honesty in scholarly affairs - Science-Education-Research

Occidently re-orienting atoms

It seems atoms are not quite as chemists imagine them not to be

Keith S. Taber

A research paper presenting a new model of atomic and molecular structure was recently brought to my attention. ¹

'New Atomic Model with Identical Electrons Position in the Orbital's and Modification of Chemical Bonds and MOT [molecular orbital theory]' ² is published in a recently-launched journal with the impressive title of Annals of Atoms and Molecules. This is an open-access journal available free on the web – so readily accessible to chemistry experts, as well as students studying the subject and lay-people looking to learn from a scholarly source. [Spoiler alert – it may not be an ideal source for scholarly information!]

In the paper, Dr Morshed proposes a new model of the atom that he suggests overcomes many problems with the model currently used in chemistry.

A new model of atomic structure envisages East and West poles as well as North and South poles) (Morshed, 2020a, p.8)

Of course, as I have often pointed out on this blog, one of the downsides of the explosion in on-line publishing and the move to open access models of publication, is that anyone can set up as an academic journal publisher and it can be hard for the non-expert to know what reflects genuine academic quality when what gets published in many new journals often seems to depend primarily upon an author being willing to pay the publisher a hefty fee (Taber, 2013).

That is not to suggest open-access publishing has to compromise quality: the well-established, recognised-as-prestigious journals can afford to charge many hundreds of pounds for open-access publication and still be selective. But, new journals, often unable to persuade experienced experts to act as reviewers, will not attract many quality papers, and so cannot be very selective if they are to cover costs (or indeed make the hoped-for profits for their publishers).

A peer reviewed journal

The journal with the impressive title of Annals of Atom and Molecules has a website which explains that

"Annals of Atoms and Molecules is an open access, peer reviewed journal that publishes novel research insights covering but not limited to constituents of atoms, isotopes of an element, models of atoms and molecules, excitations and de-excitations, ionizations, radiation laws, temperatures and characteristic wavelengths of atoms and molecules. All the published manuscripts are subjected to standardized peer review processing".
https://scholars.direct/journal.php?jid=atoms-and-molecules

So, in principle at least, the journal has experts in the field critique submissions, and advise the editors on (i) whether a manuscript has potential to be of sufficient interest and quality to be worth publishing, and (ii) if so, what changes might be needed before publications is wise.

Read about peer review

Standardised peer review gives the impression of some kind of moderation (perhaps renormalisation given the focus of the journal? ³) of review reports, which would involve a lot of extra work and another layer of administration in the review process…but I somehow suspect this claim really just meant a 'standard' process. This does not seem to be a journal where great care is taken over the language used.

Effective peer review relies on suitable experts taking on the reviewing, and editors prepared to act on their recommendations. The website lists five members of the editorial board, most of whom seem to be associated with science departments in academic institutions:

Prof. Farid Menaa (Fluorotronics Inc) ⁴
Prof. Sabrin Ragab Mohamed Ibrahim (Department of Pharmacognosy and Pharmaceutical chemistry, Taibah University)
Prof. Mina Yoon (Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Tennessee)
Dr. Christian G Parigger (Department of Physics, University of Tennessee Space Institute)
Dr. Essam Hammam El-Behaedi (Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of North Carolina Wilmington)

The members of a journal Editorial Board will not necessarily undertake the reviewing themselves, but are the people entrusted by the publisher with scholarly oversight of the quality of the journal. For this journal it is claimed that "Initially the editorial board member handles the manuscript and may assign or the editorial staff may assign the reviewers for the received manuscript". This sounds promising, as at least (it is claimed) all submissions are initially seen by a Board member, whether or not they actually select the expert reviewers. (The 'or' means that the claim is, of course, logically true even if in actuality all of the reviewers are assigned by the unidentified office staff.)

At the time of writing only three papers have been published in the Annals. One reviews a spectroscopic method, one is a short essay on quantum ideas in chemistry – and then there is Dr Morshed's new atomic theory.

