Local "academic" Dr Olivia Doll — also known as Staffordshire terrier Ollie — sits on the editorial boards of seven international medical journals and has just been asked to review a research paper on the management of tumours.
Her impressive curriculum vitae lists her current role as senior lecturer at the Subiaco College of Veterinary Science and past associate of the Shenton Park Institute for Canine Refuge Studies — which is code for her earlier life in the dog refuge.
Ollie's owner, veteran public health expert Mike Daube, decided to test how carefully some journals scrutinised their editorial reviewers, by inventing Dr Doll and making up her credentials.
The five-year-old pooch has managed to dupe a range of publications specialising in drug abuse, psychiatry and respiratory medicine into appointing her to their editorial boards.
Dr Doll has even been fast-tracked to the position of associate editor of the Global Journal of Addiction and Rehabilitation Medicine.
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Attendees of a Howard Hughes Medical Institute meeting debated whether or not science journals should publish the text of peer reviews, or even require peer reviewers to publicly sign their paper critiques:
Scientific journals should start routinely publishing the text of peer reviews for each paper they accept, said attendees at a meeting last week of scientists, academic publishers, and funding organizations. But there was little consensus on whether reviewers should have to publicly sign their critiques, which traditionally are accessible only to editors and authors.
The meeting—hosted by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) here, and sponsored by HHMI; ASAPbio, a group that promotes the use of life sciences preprints; and the London-based Wellcome Trust—drew more than 100 participants interested in catalyzing efforts to improve the vetting of manuscripts and exploring ways to open up what many called an excessively opaque and slow system of peer review. The crowd heard presentations and held small group discussions on an array of issues. One hot topic: whether journals should publish the analyses of submitted papers written by peer reviewers.
Publishing the reviews would advance training and understanding about how the peer-review system works, many speakers argued. Some noted that the evaluations sometimes contain insights that can prompt scientists to think about their field in new ways. And the reviews can serve as models for early career researchers, demonstrating how to write thorough evaluations. "We saw huge benefits to [publishing reviews] that outweigh the risks," said Sue Biggins, a genetics researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, summarizing one discussion.
But attendees also highlighted potential problems. For example, someone could cherry pick critical comments on clinical research studies that are involved in litigation or public controversy, potentially skewing perceptions of the studies. A possible solution? Scientists should work to "make the public understand that [peer review] is a fault-finding process and that criticism is part of and expected in that process," said Veronique Kiermer, executive editor of the PLOS suite of journals, based in San Francisco, California.
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(Score: 3, Funny) by sjames on Saturday May 27 2017, @09:38AM (2 children)
(Score: 3, Funny) by BsAtHome on Saturday May 27 2017, @12:16PM
Well, you're barking up the wrong tree...
Maybe you should be let out more often? Better yet, go fetch some journals!
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday May 27 2017, @01:51PM
And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you meddling kids!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Funny) by cafebabe on Saturday May 27 2017, @10:10AM (6 children)
You'd think a psychiatry journal would be more discriminating after the Rosenhan hoax. Perhaps not.
1702845791×2
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday May 27 2017, @11:06AM
Zbignew Brezinsky is dead. But I just wanted to say 'Zbignew'.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday May 27 2017, @01:55PM (1 child)
Self-Destructing Cookies [mozilla.org] does that for me, but thanks for the suggestion. It's an excellent one!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 28 2017, @08:48AM
It's better to not allow unwanted cookies in the first place. Try it, you might like it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @01:57PM (2 children)
Not many journals can afford to be discriminating. This was always true, but probably more so now when anyone can start one on the web.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday May 27 2017, @04:48PM (1 child)
How do you figure? Research journal business models are basically pure profit. Any trashy dime-store magazine would kill to have such low overhead, and the cost of a subscription is usually outlandish.
The papers they publish costs them nothing, the authors may even have to pay to submit them.
The peer review is all done by volunteers - who as this article demonstrates are often not even minimally vetted.
Editing of scientific papers is basically unethical, at best they get a proof-reading.
That leaves what, layout and printing itself that they have to pay for?
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Sunday May 28 2017, @03:37PM
And when they discover that "Dr. Olivia Doll" has recieved the best vetinarian care, they're no longer interested in collaboration.
1702845791×2
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @10:54AM
I RTFA and didn't see which journals - given there is an explosion in more-or-less blog quality journals over recent years, this would be kind of useful information. Are there any reputable journals in the list?
