Have you ever read a scientific journal and though it sounded like gibberish?
Turns out, you might have been right. It might not be the case that you simply didn’t understand the scientific concepts covered in the paper.
A recent investigation has revealed more than 100 published academic articles were nothing more than bogus strings of meaningless sentences.
That’s right–peer reviewed academic journals are publishing articles that consist of total nonsense. Apparently, there is even a computer program that can generate plausibly scientific-sounding articles that are actually just random groups of sentences.
How is this happening? Laziness is one possible answer. Apparently, all the folks who are supposed to be writing and “peer reviewing” this garbage before it gets published can’t be bothered to put in the work.
To my mind, this is just one more piece of evidence with regard to the corruption of higher education in the U.S. Having a substantial record of published articles is necessary for almost anyone who wants to have a career as a university professor. And, furthermore, scientists are always telling us about the sanctity of the scientific method and the importance of peer reviewed research in establishing facts about the natural world.
But what confidence can we have in the whole enterprise if it is possible to publish “scientific” articles that are complete gibberish? Let’s consider all of the thousands upon thousands of scientific articles that aren’t gibberish. How well are they being peer reviewed? How thoroughly?
The billions of dollars pouring into labs, research facilities, and faculty budgets each year add up to quite an investment in a system that is as obviously broken as this one.
Until academics clean up their act, and rid the publication process of such rampant corruption, they will not have deserved the public trust, nor will they have earned the credibility required to justify all of the public money they suck up every year.
With a scandal like this one, the burden is now on scientists and academic researchers to prove that the public money entrusted to their use is not put to waste, and that all their talk of the sanctity of the peer-reviewed research is not empty talk.
Nathan Harden is editor of The College Fix and author of the book SEX & GOD AT YALE: Porn, Political Correctness, and a Good Education Gone Bad.
Follow Nathan on Twitter @NathanHarden
(Image: davecobb.Flickr)
Please join the conversation about our stories on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, MeWe, Rumble, Gab, Minds and Gettr.