[sevensor]

Another tactic I've seen from the Lord Voldemorts I know is to cite loads of references that aren't readily available online. Such a citation can be used to prop up _any_ argument, whether or not the citation actually supports the argument, or even has any bearing on it at all. It's the same trap, though. To disupte the citation, you have to wait months for an inter-library loan, read the cited work in detail, and then decide what it really has to say about the argument.

I personally fell into this trap, not because I was trying to refute something, but because I was trying to back up one of my own assumptions and I found that Lord Voldemort was citing Obscure Reference X to back up the same assumption. The joke was on me when I actually tracked down Obscure Reference X in the 30-years-out-of-print proceedings of a symposium on Y. Obscure Reference X had nothing at all to say about my assumption! Needless to say, I no longer trust Lord Voldemort or anyone who publishes with him.

[simplemath]

Why can't we name these people? Libel?

Pastebin?

Fuck these frauds.

[sevensor]

The problem is that saying "Professor Lord Voldemort is a liar and a fraud" puts an end to scientific discussion and forces people to assume nakedly partisan positions. Publicly at least, we have to assume good faith in our counterparts, even if we know in our hearts that they're self-inflated gasbags.

The tactics I and the original article were describing allow Lord Voldemort to clothe any assertion he likes in the robes of science. The root of this problem is a broken incentive system for publication. We're required to publish a lot to show productivity, and we're trained to put in lots of citations to back up our work. This creates an unmanageable avalanche of worthless papers and makes it easy to build a false trail of scammy citations.

Compare this to the situation 50 years ago, before publication inflation had set in. John Nash wrote a 30 page dissertation, and cited two works at the end of it. Simon's classic "Behavioral Model of Rational Choice" cited 5 works. The entire Cowles commission report on Activity Analysis devoted only 4.5 of its 418 pages to citations, and that included a detailed lit review in its introduction. Nothing makes it to press these days without five to ten times as many citations.