Carl T. Bergstrom

I've written about that dreadful Science piece on the Sabel et al fake paper "detector" that has a 37% false positive rate and actually just checks to see if the authors use private email addresses, are affiliated with a hospital, and don't have international coauthors.

(full thread: https://fediscience.org/@ct_bergstrom/110357259338364341)

Here's why Science has to do better. When they herald a paper like this, other more credulous outlets think it's been vetted and pick up it as well.

Here's NPR.

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/14/1176062276/fake-studies-in-academic-journals-may-be-more-common-than-previously-thought

Carl T. Bergstrom (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image This week, Science published a stunningly irresponsible news story entitled "Fake scientific papers are alarmingly common" and claiming that upward of 30% of the scientific literature is fake. https://www.science.org/content/article/fake-scientific-papers-are-alarmingly-common Below, the first two paragraphs of the story. Headline and intro notwithstanding, the story itself later notes that the detector doesn't actually work and flags nearly half of real papers as fake. Does the reporter just not understand that? h/t @[email protected]

FediScience.org
May 15, 2023 at 5:26pmWeb
Show threadIsaac Erbele, MDMay 15, 2023
@ct_bergstrom It's neither here nor there, but my institutional email has changed twice since I started publishing. Using a private email address probably would have been better.
Show threadChu 朱May 15, 2023

@ct_bergstrom

That kind of criteria just sounds like gate keeper hell to me.

Show thread特级深海钓鲑鱼大师（读博理财ver.May 15, 2023

@ct_bergstrom I have read through the majority of thread and is very much shocked by the algorithm having such a high weight on using non-institutional emails.

Being from China, I can confirm that many people do not use institutional email and most school announcements are made through group chats instead of email.

Also knowing multiple university professors from China, I can confirm many only uses email for publication puposes and/or only use personal email that comes with QQ/wechat registration.

This is deeply disappointing.

Show threadNaomi PMay 15, 2023
@ct_bergstrom thank you for your thread about this; it helped me to reassure my mother about the state of academic publishing — she’s used to thinking that NPR has vetted stuff like this, and she had just heard the story before talking to me on the phone.