You Can Be Fooled And Probably Will Be

Pointman has a terrific piece up A climate of deception, deceit, lies and outright dishonesty. You should read the whole thing. It was prompted by this Jo Nova bit: Busted: 120 gibberish science papers withdrawn — so much for “peer review”. For those of you into electronics the IEEE published about 100 of the papers.


Posted

in

by

Tags:

Comments

3 responses to “You Can Be Fooled And Probably Will Be”

  1. Jccarlton Avatar
    Jccarlton

    This was made easier by the fact that every author feel compelled to include every relevant formula back to F=Ma and all the theory for the topic they are discussing. I know for a fact that is one of the easiest ways to pull the wool over somebody’s eyes. I’ve seen it done and it’s really one of the more shameful things I had to participate even though that’s what the customer wanted. Knowing now what I know about how FDA regulations are applied I understand why.

  2. Neil Avatar
    Neil

    I read, and utilize, a lot of academic papers in my work. I have never, not once, taken them as gospel. Every single one is suspect until I manage to reduce it to practice.

    That’s why I like to get hold of “reduce to practice” papers, they’re the only assurance you have that the original paper wasn’t bogus. Unfortunately, most journals these days discourage such publications as repetitive or uninteresting.

  3. Simon Avatar

    Neil,

    That is why I prefer the company of engineers.