If fake news was considered an issue, then this idea
of fake science, something that has been occurring for much longer than this
sudden surge of protest against false information, should also be getting some
attention. Senior editor for The New
Yorker, brings the science community’s attention to the harmful presence of
fake journals. Credibility is an essential aspect in a scientist, so having
their paper published in a journal is a way for them to get a boost in
credibility. While many of these journals were authentic and contained good
intentions in the beginning of this online process, many more dubious sources
began to arise merely for the sake of profit. There is a bit of a humorous
approach to the topic as Burdick describes the various ways science students
have tackled these fake journals, including methods such as crafting fake people
or letting autocorrect have its way, however this also addresses a more serious
issue for the science community as a whole.
The issue, while commonplace
as almost every science major experiences it, is actually hurting science
itself especially at this time where factual proof is being openly disregarded
by government officials, and more fake science is being used to back it up.
These fake journals are contributing to the downfall of science since, as the
amount of disinformation grows, the difference between right and wrong becomes
harder and harder to define for even scientists themselves. Alan Burdick aims
to raise awareness to this era of crisis for science as well as hopefully renew
the science community’s sense of skepticism when it comes to considering
sources of information.
The article’s use of various
anecdotes exemplifies the true nature of these profit-focused journals while
also providing reason to not follow something without truly looking into it. The
journals, while they themselves are not actually fake, have so little standards
for papers that anyone could publish one as long as they paid the author fee,
gaining false credibility in their work simply by having that journal’s title
to back their work up with. Burdick describes the crafting of the fictional
person, Anna Olga Szust, and her “dismally inadequate” papers as the initial
way to fish out and identify these fake journals. The students in charge of her
persona submitted various questionable papers that no journal should hop on the
opportunity to accept, however 48 journals responded to her with invites to
become an editor. Burdick does not announce Szust’s identity as a fake at
first, allowing his audience to become increasingly skeptical of her success
until her identity was confirmed to be false.
Further examples consist
of students typing the first few words of a sentence before allowing
autocorrect to carry the sentence, or they even just send a repeated phrase in
the format of a paper which would both still easily be accepted by these
untrustworthy journals. Burdick’s argument was built much on these examples
which evoked amusement in the reader, and that amusement allowed the reader to
consider the very real presence of these harmful sources while also avoiding
any intimidation by them. The solution seems hard to construct for dealing with
these troublesome journals, but if these students can have fun with it while
simultaneously blacklisting the bad sources, then other students in the science
community may also feel an unstated push to join the rather laidback fight as
well. Burdick’s approach does well to address issues as well as raise awareness
about them, and his methods of doing so may just spark more action in taking
down the credibility of these questionable publishers.
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