Mastodawn

John Overholt Feb 15, 2025

Why is the nonsense phrase “vegetative electron microscopy” turning up in fake scientific papers? Add two-column formatting to the list of things AI doesn’t understand. https://retractionwatch.com/2025/02/10/vegetative-electron-microscopy-fingerprint-paper-mill/
Via @researchbuzz

As a nonsense phrase of shady provenance makes the rounds, Elsevier defends its use

The origin of the phrase? The phrase was so strange it would have stood out even to a non-scientist. Yet “vegetative electron microscopy” had already made it past reviewers and editors at several j…

Retraction Watch

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Seán Fenian Feb 15, 2025

@overholt @researchbuzz If this goes on, soon NOBODY will be able to tell what's true and what isn't.

And that's probably half the point.

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Usagi

@zakalwe @overholt @researchbuzz No that's not the point in this case.

The point is that there is a metric. And people optimize for that metric. Which makes it lose all meaning and create perverse incentives.

It is difficult to measure quality of an university, and somebody noticed that scientists publish articles, the articles get cited in other articles, etc.

Some journals were designated as 'impact', that is publishing an article in it or getting cited would get the institution 'points', and things like grants would be distributed mainly according to number of 'points'.

Which resulted over time in 'impact' journals asking horrendous amounts of money for both publication and access, and people finding ways to publish garbage to increase the number of 'points' they get.