[open-science] Fake Cancer study published in 157 Open Access Journals

[Francois Grey]

Hi Peter, Klaus,

Let's keep our eyes on the ball here. We can agree to respectfully disagree about some of the specifics of the study, but when it comes to influence, and article in The Economist (millions of readers, many of whom are highly influential yet not well-versed in science publishing issues) totally dwarfs the impact of a personal opinion in "Gunther Eysenbach's Random Research Rants".

This one isn't going to go away just because parts of the blogosphere wish it would. Science is the highest ranking journal in the US. Bohannon is an experienced and respected science journalist. IMHO, what he did is a decent piece of investigative science journalism. Holding it up to the ethical standards of scientific publications misses the point. Beall, himself, has praised Bohannon's study<http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/10/03/science/#more-2386>.

I agree with Peter that OKF should stay focussed on its core competence in this area, opening up scientific data. But it would be wonderful to see an alliance of reputable institutions like OKF putting together a concise, well-formulated rebuttal, and broadcasting it well beyond the confines of the OA community. Starting with the Letters column of The Economist.

The issue here is not the study itself, but the distortions that mainstream media is introducing in transmitting its main message. I agree with Klaus: let's focus on the message, not the messenger.

Francois

From: Klaus Graf <klausgraf at googlemail.com<mailto:klausgraf at googlemail.com>>
Date: Monday, October 7, 2013 2:33 PM
To: Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk<mailto:pm286 at cam.ac.uk>>
Cc: François GREY <francois.grey at cern.ch<mailto:francois.grey at cern.ch>>, open-science <open-science at lists.okfn.org<mailto:open-science at lists.okfn.org>>
Subject: Re: [open-science] Fake Cancer study published in 157 Open Access Journals

I am still disappointed of the quite unfair handling of the Bohannon scoop by OA advocates I admire(d) like Suber or now Murray Rust. I never thought I would be on the side of Scholarly Kitchen

http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/10/04/open-access-sting-reveals-deception-missed-opportunities/

See also
http://archivalia.tumblr.com/tagged/openaccess

I still cannot see serious flaws and would like to be spared by offlist comments suggesting I should read the critics of Suber (quite unfair), Eisen (unfair) and Taylor (ridicolous). I will delete such spam immediately.

The "definitive rejection" by Eysenbach is in my opinion absolutely worthless. The study isn't "blatantly unethical" as Eysenbach writes because only an undercover operation could demonstrate the extension of the OA sump. There is an shocking alliance of scam publishers and editors calling Bohannon a "criminal" and pseudo-serious critiics like Eysenbach.

If you don’t like that message, don’t blame the messenger!

Klaus Graf
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-science/attachments/20131007/0f5b79a1/attachment-0001.html>