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“Predatory journals are also enabling the publication of much ‘activist science,’ publishing articles that appear to be scientific but that could never pass peer review and be accepted and published in authentic journals.”

These include:

• “Those promoting hypotheses that mainstream science has found to be false,” such as claiming that vaccines cause autism;

• “Those denying hypotheses that mainstream science has found to be true, such as those denying that global warming is occurring;”

• Claims of “far-fetched cosmological discoveries.” A recent one claims to have discovered that dark matter and dark energy are the same thing, which the author calls dark fluid, though without giving evidence;

• Alleged documentations of alien sightings;

• Promotions for new and untested medicines or other commercial products;

• Some have even tried to bypass the normal procedure in biology in order to name living species after themselves.

And Beale says these can have a harmful effect.

“Science is cumulative, with new research building on findings already recorded in scholarly books and journals. When junk science is published bearing the imprimatur of science, later scientists may inadvertently use that work as the basis of their work, threatening the integrity of their results.”

Predatory journals are low-quality websites that masquerade as online science journals. For a fee, they publish research for scientists who can’t get their work into real science publications. Legitimate researchers try to avoid or ignore them, but sometimes their copycat approach makes them look like the real thing.

tspears@ottawacitizen.com

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