Ars Technica has an article on investigations performed by Science magazine and the Ottawa Citizen.
Peer-reviewed scientific papers are the gold standard for research. Although the review system has its limitations, it ostensibly ensures that some qualified individuals have looked over the science of the paper and found that it's solid. But lately there have been a number of cases that raise questions about just how reliable at least some of that research is.
The first issue was highlighted by a couple of sting operations performed by Science magazine and the Ottawa Citizen. In both cases, a staff writer made up some obviously incoherent research. In the Citizen's example, the writer randomly merged plagiarized material from previously published papers in geology and hematology. The sting paper's graphs came out of a separate paper on Mars, while its references came from one on wine chemistry. Neither the named author nor the institution he ostensibly worked at existed.
Unfortunately, by attempting to highlight the problem of lax review procedures, some computer scientists may have exacerbated the problem. Suspecting that some reviewers weren't doing a thorough job on some conference papers, they put together a random gibberish paper generator for anyone who wanted to test whether reviewers were paying attention. Unfortunately, that software has since been used to get 120 pieces of gibberish published.
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In an effort to show how politically correct nonsense and evil (but I repeat myself) can get through academic peer review and be published, some academics did just that with seven papers. More are partly through the process.
A particularly funny and horrifying case is the Gender Studies journal Affilia. Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf only needed to be translated with wording in the typical style of intersectionality theory, and it passed muster.
Another published paper, considered exemplary scholarship by the journal that published it, contains this whopper: "Dog parks are microcosms where hegemonic masculinist norms governing queering behavior and compulsory heterosexuality can be observed in a cross-species environment."
The Grievance Studies Scandal: Five Academics Respond
Now, three academics have submitted twenty spoof manuscripts to journals chosen for respectability in their various disciplines. Seven papers were accepted before the experiment stopped; more are surviving peer review. This new raid on screamingly barmy pseudo-scholarship is the Alan Sokal Opening, weaponised. Like dedicated traceurs in a Parkour-fest, the trio scrambled over the terrain of what they call Grievance Studies. And they dropped fire-crackers. One published paper proposed that dog parks are "rape-condoning spaces." Another, entitled "Our Struggle is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism" reworked, and substantially altered, part of Mein Kampf. The most shocking, (not published, its status is "revise and resubmit") is a "Feminist Approach to Pedagogy." It proposes "experiential reparations" as a corrective for privileged students. These include sitting on the floor, wearing chains, or being purposely spoken over. Reviewers have commented that the authors risk exploiting underprivileged students by burdening them with an expectation to teach about privilege.
Also at WSJ.
Related: Publishing Stings Find Shoddy Peer Review
Absurd Paper Accepted by Open-Access Computer Science Journal
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