A new theory of atomic structure

The abstract of Dr Morshed's paper immediately suggests that this is a manuscript which was either not carefully prepared or has been mistreated in production. The first sentence is:

The concept of atom has undergone numerous changes in the history of chemistry, most notably the realization that atoms are divisible and have internal structure Scientists have known about atoms long before they could produce images of them with powerful magnifying tools because atoms could not be seen, the early ideas about atoms were mostly founded in philosophical and religion-based reasoning.
Morshed, 2020a, p.6

Presumably, this was intended to be more than one sentence. If the author made errors in the text, they should have been queried by the copy editor. If the production department introduced errors, then they should have been corrected by the author when sent the proofs for checking. Of course, a few errors can sometimes still slip through, but this paper has many of them. Precise language is important in a research paper, and sloppy errors do not give the reader confidence in the work being reported.

The novelty of the work is also set out in the abstract:

In my new atomic model, I have presented the definite position of electron/electron pairs in the different orbital (energy shells) with the identical distance among all nearby electron pairs and the degree position of electrons/electron pairs with the Center Point of Atoms (nucleus) in atomic structure, also in the molecular orbital.
Morshed, 2020a, p.6

This suggests more serious issues with the submission than simple typographical errors.

Orbital /energy shells

The term "orbital (energy shells)" is an obvious red flag to any chemist asked to evaluate this paper. There are serious philosophical arguments about precisely what a model is and the extent to which a model of the atom might be considered to be realistic. Arguably, models that are not mathematical and which rely on visualising the atom are inherently not realistic as atoms are not the kinds of things one could see. So, terms such as shell or orbital are either being used to refer to some feature in a mathematical description or are to some extent metaphorical. BUT, when the term shell is used, it conventionally means something different from an orbital.

That is, in the chemical community, the electron shell (sic, not energy shell) and the orbital refer to different classes of entity (even if in the case of the K shell there is only one associated orbital). Energy levels are related, but again somewhat distinct – an energy level is ontologically quite different to an orbital or a shell in a similar way to how sea level is very different in kind to a harbour or a lagoon; or how 'mains voltage' is quite different from the house's distribution box or mains ring; or how an IQ measurement is a different kind of thing to the brain of the person being assessed.

Definite positions of electrons

An orbital is often understood as a description of the distribution of the electron density – we might picture (bearing in mind my point that the most authentic models are mathematical) the electron smeared out as in a kind of time-lapse representation of where the electron moves around the volume of space designated as an orbital. Although, as an entity small enough for quantum effects to be significant (a 'quanticle'? – with some wave-like characteristics, rather than a particle that is just like a bearing ball only much smaller), it may be better not to think of the electron actually being at any specific point in space, but rather having different probabilities of being located at specific points if we could detect precisely where it was at any moment.

That is, if one wants to consider the electron as being at specific points in space then this can only be done probabilistically. The notion of "the definite position of electron/electron pairs in the different orbital" is simply nonsensical when the orbital is understood in terms of a wave function. Any expert asked to review this manuscript would surely have been troubled by this description.

It is often said that electrons are sometimes particles and sometimes waves but that is a very anthropocentric view deriving from how at the scale humans experience the world, these seem very distinct types of things. Perhaps it is better to think that electrons are neither particles nor waves as we experience them, but something else (quanticles) with more subtle behavioural repertoires. We think that there is a fundamental inherent fuzziness to matter at the scale where we describe atoms and molecules.

So, Dr Morshed wants to define 'definite positions' for electrons in his model, but electrons in atoms do not have a fixed position. (Later there is reference to circulation – so perhaps these are considered as definite relative positions?) In any case, due to the inherent fuzziness in matter, if an electron's position was known absolutely then there would would (by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle) be an infinite uncertainty in its momentum, so although we might know 'exactly' where it was 'now' (or rather 'just now' when the measurement occurred as it would take time for the signal to be processed through first our laboratory, and then our nervous, apparatus!) this would come with having little idea where it was a moment later. Over any duration of time, the electron in an atom does not have a definite position – so there is little value in any model that seeks to represent such a fixed position.

