Phony Science

GREEN NAZIS                                     WHY FAKE DATA ... WHEN YOU CAN FAKE A SCIENTIST? Hoss Cartwright, a former editor of the International Journal of Agricultural Innovations and Research, had a good excuse for missing the 5th World Congress on Virology last year: He doesn’t exist. But, one of today’s most direct new frauds is incredibly simple: Make up new people. (and then let them vote?) "Cartwright, Uhnemann, Borat, and others are, in some sense, sting operations built to expose the growing practice of gaming the metrics by which scientific publications are judged. The number of publications a scholar has, how many times they have been cited, who the co-authors are—metrics like these should all be secondary to the quality of the work itself, but often they are actually more important. “Scientists no longer publish to share results with their colleagues, but rather to improve their ‘metrics,’ ” laments Morgenstern. These metrics can have real impact on scientists’ careers.  [Full] Tom Smith What can I possibly add to this?  (PS.  Guess who they voted for.)