Major publisher retracts 43 scientific papers amid wider fake peer-review scandal

[mike_c]

8. this is a bunch of whooie....

The majority of scientists in America are academic scientists, not employees of companies like Monsanto. Most fundamental, basic research occurs in university laboratories, paid for with public funds, and conducted in the public interest. In my department, for example, no one's research is funded by for-profit corporations like Monsanto. No one. Instead, we're almost all funded either by public funding (e.g. the National Science Foundation or the various federal land management agencies like the Dept of Interior) or by private foundations that make grants in the public interest, e.g. the Howard Hughes Medical Foundation.

That vast conspiracy of science and industry that you fear is not really very vast, after all.

And your specific reference to the Serolini affair suggests that you actually support the subversion of peer review and the erosion of professional standards in scientific publishing. The editor of the pay-to-publish vanity journal that ultimately published the Serolini et al paper has admitted that they did no meaningful peer review at all, once Serolini's check cleared.