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I knew immediately this was BS, sure enough, someone already beat me to it with the comment explaining why.

Man, I'm so ashamed of my field (experimental psychology). Maybe ~60% of publications are literally worse than useless (that is, they are outright intentional lies).

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The damage done will take decades to fix if it can be fixed. No idea why anyone would even bother engaging with (experimental psychology)

If you have a Ph.D. you can somewhat sort the wheat from the chaff. But it's 100% not worth it for the layman. Better to just ignore it.

That's why, even though it's incredibly sad to see, I can hardly begrudge the current administration their "defund anything and everything using keyword search". Since they can't trust the experts, that's really about the best that can be done from their perspective.


The ones who are vetting these articles have PhDs.

Disclosure: PhD


Oh, I know.

There are many reasons why peer review doesn't work including but not limited to (1) motivated reasoning AKA complicity in whatever lie is being pushed (2) no real incentive to put effort into peer review (3) laziness and irresponsibility, see also point 2 (4) the "somewhat" qualifier I put in my original comment.

I'm being critical of peer reviewers here, but it's a genuinely very difficult job that takes massive effort to do well.

And then there's actual malpractice like editing data, which is functionally impossible to catch in peer review if the authors are clever. The whole system replies on trust, and trust is completely underserved.


Are you impugning the good name of the Ig Noble awards? For shame!



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