{"id":91430,"date":"2015-06-26T00:04:28","date_gmt":"2015-06-26T07:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=91430"},"modified":"2015-06-17T08:40:52","modified_gmt":"2015-06-17T15:40:52","slug":"there-are-medical-journals-and-there-are-medical-journals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2015\/06\/there-are-medical-journals-and-there-are-medical-journals.html","title":{"rendered":"There are medical journals and there are medical journals"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Every time some anti-vax propagandist sends me something about his quack obsession, he quotes some medical journal somewhere as though this is the ultimate trump card. \u00a0If it\u2019s published in something that calls itself a medical journal, it\u2019s gotta be SCIENCE[TM]!, right?<\/p>\n

Not so much as you might think actually. \u00a0Here, for instance, is the story of a guy who got seventeen different \u201cmedical journals\u201d to accept a fake piece called \u201cCuckoo for Cocoa Puffs<\/a>?\u201d<\/p>\n

Shrime decided to see how easy it would be to publish an article. So he made one up. Like, he literally made one up. He did it using www.randomtextgenerator.com<\/a>. The article is entitled \u201cCuckoo for Cocoa Puffs?\u201d and its authors are the venerable Pinkerton A. LeBrain and Orson Welles. The subtitle reads: \u201cThe surgical and neoplastic role of cacao extract in breakfast cereals.\u201d Shrime submitted it to 37 journals over two weeks and, so far, 17 of them have accepted it. (They have not \u201cpublished\u201d it, but say they will as soon as Shrime pays the $500. This is often referred to as a \u201cprocessing fee<\/a>.\u201d Shrime has no plans to pay them.) Several have already typeset it and given him reviews, as you can see at the end of this article. One publication says his methods are \u201cnovel and innovative\u201d!. But when Shrime looked up the physical locations of these publications, he discovered that many had very suspicious addresses; one was actually inside a strip club.<\/p>\n

When Shrime looked up the physical locations of these publications, he discovered that many had very suspicious addresses; one was actually inside a strip club.<\/p>\n

Many of these publications sound legitimate. To someone who is not well-versed in a particular subfield of medicine\u2014a journalist, for instance\u2014it would be easy to mistake them for valid sources. \u201cAs scientists, we\u2019re aware of the top-tier journals in our specific sub-field, but even we cannot always pinpoint if a journal in another field is real or not,\u201d Shrime says. \u201cFor instance, the International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology<\/a><\/em> is the very first journal I was ever published in and it\u2019s legitimate. But the Global Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology<\/em> is fake. Only someone in my field would know that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every time some anti-vax propagandist sends me something about his quack obsession, he quotes some medical journal somewhere as though this is the ultimate trump card. \u00a0If it\u2019s published in something that calls itself a medical journal, it\u2019s gotta be SCIENCE[TM]!, right? Not so much as you might think actually. \u00a0Here, for instance, is the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[95],"class_list":["post-91430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-quacks-and-cranks"],"yoast_head":"\nThere are medical journals and there are medical journals<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Every time some anti-vax propagandist sends me something about his quack obsession, he quotes some medical journal somewhere as though this is the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2015\/06\/there-are-medical-journals-and-there-are-medical-journals.html\" \/>\n<meta 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