The problem addressed

Dr Morshed begins by giving some general historical introduction to ideas about the atom, before going on to set out what is argued to be the limitation of current theory:

Electrons are arranged in different orbital[s] by different numbers in pairs/unpaired around the nuclei. Electrons pairs are associated by opposite spin together to restrict opposite movement for stability in orbital rather angular movements. The structural description is obeyed for the last more than hundred years but the exact positions of electrons/pairs in the energy shells of atomic orbital are not described with the exact locations among different orbital/shells.
Morshed, 2020a, p.6

Some of this is incoherent. It may well be that English is not Dr Morshed's native language, in which case it is understandable that producing clear English prose may be challenging. What is less forgivable is that whichever of Profs. Ibrahim, Yoon, or Drs Menaa, Parigger, or El-Behaedi initially handled the manuscript did not point out that it needed to be corrected and in clear English before it could be considered for publication, which could have helped the author avoid the ignominy of having his work published with so many errors.

That assumes, of course, that whichever of Ibrahim, Yoon, Menaa, Parigger, or El-Behaedi initially handled the manuscript were so ignorant of chemistry to be excused for not spotting that a paper addressing the issue of how current atomic models fail to assign "exact positions of electrons/pairs in the energy shells of atomic orbital are not described with the exact locations among different orbital/shells" both confused distinct basic atomic concepts and seemed to be criticising a model of atomic structure that students move beyond before completing upper secondary chemistry. In other words, this paper should have been rejected on editorial screening, and never should have been sent to review, as its basic premise was inconsistent with modern chemical theory.

If, as claimed, all papers are seen by the one of the editorial board, then the person assigned as handling editor for this one does not seem to have taken the job seriously. (And as only three papers have been published since the journal started, the workload shared among five board members does not seem especially onerous.)

Just in case the handling editorial board member was not reading the text closely enough, Dr Morshed offered some images of the atomic model which is being critiqued as inadequate in the paper:

A model of the atom criticised in the paper in Annals of Atoms and Molecules (Morshed, 2020a, p.7)

I should point out that I am able to reproduce material from this paper as it is claimed as copyright of the author who has chosen to publish open access with a license that "permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited". (Although, if you look very closely at the first figure, it seems to have superimposed in red text "© Copyright www.chemistrytutotial.org", where, by an unlikely coincidence, I found what seems to be the same image on the page Atomic Structure with Examples.)

Read about copyright in academic works

Again, the handling editor should have noticed that these images in the figure reflect the basic model of the atom taught in introductory school classes as commonly represented in simple two-dimensional images. These are not the models used to progress knowledge in academic chemistry today.

These images are not being reproduced in the research paper as part of some discussion of atomic representations in school textbooks. Rather this is the model that the author is suggesting falls short as part of current chemical theory – but it is actually an introductory pedagogical model that is not the basis of any contemporary chemical research, and indeed has not been so for the best part of a century. Even though the expression "the electrons/electron pairs position is not identical by their position, alignments or distribution" does not have any clear meaning in normal English, what is clear is that these very simple models are only used today for introductory pedagogic purposes.

Symmetrical atoms?

The criticism of the model continues:

The existing electrons pair coupling model is not also shown clearly in figure by which a clear structure of opposite spine pair can be drowned. Also there are no proper distribution of electron/s around the center (nuclei) to maintain equal number of electrons/electronic charge (charge proportionality) around the total mass area of atomic circle (360°) in the existing atomic model (Figure 1). There are no clear ideas about the speed proportion and time of circulation of electrons/electron pairs in the atomic orbital/shells so there is no answer about the possibility of uneven number of electrons/electron pairs at any position /side of atomic body can arise that must make any atom unstable.
Morshed, 2020a, p.7

Again, this makes little sense (to me at least – perhaps the Editorial Board members are better at hermeneutics than I am). Now we are told that electrons are 'circulating' in the orbitals/shell which seems inconsistent with them having the "definite positions" that Dr Morshed's model supposedly offers. Although I can have a guess at some of the intended meaning, I really would love to know what is meant by "a clear structure of opposite spine pair can be drowned".

