Questioning the ethics of John Bohannon’s hoaxes and stings in the context of science publishing

Silva, Jaime A. Teixeira da; Al-Khatib, Aceil

doi:10.17646/kome.2016.16

Cited by 14 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…The second serious issue with the Sorokowski et al (2017) sting is that it used fraud, namely, the creation of a fake individual, who was then posed as a real editor to journals listed by Beall, the DOAJ and JCR, in a deliberate attempt to deceive. Such “sting” operations that base their success stories on fraud and deception have great ethical flaws, much the same as the (in)famous 2013 John Bohannon Science sting (Bohannon, 2013), which also relied on the Beall and DOAJ-lists, making equally concerning conclusions based on fraudulent submissions (Teixeira da Silva and Al-Khatib, 2016). Any element of fake corrupts the scholarly record (Teixeira da Silva, 2017c), and sting operations of the type used by Bohannon (2013) and Sorokowski et al use unethical methods to achieve their conclusions and thus reduce public trust in academics, thereby endangering academics more than they inform them (Al-Khatib and Teixeira da Silva, 2016).…”

Section: Media and Editorials That Support Or Praise Fake Sting Operations Operate Unethicallymentioning

confidence: 99%

How hyped media and misleading editorials can influence impressions about Beall’s lists of “predatory” publications

Silva¹,

Tsigaris

2019

JICES

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Purpose The issue of “predatory” publishing and the scholarly value of journals that claim to operate within an academic framework, namely, by using peer review and editorial quality control, but do not, while attempting to extract open access (OA) or other publication-related fees, is an extremely important topic that affects academics around the globe. Until 2017, global academia relied on two now-defunct Jeffrey Beall “predatory” OA publishing blacklists to select their choice of publishing venue. This paper aims to explore how media has played a role in spinning public impressions about this issue. Design/methodology/approach The authors focus on a 2017 New York Times article by Gina Kolata, on a selected number of peer reviewed published papers on the topic of “predatory” publications and on an editorial by the Editor-in-Chief of REM, a SciELO- and Scopus-indexed OA journal. Findings The Kolata article offers biased, inaccurate and potentially misleading information about the state of “predatory” publishing: it relies heavily on the assumption that the now-defunct Beall blacklists were accurate when in fact they are not; it relies on a paper published in a non-predatory (i.e., non-Beall-listed) non-OA journal that claimed incorrectly the existence of financial rewards by faculty members of a Canadian business school from “predatory” publications; it praised a sting operation that used methods of deception and falsification to achieve its conclusions. The authors show how misleading information by the New York Times was transposed downstream via the REM editorial. Originality/value Education of academics.

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Section: Media and Editorials That Support Or Praise Fake Sting Operations Operate Unethicallymentioning

confidence: 99%

How hyped media and misleading editorials can influence impressions about Beall’s lists of “predatory” publications

Silva¹,

Tsigaris

2019

JICES

Self Cite

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“…Even though, ultimately, the "sting" proved what was already known about the predatory operations of many open access journals, and even though it helped to widely spread consciousness among academics, the Bohannon sting was deeply entrenched in lack of publishing ethics, with wide-spread abuses of OSSs. What remains unclear is why such widespread lack of publishing ethics protocol has not merited the retraction of that paper (19).…”

Section: New and Nuanced Abuses Of Online Submission Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Abuse of Online Submission Systems, Fake Peer Reviews and Editor-Created Accounts

Silva¹

2016

pers. bioet

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Many journals and publishers employ online submission systems (OSSs) to process manuscripts. In some cases, one "template" format exists, but it is then molded slightly to suit the specific needs of each journal, a decision made by the editor-in-chief or editors. In the past few years, there has been an increase in the number of cases in which OSSs have been abused, mostly by the authorship, either through the creation of fake identities or the use of false e-mail accounts. Although the abusive or fraudulent authors are at fault in such cases, the fact that such cases remained undetected for so long is of concern. Moreover, the current OSSs are imperfect, have security issues and may not be able to detect false information, except through post-submission verification. Sting operations, which involve the submission of false manuscripts with false identities and false affiliations, are no less unethical, and those who abuse the publishing protocol deserve to be as reprimanded as those who abuse OSSs. Finally, I question the ethics of editors or publishers creating OSS accounts on behalf of reviewers prior to obtaining their explicit permission.

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“…“While sting operations can sometimes be the only way to present solid evidence on a topic of strong public interest, we believe that in scientific research and publications, such stings should be discouraged or at least a safeguarding policy should be implemented to protect the integrity of scientific research.” (Teixeira da Silva & Al-Khatib, 2016, p. 86)…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Replication Crisis: Framing Science for Untold Crimes

Borchard

2022

Qualitative Inquiry

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Here the author presents a sequentially yet nonlinearly organized collage of previously published writing, curated under the title “Replication Crisis: Framing Science for Untold Crimes.” The collage is composed entirely of quotations. Here, a thesis-driven expository regime is replaced with open-ended discursive potential. The excerpts include assessments of the replication crisis in science; discussions of p values and their centrality in the crisis; reviews and analysis of recent scientific hoaxes, “sting” operations, and/or fraudulent studies (some attempting to delegitimize poststructuralist, postmodernist, and feminist critiques of science); discussions of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and Wittgensteinian language games; and quotations from contemporary social theory and literature. The collage, as an experiment, offers readers an opportunity for re-contextualization through their own associative sense-making. Readers determine what is important information, what might be fruitfully compared and contrasted, and how discourses come to “mean.”

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Questioning the ethics of John Bohannon’s hoaxes and stings in the context of science publishing

Cited by 14 publications

References 11 publications

How hyped media and misleading editorials can influence impressions about Beall’s lists of “predatory” publications

How hyped media and misleading editorials can influence impressions about Beall’s lists of “predatory” publications

On the Abuse of Online Submission Systems, Fake Peer Reviews and Editor-Created Accounts

Replication Crisis: Framing Science for Untold Crimes

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