We should also apply the same scrutiny to the boards of companies, organizations, universities, religious entities, govt. departments where actual money is involved. Inexperienced, unqualified family members on the board? Directorships in 12 different places + a full time (at least fully paid at %xxx,xxx level) job? Hmm...
Bear in mind journals don't pay squat for anything. No-one is making any money out of it and barely anyone is reading. Move up the chain to high end journals and I would bet these are the cleanest, least corrupt entities that humanity has produced. Blinded peer review by 3 parties with very little editorial power to overrule the reviews, this has been my experience even at mid-level journals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @02:15PM
This is perfect for our modern trend of alt-facts and alt-news. We have an entire political movement called the alt-right dedicated to the idea that feelings are more important than hard evidence. If one weren't aware that their enemies include snowflakes and millennials, one might conclude that they have an awful lot in common with snowflakes and millennials.
If this dog is coming to patriotically correct conclusions, then why stop her? Why should elitist academics in ivory towers who spend all their time with their noses in books tell us what to do?
Can this dog provide evidence that there is indeed something to gateway drug theory? Can this dog provide the evidence, without looking any more deeply than p hacking, that highly addictive SSRI drugs do not cause the user to experiment with other drugs but that equally effective, less addictive plant-based antidepressants such as St. John's wort and cannabis inevitably cause the user to seek opioids? Can this dog provide the evidence that there is something to social gender theory? If this dog can find evidence that the brain is not a sexed organ and that transgenderism is merely an artifact of improper socialization, showing that the brain is perfectly capable of being socialized to be either gender, this would be a great boon for the alt-right and their close allies on that issue, feminists.
In conclusion, nobody know you're a dog on the internet! If a homosexual who was sexually abused as a child and developed his own pedophilia as a result can be an intellectual lighthouse for the alt-right, then why not a dog?
Postscript:
But hold on, says the reader! What about gender essentialism? Isn't that in direct conflict with social gender theory? Yes, yes, I wanted to keep this short, but if you must, here's how it works. Social gender theory when it says that transgendered people are mentally ill, gender essentialism when it says that transgendered people are mentally ill. If social gender theory says in a certain context that transgendered people are not mentally ill, then we reject it within that context; if gender essentialism says in a certain context that transgendered people are not mentally ill, then we reject it within that context. At no time do we attempt to compare our philosophy to reality. Like Ptolemy, we must insist that it is the real world which is less real than the world of ideas. Thus, we identify that the unholy partnership between the alt-right and feminists goes back to a single theory that fits all these data: both are actually right-wing authoritarian followers, gorged on a diet of, er, dog food given to them by their right-wing authoritarian leaders.
In fact, we can do the exact same exercise with gateway drug theory, and by following this process, we can conclude that even if cannabis has qualities that are like medicine, that people who wish to use cannabis as medicine, especially for psychiatric problems, must merely (“just”) want to get high. Plus, I did not check today, but there's also that story in the submissions about how penises are evil. If I were not being facetious, I might conclude that something has gone terribly wrong with our academic and scientific institutions and that the alt-right are a wholly inadequate reaction to that.
We begin with our conclusions in this process. Then we accumulate evidence to support our conclusions. If we cannot find the right evidence to support our conclusions, then we must turn to alt-evidence. We know our conclusions to be ineffable, because we feel that it is so, and our feelings are more important than reality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @02:29PM (1 child)
It is a doggy dog world after all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 28 2017, @05:34AM
"Scientific research" is bunkum, medical research doubly so. Woof woof. Remember to immunize, or watch VAXXED and think for yourself.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday May 27 2017, @05:13PM
so how is she writing her reviews? Or, who is actually writing those reviews? Someone competent? Or is there another joke hiding here?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @05:15PM (1 child)
I'm not at all familiar with the area, but unless the submitted work submitted looked like "bark bark woof" surely all we're seeing here is a very skilled owner succeeding under another name with false qualifications?
It looks, naïvely, as if the journals cared only about the quality of the work and didn't give a shit about the person producing it.
I guess they should probably check qualifications, but really if the work is sound does it matter?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 28 2017, @10:05AM
But it's a dog, I tell you. A DOG. Don't you know scientists are mocking us and siphoning off sweet, sweet grant money from hard working tax payers like the Koch brothers?
(Score: 1) by RoxTeddy on Sunday May 28 2017, @09:03PM
Not do correct vetting :p