Academic predators

Today's topic, which comes to me via a long-time loyal reader of Skeptophilia, has a funny side and a not-so-funny side.

The link my friend sent me was to a paper called "The Psychometric Measurement of God," by one George Hammond, M.S. Physics.  In it, he claims to have used the methods of physics to prove that God exists, which would be a pretty good feat.  So I eagerly read the paper, which turned out to be an enormous mélange of sciency-sounding terms, evidently using a template something like this: "(big word) (big word) (big word) God (big word) (big word) (big word) (big word) matrix (big word) (big word) scientific measurement (big word) (big word) (big word) God exists q.e.d."

Don't believe me? Here's a representative passage:

I had already published in 1994 a peer-reviewed paper in a prominent journal pointing out that there was a decussation in the Papez Loop in Jeffrey Gray’s fornical septo-hippocampal system indicating that it regulated not only Anxiety as he said it did, but in a diagonal mode of operational so regulated his Impulsivity dimension.  In the brain the septum is located dead center in the “X” formed by the fornix thus regulating information to and from all 8 cubic lobes of the brain via the fornical Papez Loop.  Since then the septal area is also dead center in Thurstone’s Box in the brain I eventually realized that Gray’s septo-hippocampal system controls all 13 personality dimensions of the Structural Model of Personality!...  Meanwhile, factorization of this 4 x 4 matrix yields one, single, final top 4th order eigenvector of Psychology.  What could this factor be?...  [T]he final top factor in Psychology is in fact the God of the Bible.  Since this is a scientific measurement, God can actually be measured to 2 decimal point accuracy.

Please note that I didn't select this passage because it sounds ridiculous; it all sounds like this.

Or maybe, with my mere B.S. in Physics, I'm just not smart enough to understand it.

The fact that this is a wee bit on the spurious side is accentuated by the various self-congratulatory statements scattered through it, like "this is nothing less than awesome!" and "if you think discovering the gods is an amazing scientific turn of events, brace yourself!" and "my personal scientific opinion as a graduate physicist is that the possibility [of my being correct] is better than 1 in 3."  Also, the inadvertently hilarious statement that "evolutionary biology discovered the 'airbag theory' millions of years before General Motors did" might clue you in to the possibility that this paper may not have been peer reviewed.

But so far, this is just some loony guy writing some loony stuff, which should come as no big surprise, because after all, that's what loony guys do.  And there's not much to be gained by simply poking fun at what, honestly, are low-hanging fruit.  But that brings us to the less-than-amusing part.

The site where this "paper" was published is academia.edu.  My general thought has been that most .edu sites are pretty reliable, but that may have to be revised.  "Academia" is not only not peer reviewed -- it's barely even moderated.  Literally anyone can publish almost anything.

Basically, it's not a site for valid scientific research; it's purely a money-making operation.  If you poke around on the site a little, you'll find you're quickly asked to sign up and give them your email, and badgered to subscribe (for a monthly fee, of course).  I probably don't need to say this, but do not give these people your email.  It turns out there's a page on Quora devoted to the topic of academia.edu, and the comments left by people who have actually interacted with them are nothing short of scathing.  Here's a sampler:

• If you sign up, the people who upload the pdf files will give you exactly what it seemed like they would give you, a paper pdf that makes you sign up using another link, which is also fake!  If you ask to contact the person who wrote it, they will either ignore you or block you. Don’t sign up for Academia, because when you do they just take you to another link, which is ridiculous.  Academia is a public research company, they don’t review anything or enforce rules.
• I found it very unsettling that the ONLY permission they ask for is to….VIEW AND DOWNLOAD YOUR CONTACTS!  That was a SERIOUS tip-off to me that something wasn’t right.
• It’s a scam, they try every trick in the book to get you to sign up; according to them I must be one of the most famous people on the planet.
• I hate this site.  Looks like scammy trash.  I tried to sign up and after receiving my e-mail (use an account you don’t care about), then it looks like I can only proceed if I sign up for a bulk download account, and that costs money.  Fuck 'em.
• They are scammers trying to get your money.  They told me I was cited in more than 2k papers.  My name is not common and I don't participate in the academic world.
• Be careful with this.  Academia.edu was flagged by gmail and seems to have full access to my Google Account, not even partial access.  Given some of the other privacy and IP considerations with sharing your content on this site I would steer clear of it in future regardless - it’s basically a LinkedIn with similar commercial ambitions to make VCs a ton of money so there are the common concerns of “you’re the product” and “your content is now their content”.  Regardless this level of access to gmail is unwarranted and an invasion of privacy and was not clearly disclosed when I signed up (quick sign up to download a document).

