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by alexhill 4016 days ago
> that journal peer review is non-existent

This isn't about peer review, because the paper was knowingly submitted only to journals known not to conduct peer review. Quoting from the article:

> We needed to get our study published pronto, but since it was such bad science, we needed to skip peer review altogether. Conveniently, there are lists of fake journal publishers.

And later:

> The new publisher’s CEO, Carlos Vasquez, emailed Johannes to let him know that we had produced an “outstanding manuscript,” and that for just 600 Euros it “could be accepted directly in our premier journal.”

This is really more about science journalism than about science.

These kinds of journals are difficult for a lay person to tell apart from actual, scientific journals, but distinguishing between the two is exactly the kind of job a competent science journalist would do. Inept science journalists, on the other hand, give these fake journals a reason to exist by citing them unchallenged.

1 comments

And his experiment reveals that the Internet gets its nutrition science from inept science journalists. Think of all the arguments won by people searching google and having this show up. I once won an argument by changing Wikipedia during the argument and showing it to him on his computer.