Sep 17, 2017 11:18 PM
(This post was last modified: Sep 17, 2017 11:18 PM by C C.)
India Opens Homeopathy Laboratory
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index...aboratory/
EXCERPT: As I continue my efforts to fight against pseudoscience in medicine, I often ask myself – how bad can it theoretically get? I have had this discussion with others as well, some of whom argue that we should not worry because science will win out in the long run. Science is self-corrective, and pseudoscience will become marginalized over time. I hope this optimistic view is correct, but I am not reassured by the evidence. Let’s consider a recent article in the Hindustan Times, written completely without skepticism or irony, which details how the government of India has opened a state-of-the art laboratory to study homeopathy....
The Ugly State of the Literature These Days
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/arc...these-days
EXCERPT: So how’s it going out there in the land of the journals that will publish any flippin’ thing you send them? Apparently pretty well. [...] there’s no shortage of quasi-open-access titles out there, the ones that (like reputable OA journals) do charge you for publication and make the resulting paper freely available (if the web site stays up). But the key difference is that they skip that pesky stage where they actually review the papers. Or even look at the papers at all. It’s much easier to make all such editorial decisions on the basis of “Have the funds deposited?”
[...] That’s what I take away from this article, which shows that there are more people publishing in these papers than you’d think from institutions that should know better. [...] India was the number-one source of publications in the total sample, but the US was a solid runner-up. Now, if you adjust for the number of papers produced by each country, the proportion of US scientific papers going to predatory journals is still low, but it’s definitely higher than it should be. [...] The article itself doesn’t hide its conclusions:
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index...aboratory/
EXCERPT: As I continue my efforts to fight against pseudoscience in medicine, I often ask myself – how bad can it theoretically get? I have had this discussion with others as well, some of whom argue that we should not worry because science will win out in the long run. Science is self-corrective, and pseudoscience will become marginalized over time. I hope this optimistic view is correct, but I am not reassured by the evidence. Let’s consider a recent article in the Hindustan Times, written completely without skepticism or irony, which details how the government of India has opened a state-of-the art laboratory to study homeopathy....
The Ugly State of the Literature These Days
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/arc...these-days
EXCERPT: So how’s it going out there in the land of the journals that will publish any flippin’ thing you send them? Apparently pretty well. [...] there’s no shortage of quasi-open-access titles out there, the ones that (like reputable OA journals) do charge you for publication and make the resulting paper freely available (if the web site stays up). But the key difference is that they skip that pesky stage where they actually review the papers. Or even look at the papers at all. It’s much easier to make all such editorial decisions on the basis of “Have the funds deposited?”
[...] That’s what I take away from this article, which shows that there are more people publishing in these papers than you’d think from institutions that should know better. [...] India was the number-one source of publications in the total sample, but the US was a solid runner-up. Now, if you adjust for the number of papers produced by each country, the proportion of US scientific papers going to predatory journals is still low, but it’s definitely higher than it should be. [...] The article itself doesn’t hide its conclusions:
Whether authors are being duped or are overzealously seeking to lengthen their publication lists, this represents enormous waste. Just the subset of articles that we examined contained data from more than 2 million individuals and over 8,000 animals. By extrapolation, we estimate that at least 18,000 funded biomedical-research studies are tucked away in poorly indexed, scientifically questionable journals. Little of this work will advance science. It is too dodgily reported (and possibly badly conducted) and too hard to find.
MORE: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/arc...these-days