By now, everybody reading this obscure blog knows about the so-called sting operation by John Bohannon in Science Magazine last week. As virtually everybody has pointed out, the outcome of this stunt is entirely meaningless. Here are a few analogies that could serve to demonstrate about how embarrassingly inane this whole project really was:
Science Magazine journalist exposes bank transfer scam by sending bogus bank account numbers.
or:
Science Magazine journalist demonstrates efficiency of homeopathy by treating over 300 patients with cold symptoms – 62% feel fine five days later.
or:
Science Magazine journalist proves that accepting a single fraudulent/erroneous article invalidates all scholarly papers a journal has ever published.
Who can come up with some more?
Science Magazine journalist shows counterfeit Rembrandt to criminal claiming to be an art expert, and criminal buys it “cheap”, intending to on-sell.
Science Magazine journalist finds it possible to buy a gun from a “licensed gun dealer” in a slum, when he should have failed the background check.
Bjorn, if the article is truly meaningless as you claim, I ask whether you would be willing to ever submit a paper to one of the journals that accepted the bogus manuscript? Would you recommend to a friend that they submit a paper to one of those journals?
Thanks for your comment, Jeffrey, and thanks for keeping your list!
Thanks in part to your list, I likely would have never submitted any of my articles there already before this childish game. In many cases, that would have been like sending money and my bank details to the poor lady whose millions are locked in an African bank account, or taking homeopathic pills against my cold. For anybody with enough neurons for a synapse, Bohannon’s stunt really wasn’t required for that decision.
For that matter, if the career of my co-authors allows it, I wouldn’t ever submit anything to Science, Nature or Cell and the ilk anymore either. If I can help it, I’d rather not have my paper alongside those of Diderik Stapel, Who-Suk Wang, Jan-Hendrik Schoen, etc. The data show that the highest ranking journals publish the least reliable science – that’s not the kind of stamp I’d like to have on my work, either.
You see, Bohannon’s piece is really completely and utterly meaningless for anybody’s submission strategy – and perhaps colleagues for whom this was not the case ought to consider whether they’re in the right profession.
If I had my way, I’d submit my paper to an institution-based repository where all my peers and non-peers can access it. What do we need journals for these days anyway? I mean, this is 2013, not 1983! If you’re interested in my work, you’ll find it. If you don’t find it, it’s likely not of interest to you anyway. Unfortunately, it’s going to be a long, uphill battle until that utopia comes true, if ever.