So, the sad truth is that just because a site has .edu in its address, it's not necessarily reliable.  I always say "check sources, then check them again," but this is becoming harder and harder with pay-to-play sites (often called "predatory journals") that will publish any damn thing people submit.  From what I found, it seems like academia.edu isn't exactly pay-to-play; there's apparently not a fee for uploading your paper, and the money they make is from people naïve enough to sign up for a subscription.  (Of course, I couldn't dig into their actual rules and policies, because then I would have had to sign up, and I'm damned if I'm letting them get anywhere near my email address, much less my money.)  Even so, what this means is that the papers you find there, like the one by the estimable Mr. Hammond (M.S. Physics) have not passed any kind of gatekeeper.  There may be legitimate papers on the site; it's possible some younger researchers, trying to establish their names in their fields, are lured in by the possibility of getting their work in print somewhere.  Those papers are probably okay.

But as Hammond's "(big word) (big word) (big word) I proved that God exists!  I'm awesome!" paper illustrates, it would be decidedly unwise to trust everything on their site.

So once again: check your sources.  Don't just do a search to find out if what you're looking into has been published somewhere; find out where it's been published, and by whom, and then see if you can find out whether the author and the publication are legitimate.

It may seem like a lot of work, but if you want to stem the rising tide of false claims circulating madly about -- and I hope we all do -- it's well worth the time.

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People made fun of Donald Rumsfeld for his statement that there are "known unknowns" -- things we know we don't know -- but a far larger number of "unknown unknowns," which are all the things we aren't even aware that we don't know.

While he certainly could have phrased it a little more clearly, and understand that I'm not in any way defending Donald Rumsfeld's other actions and statements, he certainly was right in this case.  It's profoundly humbling to find out how much we don't know, even about subjects about which we consider ourselves experts.  One of the most important things we need to do is to keep in mind not only that we might have things wrong, and that additional evidence may completely overturn what we thought we knew -- and more, that there are some things so far out of our ken that we may not even know they exist.

These ideas -- the perimeter of human knowledge, and the importance of being able to learn, relearn, change directions, and accept new information -- are the topic of psychologist Adam Grant's book Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know.  In it, he explores not only how we are all riding around with blinders on, but how to take steps toward removing them, starting with not surrounding yourself with an echo chamber of like-minded people who might not even recognize that they have things wrong.  We should hold our own beliefs up to the light of scrutiny.  As Grant puts it, we should approach issues like scientists looking for the truth, not like a campaigning politician trying to convince an audience.

It's a book that challenges us to move past our stance of "clearly I'm right about this" to the more reasoned approach of "let me see if the evidence supports this."  In this era of media spin, fake news, and propaganda, it's a critical message -- and Think Again should be on everyone's to-read list.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Waving DNA and four-dimensional dark manifolds

I try to avoid posting about claims that are simply ridiculous, because (1) ridiculous claims are a-dime-a-dozen on the interwebz, and (2) low-hanging fruit has kind of lost its appeal for me.  But every once in a while I happen on something that is so ridiculous that it seems to be almost inspired.

Kind of like an art piece in the Museum of Wackiness.

I learned about this one from a loyal reader of Skeptophilia who sent me a link with the message, "Oh, Gordon, did you know there were 'DNA waves'?  As well as black holes at the center of the earth?"

Well, I couldn't read something like that without clicking the link.  It brought me to the wonderful site RetractionWatch, which is devoted to articles on retractions and errata in scientific publications, something absolutely critical to the scientific process.

This one is a doozy, although the journal that published the original paper -- the Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences -- might as well open up a permanent page on RetractionWatch.  The particular paper this post references has the following title, which I swear I'm not making up:

• "A Black Hole at the Center of Earth Plays the Role of the Biggest System of Telecommunication for Connecting DNAs, Dark DNAs and Molecules of Water on 4+N- Dimensional Manifold."

The paper, apparently, was part of an issue on "Global Dermatology."  What any of this has to do with skin diseases is beyond me.

(Nota bene: there's a link to the paper in the RetractionWatch article, but it requires a login to read it, and no way in hell am I giving the Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences my information about anything.  And besides, the original paper may have been taken down by now.  So I'm restricted to the excerpts in RetractionWatch, which admittedly limits my knowledge about the paper itself.)

