temporary issue due to system migration and was corrected as soon as it was discovered“
– Microprocessors and microsystems
In other words, Elsevier is arguing that they are capable of publishing scientific papers that literally nobody has read at all, and capable of doing this for multiple entire editions of their journals without anybody noticing. Microsystems and microprocessors costs $1,893 a year for an institutional subscription, but it’s run with a less rigorous review process than this website. Is that really credible? It hardly matters; no matter what perspective you look at it from their explanation is damning. Either it’s a lie (as explanations of scientific misconduct have often been in the past), or it’s true and Elsevier are saying that they’ve been charging thousands of dollars a year for a non-existent editorial service. Remember that it’s ultimately taxpayers who fund this via government research budgets.
Medical corruption spreads to other fields
This journal is suspicious in another way: despite theoretically being about embedded micro-controllers, a quick review of the articles shows that many of them have nothing to do with this topic and in fact some of them are clearly medical papers, e.g. the last issue contains articles on watermarking algorithms for medical images. Although related to computer science, that is not related to this specific sub-field. In April what is clearly a purely medical paper was published by some nurses in China. It appears to be something related to MRI scans. I say “appears” because the paper is so garbled that it’s basically unintelligible. The final sentence of the abstract says:
“MRI is more research to enable a normal identification from pathological conditions required to provide a diagnostic reference value, to be used for functional PHV evaluation potential shows.”
This sentence doesn’t seem to contain much real meaning so it’s questionable whether it’s explainable as a bad auto-translation. The paper also passes off a circuit diagram of a simple water leak detector downloaded from a western website as an “image detection sensor using intervention after heart valve replacement”. As is often the case with investigations into scientific integrity, everything looks roughly right from a distance until you sit down and start reading carefully, at which point it all falls apart.
It’s worth stressing that this problem isn’t limited to one or two journals, nor is it exclusive to Chinese authors. A quick search on Google Scholar for “counterfeit consciousness” or “profound neural organisation” shows large numbers of results in many different journals, with Indian names also being quite prevalent.
Where do these substitutions come from? It was easy to recognise how this language is being generated, because when I worked as an engineer at Google I spent several years on anti-spam projects. Replacing “big data” with “enormous information” is the work of so-called spinners. Spinners are very simple tools that have been around for decades. They don’t need to generate intelligible text because their output is only meant to be read by other machines, usually, the “crawlers” that power search engines. By generating many variants of a single base article all of which link to a target page, a search engine can be fooled into thinking there is genuine widespread interest in the article across the internet, and that increases its rankings. Here’s an article about spinners by an apparently shameless web spammer who uses them.
It’s ironic that a scientific community that has generated tens of thousands of papers about “disinformation” from “social bots” is itself flooding the world with spambot generated ‘research’. Doubly ironic is the fact that the unpublished pre-print forming the basis of this article appears to have found its genesis in the investigations of a Russian software engineer working at Yandex. If you’re an academic reading this site (good job!) then you may wish to gently suggest to your colleagues that next time they are tempted to talk about misinformation, they start by addressing problems a bit closer to home.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Next paid 3 day seminar: ‘GlobaloneyBoiing and how it causes cancer, heart attacks and ugly nurses’
Next one after that: ‘Midazolam, murder, and euthansia and why we need to do it more often – tips and tricks for beginners’
Next one after: ‘Stabbinations, profits and Transhumanism – how to stab effectively and safely’
Followed by: ‘Dance routines in empty hospitals during a scamdemic – intermediate level’
etc
End. The. National. Death. Service.
Next one: The Roman Empire flourished during the Roman Warm Period. How an increase in temperatures leads to colonialism and how you can prevent it by turning down the heating on your wards.
Next one: Don’t clap for carers. How not to contract an STD at work.
Next one: How to tackle the obesity crisis. A beginners guide to fat shaming.
Next one: How to frame a neonatal nurse to cover up failings in your department. An advanced course for senior managers.
More Tax payers hard earned ££,s down the SH1TTER !
Memo from the Prime Minister’s office:
“Steve, important we respond to show that we’re on the side of ordinary working people, so suggest you:
1. Make announcement today that you’re a bit miffed about this
2. Er…think (1) should be enough, so no further action required.
Cheers mate. Rish”
I’ll tell you who needs unconscious bias training – the radicals that organise these conferences and push these insane agendas on everyone. They, more than anyone else, need to examine their biases. In fact they probably need psychotherapy pretty urgently.
Please don’t call it a Diversity Conference. It has nothing to do with Diversity. Our enemies have chosen this language in order to make anyone who opposes their mad, evil ideas seem like they are against “diversity” (whatever that means) – and what nice, right-thinking person could possibly be against that?
We must now always put an Orwellian interpretation on anything coming from those nominally in authority.
I’m completely against diversity when it means giving respect to a minor attracted person & child abusers. When I started in the NHS in the late 1980s they were called paedophiles & mandatory training was for child protection, how to spot grooming behaviours & prevent harm. How the world has changed. I’d be going through a disciplinary if I were still working as there is no way I could stop protecting children by going along with this perverted nonsense.
Patient care should be the focus of healthcare & that includes being aware of signs of abuse rather than facilitating abuse disguised as healthcare.
I’ve spotted a couple in my career & with the right intervention have helped to protect a wife & 2 children.
NHS internal emails and intranet announcements have the writer specify their preferred method of address, such as ‘he/him’.
Benches outside hospitals, a Southeastern Railway locomotive, and the logo of a branch of a high street bank are striped in the rainbow + chevron colours. Perhaps the new banknotes featuring the portrait of the King will be the next to display this sign of the new conformity.
The very fact that Fishy and his ministers are allowing this jamboree to proceed tells us all we need to know about where their priorities lie and whose side they are on.
An NHS waiting list of seven million and a regional health authority is organising a three day talking shop on pronouns? FFS!
Jacqueline Scott, the head nutter for this outfit, should be loudly and publicly sacked and made an example of.
Unfortunately, this crap is all part of the Agenda 2030 ESG criminal enterprise and we all know where Fishy takes his orders from so this shit will simply continue.
NHS motto:
F. the patients we’re on a jamboree.
Some people may well die while this beano plays out.
Beautifully put.
Thank you.
Brilliant, HP!
Thanks Aethelred
What on god’s green earth is this to do with healthcare? Nothing. How many times do you, as the NHS customer, find yourself in the position of being confused what to call someone? Never I should think. So it’s all about brainwashing the healthcare service in idiotic language. And this is a conference for 1,000 people over 3 days which is going to cost money. And who are all these attendees? People taken away from the actual business that the NHS is meant to deliver. It’s a effing disgrace!
This is worse than a disgrace: It’s New Labour authorized fraud. There’s a so-called equalities act which demands that all public services must DIE (note the wording) and hence, hordes of consultant and ‘charitable’ poleeches attach themselves to anything with a budget in order to suck it dry.
Seconded Aethelred
If I called a patient by the wrong name or title, they were usually quick to say what I should have called them. How does that differ from not knowing which pronoun to use? I’m certain that a very quick & firm correction would be made!!
I´m pretty sure that if doctors and nurse were in charge of the health service, we would not see this inversion of clinical priorities.
Given the way doctors and nurses have conducted themselves these last three years, I cannot support that contention.