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Sunday, December 28, 2014

Science Journal Fraud: Paying for Placement

Barber woke from coma speaking fluent French and thinking he was Matthew McConaughey Telegraph

The Cold-Medicine Racket Atlantic

Corruption has become the biggest growth business in the US. The latest example is the subversion of peer-reviewed research in top scientific journals. This isn’t as crass as pay to play in public pension funds, but the results are just as bad. Here, it appears that Chinese services are offering a whole menu of scholarly paper placement services. That does not mean helping you get your paper placed, but letting you buy a completed and not necessarily valid paper and charing you for getting it published with you as an author, with the price depending on the impact factor of the publication. The article also describes other scams, such as bogus peer reviews.
The Chinese services are so large scale that it enabled them to be caught out. But that raised the uncomfortable question of how many other vendors there are who operate with more finesse and on a smaller scale and have yet to be exposed.

On December 17, 2014, Scientific American published an investigative report by journalist Charles Seife documenting a new and curious form of scholarly publication fraud, For Sale: “Your Name Here” in a Prestigious Science Journal. As an editor and supporter of evidence-based medicine I am both appalled by, and sympathetic to, how such widespread fraud could take place unnoticed. Paying for placement

Rolling Stone magazine requests audit of discredited gang rape story Reuters (EM)

Bankers Brought Rating Agencies ‘To Their Knees’ On Tobacco Bonds ProPublica (EM)

These experts still don’t buy the FBI claim that North Korea hacked Sony Los Angeles Times

Creative accounting is nothing new for the Eurozone Fistful of Euros

Inquiry in Anthrax Mailings Had Gaps, Report Says New York Times

GAO Analysis Highlights Lab Samples Excluded in Sloppy FBI Anthrax Investigation Emptywheel

The Triumphant Rise of the Shitpic The Awl


Is It Bad Enough Yet? New York Times

Q&A: Ian Klaus on the History of Fraudsters, Fakes, the Financial Press, and More The Baffler

Cause And Effect: The Revolutionary New Statistical Test That Can Tease Them Apart Medium (original paper).

The Crowdsourcing Scam The Baffler

Top managers’ pay reveals weak link to value FT. Shocker!

Oil heavyweights differ on catalyst for crude price rebound Financial Times. We pointed out the Harry Hamm v. Saudi divergence yesterday. Hamm has this all wrong. First, the Saudis are bigger than he is. Second, they have a large sovereign wealth fund. They don’t need oil revenues to fund government spending. In fact, Moodys said that the Saudis plus three of the other five major Gulf states could fund spending for several years out of their sovereign wealth funds. And on top of that, the Saudi government has little debt and thus plenty of borrowing capacity. But if this is what the US shale industry is telling itself, they are going to keep pumping until the Saudis crush them.

Meet Alfreda Bikowsky, the Senior Officer at the Center of the CIA’s Torture Scandals The Intercept. Hmm. The director of the airport used for the Polish black site Stare Kiejkuty mentions a woman meeting one of the torture flights… And Greenwald mentions Bikowsky took a hand in at least one torture session….

‘Why the Innocent Plead Guilty’: An Exchange NYRB

Predatory Fining and Mass Surveillance Marginal Revolution

Man can’t challenge $280K tax bill he probably doesn’t really owe, Pa. court says Patriot-News Philly sends out huge, “made up” delinquency notices to get taxpayers “to induce the targeted taxpayer to contact the city’s revenue department.”

Putting bedbugs to bed forever Science Dailyd