Fortunately, RetractionWatch was kind enough to include the paper's abstract, which I reproduce here verbatim:

Recently, some scientists from NASA have claimed that there may be a black hole like structure at the centre of the earth.  We show that the existence of life on the earth may be a reason that this black hole like object is a black brane that has been formed from biological materials like DNA.  Size of this DNA black brane is 109 times longer than the size of the earth’s core and compacted interior it.  By compacting this long object, a curved space-time emerges, and some properties of black holes emerge.  This structure is the main cause of the emergence of the large temperature of the core, magnetic field around the earth and gravitational field for moving around the sun.  Also, this structure produces some waves which act like topoisomerase in biology and read the information on DNAs.  However, on the four-dimensional manifold, DNAs are contracted at least four times around various axis’s and waves of earth couldn’t read their information.  While, by adding extra dimensions on 4 +n-dimensional manifold, the separation distance between particles increases and all of the information could be recovered by waves.  For this reason, each DNA has two parts which one can be seen on the four-dimensional universe, and another one has existed in extra dimensions, and only it’s e_ects [sic] is observed.  This dark part of DNA called as a dark DNA in an extra dimension.  These dark DNAs not only exchange information with DNAs but also are connected with some of the molecules of water and helps them to store information and have memory.  Thus, the earth is the biggest system of telecommunication which connects DNAs, dark DNAs and molecules of water.

I read this whole thing with an expression like this on my face:

This paper was by Massimo Fioranelli et al., which means that it was the product of more than one brain.  (Although this may be questionable as well, as I will describe momentarily.)  And in fact, this isn't the only paper that was retracted by OAMJMS.  They retracted five papers simultaneously -- and four of them were by Fioranelli's team.  Once again, RetractionWatch kindly provided titles and links to the other papers, which you have to see because they're just that wonderful.  The three other Fioranelli et al. papers were:

• "DNA Waves and Their Application in Biology"
• "Recovery of Brain in Chick Embryos by Growing Second Heart and Brain"
• "A Mathematical Model for the Signal of Death and Emergence of Mind out of Brain in Izhikevich Neuron Model"

The fifth paper, by Nicola Zerbinati et al., had an equally entertaining title:

• "New System Delivering Microwaves Energy for Inducing Subcutaneous Fat Reduction: In Vivo Histological and Ultrastructural Evidence."

Which makes me think of someone putting a pork chop in the microwave, and observing that if you turn it on, the fat melts.  I wouldn't recommend it as a method for losing weight, however.

Oh, and apparently, Fioranelli was also the author of a previously-retracted paper attributing COVID-19 to 5G technology.  The man's a veritable fountain of goofiness.

The pièce de résistance of the story, though, is in OAMJMS's statement of retraction, which is too good not to reproduce in full:

An internal investigation has raised sufficient evidence that they are not directly connected with the special issue Global Dermatology and contain inconsistent results.  Several co-authors requested to be excluded from the author list.  As such, we retract these articles from the literature and by guidelines and best editorial practices from the Committee on Publication Ethics.  We apologize to our audience about this unfortunate situation.

So we have:

• co-authors who apparently didn't know they were being listed as such
• apparent surprise that a paper on black holes communicating with your DNA has fuck-all to do with dermatology
• "inconsistent results," which I have to admit sounds more professional than "absolute lunacy"
• figuring out that Fioranelli is nuttier than squirrel shit took an "internal investigation"

The only thing that would have made this better is if the papers had come with a video link showing Fioranelli explaining his theories via interpretive dance.

So you can see how I couldn't resist writing a post about this one.  Opportunities to write about weird ideas from cranks are commonplace; one this bizarre is truly something to be cherished.

But my reaction is probably just due to the black hole at the center of the Earth confusing me by sending waves to add extra dimensions to my dark DNA manifolds.  I hate it when that happens.

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To the layperson, there's something odd about physicists' search for (amongst many other things) a Grand Unified Theory, that unites the four fundamental forces into one elegant model.

Why do they think that there is such a theory?  Strange as it sounds, a lot of them say it's because having one force of the four (gravitation) not accounted for by the model, and requiring its own separate equations to explain, is "messy."  Or "inelegant."  Or -- most tellingly -- "ugly."

So, put simply; why do physicists have the tendency to think that for a theory to be true, it has to be elegant and beautiful?  Couldn't the universe just be chaotic and weird, with different facets of it obeying their own unrelated laws, with no unifying explanation to account for it all?

