Science Publisher Retracts 44 Papers for Being Utter Nonsense
The publisher Springer Nature was forced to retract over 40 papers from its Arabian Journal of Geosciences after realizing they were nothing more than garbled jargon. This is just the latest in a series of shoddy research papers getting past the publisher.
First reported by research journal watchdog Retraction Watch, the slew of retractions comes on the heels of other issues at the publisher, where hundreds of papers were previously flagged with “expressions of concern” for research integrity breaches.
The retraction notice on one of papers reads as follows: “The Editor-in-Chief and the Publisher have retracted this article because the content of this article is nonsensical. The peer review process was not carried out in accordance with the Publisher’s peer review policy. The author has not responded to correspondence regarding this retraction.”
The journal is intended for geoscience research; discussion of volcanoes, soils, and rocks are par for the course. But these questionable papers’ topics were further afield, with many discussing sports, air pollution, child medicine, and combinations of the aforesaid.
Some titles of the farkakte research: “Simulation of sea surface temperature based on non-sampling error and psychological intervention of music education”; “Distribution of earthquake activity in mountain area based on embedded system and physical fitness detection of basketball”; “The stability of rainfall conditions based on sensor networks and the effect of psychological intervention for patients with urban anxiety disorder.” A complete list of the retracted papers can be found here.
Chris Graf, the research integrity director for Springer Nature, told Retraction Watch that “As previously stated, we are developing new AI and other-tech based tools and putting additional checks in place to identify and prevent attempts of deliberate manipulation.”
“Moreover, we are gathering evidence into how these subversions are being carried out to share with other publishers, [the Committee on Publication Ethics], relevant institutions and other agencies to help inform the development of industry-wide practices and ensure that culpable parties can be held to account,” Graf added.
Whether such measures are effective or not remains to be seen. Based on the previous issues seen at this and many other journals, there’s not much reason to be hopeful.
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Opus
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I wonder how many of those papers were submitted on April 1st? And how many authors are sitting back in shock, thinking, “That was a joke and they published it.”
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K Kaiser
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@Opus,
I doubt that any of such drivel was submitted on April 1st.
In reality, the number of papers that were (according to publishers/journals’ claims) peer reviewed, and subsequently published by such “journals of high reputation” — only later to be recognized as of “imaginary nature” (or outright fraud) — have been rapidly increasing for some time now.
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ЯΞ√ΩLUT↑☼N
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There are thousands of “papers” of this ilk with “climate change” in the title – all of them rubbish. This stems from the fact that over the past 20 years, it’s been difficult for wannabe professors to get tenure or grants to study a favourite subject, such as “bee migration” or the “sexual habits of the lesser spotted weevil” without tacking “in the face of climate change” to the end of the title. All basic fraud and nonsense.
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Eric the Red
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This journal is just a more obvious example of what the left and their social science journals have been doing ever since Boas. The difference is that the left is slightly more subtle, with far more experience. They’ve perfected the art of flinging semantic BS about some issue, and it’s all confirmation bias. Let’s see, how many ways can I typify this…
Leftists don’t think or write cogent expositions, they just string together implied pejoratives, shallow chains of superficial causation, hyperbolic impressions stuck together to impersonate reasoning, loose associations, random innuendos flung together…
Are you getting the picture? The really awful thing about it, is that the left has managed to bamboozle most of society for the last 70 years by using this tried-and-true technique. They’ve used it as supporting data to cement their political agenda. Next question: Is it important that the left is repeatedly doing this type of thinking and exposition? Does anyone on the right even recognize it as a common leftist tactic? Is anyone on the left smart enough to critically analyze the logical fallacies and call them out? If it’s called out, can it be stopped? Or do we just keep allowing the left to run wild over the political landscape with their fallacies and semantic tricks, thereby turning society into an insane woke wasteland?
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