Protecting an atom from drowning? (Images by Image by ZedH and Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay)

A flat model of the atom

I initially thought that Dr Morshed is concerned that the model shown in figure 1 cannot effectively show how in the three dimensional atomic structure the electrons must be arranged to give a totally symmetric patterns: and (in his argument) that this would be needed else it would leave the atoms unstable. Of course, two dimensional images do not easily show three dimensional structure. So when Dr Morshed referred to the "atomic circle (360°) in the existing atomic model" I assumed he was actually referring to the sphere.

On reflection, I am not so sure. I was unimpressed by the introduction of cardinal points for the atom (see Dr Morshed's figure 2 above, and figure 4 below). I could understand the idea of a nominal North and South pole in relation to the angular momentum of the nucleus and electrons 'spinning up or down' – but surely the East and West poles are completely arbitrary for an atom as any point on the 'equator' could be used as the basis for assigning these poles. However, if Dr Morshed is actually thinking in terms of a circular (i.e., flat) model of the atom, and not circular representations of a spherical model of atomic structure then atoms would indeed have an Occident and an Orient! The East pole WOULD be to the right when the atom has the North pole at the top as is conventional in most maps today. ⁵

But atoms are not all symmetrical?

But surely most atoms are not fully symmetrical, and indeed this is linked to why most elements do not commonly exist as discrete atoms. The elements of those that do, the noble gas elements, are renown for not readily reacting because they (atypically for atoms) have a symmetrical electronic 'shield' for the nuclear charge. However, even some of these elements can be made cold enough to solidify – as the van der Waals forces allow transient fluctuating dipoles. So the argument seems to be based on a serious alternative conception of the usual models of atomic structure.

It is the lack of full symmetry in an atom of say, fluorine, or chlorine, which means that although it is a neutral species it has an electron affinity (that is, energy is released when the anion is formed) as an electron can be attracted to the core charge where it is not fully shielded.

The reference to "time of circulation of electrons/electron pairs in the atomic orbital/shells" seems to refer to a mechanical model of orbital motion, which again, has no part in current chemical theory.

Preventing negative electron pairs repelling each other

Dr Morshed suggests that the existing model of atomic structure cannot explain

Why the similar charged electrons don't feel repulsion among themselves within the same nearby atomic orbital of same atom or even in the molecular orbital when two or more atomic orbital come closer to form molecular orbital within tinier space though there is more possibility of repulsion between similar charged electrons according to existing atomic model.
Morshed, 2020a, p.7

Electrons do not feel repulsion for the same reason they do not feel shame or hunger or boredom – or disdain for poor quality journals. Electrons are not the kind of objects that can feel anything. However, this anthropomorphic expression is clearly being used metaphorically.

I think Dr Morshed is suggesting that the conventional models of atomic structure do not explain why electrons/electron pairs do not repel each other. Of course, they do repel each other – so there is no need to look for an explanation. This then seems to be an alternative conception of current models of the atom. (The electrons do not get ejected from the atom as they are also attracted to the nucleus – but, if they did not repel each other, there would be no equilibrium of forces, and the structure of the atom would not be stable.)

A new model of atomic structure supposedly reflects the 'proper' angles between electrons in atoms (Morshed, 2020, p.9)

Dr Morshed suggests that his model (see his Figure 4) 'proves the impossibility of repulsion between any electron pairs' – even those with similar charges. All electron pairs have negative (so similar) charges – it is part of the accepted definition of an electron that is is a negatively charged entity. I do not think Dr Morshed is actually suggesting otherwise, even if he thinks the electrons in different atoms have different magnitudes of negative charge (Morshad, 2020b).