This is the question that physicist Sabine Hossenfelder addresses in her wonderful book Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physicists Astray.  She makes a bold statement; that this search for beauty and elegance in the mathematical models has diverted theoretical physics into untestable, unverifiable cul-de-sacs, blinding researchers to the reality -- the experimental evidence.

Whatever you think about whether the universe should obey aesthetically pleasing rules, or whether you're okay with weirdness and messiness, Hossenfelder's book will challenge your perception of how science is done.  It's a fascinating, fun, and enlightening read for anyone interested in learning about the arcane reaches of physics.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Transwarp nonsense

In today's science news, we have a paper called "Rapid Genetic and Developmental Morphological Changes from Extreme Celerity," from the American Research Journal of Biosciences, by Lewis Zimmerman et al., which describes some unexpected consequences to living beings who are accelerated rapidly.

Turns out that the results are nothing short of terrifying.  Traveling at extreme accelerations and velocities triggers a parallel acceleration in mutations within the test subjects' DNA.  In other words, evolution speeds up, with a resulting change in their physical forms.  If they then reproduce (which they did), their offspring maintain those altered traits, and end up looking nothing like the original organisms did.

I hope by this point you're saying, "Hang on a moment..."  Some of my fellow Trekkies might be adding, "Wasn't that the plot of the Star Trek Voyager episode 'Threshold,' wherein Captain Janeway and Tom Paris are exposed to "transwarp" speeds (higher than Warp 10), and mutate into slimy-looking half-human/half-tadpoles, proceed to have some hot sex that I don't even want to think about, and generate several very skeevy looking babies?  Which they decide to abandon on a jungle planet after an 'antiproton beam' returns their DNA (and their bodies) to human form, instead of doing what an antiproton beam would actually do, namely making them explode in a burst of gamma rays?"

If that's what you said, you're exactly correct, and that resemblance is no coincidence.  Zimmerman wrote up his scholarly paper based on the plot of the Voyager episode, listing himself and six Starfleet officers as the authors, and submitted it to ten journals that had the reputation of being "predatory" -- i.e., pay-to-play.  It was rejected six times, but four journals accepted it, and one -- the aforementioned American Research Journal of Biosciences -- actually published it.

I bring all this up for two reasons.

First, in the current atmosphere of distrust by laypeople of scientists and science in general, we seriously don't need this.  Given that we have a president and a significant slice of his administration who doubt the existence of climate change (although I'm fully aware that there's a money motive for this disbelief, further confounding matters), the last thing we want is some journal whose editorial board -- if it even exists -- accepting bullshit articles that are recycled plots from Star Trek.

Paris and Janeway's bouncing baby tadpoles

Second, this is a bit of a caveat to anyone who is her/himself engaged in academic pursuits to be very, very careful of source reliability.  It used to be, back in the Middle Ages when I was in graduate school, that all you had to do was make sure that the journal you were referencing looked as if it were requiring things like peer review and explicit publication of conflicts of interest.  Later on, as long as the website address said ".edu" or ".org," they probably were okay.

Now?  Just having a fancy name like "American Research Journal of Biosciences" is no guarantee of reliability.  You can't just download a pdf of an academic paper, give a quick look to its source listings and citations, and assume it's reasonably valid.  Because what Zimmerman's little prank shows is that predatory journals don't give a rat's ass what they publish, as long as the authors are willing to pay for the privilege.  And the vast majority of them aren't going to be blitheringly obvious fakes like the "Extreme Celerity" paper was.  Most of them are likely to be papers that were rejected during peer review for things like design flaws, inappropriate controls, or more subtle problems such as "p-hacking" -- things you might not notice at a quick read.

It's sad, but the problem isn't going away.  As soon as there's a lucrative market for something like pay-to-play academic publishing, it's going to continue to churn out trash.  What Zimmerman's paper shows is that you can't simply assume that if something's in a journal, it made it through peer review.  The truth is that there are hundreds of predatory journals out there, and it's incumbent upon anyone using scientific research, or even reading it, to make certain what you're looking at has been through a rigorous vetting process before reaching print.

Kind of a shame, really, and not just from the standpoint of muddying the waters of scientific research.  I've been hoping for faster-than-light travel ever since I was a kid watching Lost in Space.  Hell, I'd take Warp 1, much less Warp 10.  I'm not eager to be turned into a slimy tadpole creature, but if I could visit other star systems, it's a risk I'm willing to take.  And after all, if I do get mutated, I can always rely on a handy beam of antiprotons to bring me back to my original form.