Will the Real Scientists Please Stand Up?

It is an amusing story, and I will try to spare you the four-page version of news piece told by ARD (German public TV, Channel One). 

So the headline of this piece is over 5,000 German professors/scientists....associated with German university operations.....have published research papers....published by....publishers.  The suggestion here is that a group of disrespected publishers...mostly online specialist journals have grown in the past two decades.  They need new material every month, and these 5,000 German scientists are participating in fraudulent research (or this is what the experts say to ARD).

The suggestion here is that these commercial journals are not in alignment with standard rules of 'scientific quality assurance'.

The hint by ARD?  Almost anybody can publish what they want.  You don't have to be a real scientist, nor does your work have to have absolute values on the data collected.

So the news folks now introduce the term "pirate publishing", which has been around for probably decades.  I might even go and suggest that it existed in the 1800s as well.

About eight years ago, I sat and watched an interview where a US professor talked to this issue, and he laid out the basic problem.  To be recognized in any university setting....you needed to state for your cause (your promotion) that you got published.  We aren't talking about once every three years.....but articles being published several times each year.  Even if this were just a 300-word essay piece talking to one minor topic....it's being noted in print.

These 5,000 German professors or scientists?  They are concerned with their future promotion, and this science report is their method of getting noted.

The new problem which is being laid out.....who is a scientist and who is not.  You can see a potential 'battle' erupting here over some accreditation that the government may have to hand out and say that these people are scientists, and these other people are not scientists.  In a way, it's a bit amusing to see this scientist landscape being laid out and how the government may be the presented solver of this 'problem' (if it is a problem).

The odds that half the material being presented in real science journals might be faked....by real scientists?  Oh.....let's not bring that topic up.  That would just freak out the Germans even more.