Dr Morshed introduces a new concept that he calls 'center of electron pairs neutralization point'.

This is the pin-point situated in a middle position between two electrons of opposite spin pairs. The point is exactly between of opposite spine electron pairs so how the opposite electronic spin is neutralized to remaining a stable electron pair consisting of two opposite spin electrons. This CENP points are assumed to be situated between the cross section of opposite spine electronic pair's magnetic momentum field diameter (Figure 3).
Morshed, 2020a, p.8

The yellow dot represents a point able to neutralise the opposite spin of a pair of electrons(!), and is located at the point found by drawing a cross from the ends of the ⥯ symbols used to show the electron spin! This seems to be envisaged a real point that has real effects, despite being located in terms of the geometry of a totally arbitrary symbol.

So, the electron pair is shown as a closely bound pair of electrons with the midspot of the complex highlighted (yellow in the figure) as the 'center of electron pairs neutralization point'. Although the angular momentum of the electrons with opposite spin leads to a magnetic interaction between them, they are still giving rise to an electric field which permeates through the space around them. Dr Morshed seems to be suggesting that in his model there is no repulsion between the electron pairs. He argues that:

According to magnetic attraction/repulsion characteristics any similar charges repulse or opposite charges attract when the charges energy line is in straight points. If similar charged or opposite charged end are even close but their center of energy points is not in straight line, there will be no attraction or repulsion between the charges (positive/negative). Similarly, when electrons are arranged in energy shells around the nucleus the electrons remain in pairs within opposite spin electrons where the poses a point which represent as the center of repulsion/attraction points (CENP) and two CENP never come to a straight within the atomic orbital so the similar charged electrons pairs don't feel repulsion within the energy shells.
Morshed, 2020a, pp.8-9

A literal reading of this makes little sense as any two charges will always have their centres in a straight line (from the definition of a straight line!) regardless of whether similar or opposite charges or whether close or far apart.

My best interpretation of this (and I am happy to hear a better one) is that because the atom is flat, and because the electron pairs have spin up and spin down electrons, with are represented by a kind of ⥮ symbol, the electrons in some way shield the 'CENP' so that the electron pair can only interact with another charge that has a direct line of sight to the CENP.

Morshed seems to be suggesting that although electron pairs are aligned to allow attractions with the nucleus (e.g., blue arrows) any repulsion between electron pairs is blocked because an electron in the pair shields the central point of the pair (e.g., red arrow and lines)

There are some obvious problems here from a canonical perspective, even leaving aside the flat model of the atom. One issue is that although electrons are sometimes represented as ↿ or ⇂ to indicate spin, electrons are not actually physically shaped like ↿. Secondly, pairing allows electrons to occupy the same orbital (that is, have the same set of principal, azimuthal and magnetic quantum numbers) – but this does not mean they are meant to be fixed into a closely bound entity. Also, this model works by taking the idea of spin direction literally, when – if we do that – electrons can have only have spin of ±¹/₂. In a literal representation such as used by Dr Morshed he would need to have ALL his electrons orientated vertically (or at least all at the same angle from the vertical). So, the model does not work in its own terms as it would prevent most of the electron pairs being attracted to the nucleus.

Morshed's figure 4 'corrected' given that electrons can only exist in two spin states. In the (corrected version of the representation of the) Morshed model most electron pairs would not be attracted to the nucleus.

A new (mis)conception of ionic bonding

Dr Morshed argues that

In case of ionic compound formation problem with the existing atomic model is where the transferred electron will take position in the new location on transferred atom? If the electrons position is not proportionally distributed along total 360 circulating area of atom, then the position of new transferred electron will cause the polarity in every ion (both cation and anion forms by every transformation of electrons) so the desired ionization is not possible thus every atom (ion) would become dipolar. On the point of view any ionization would not possible i.e., no ionic bonded compound would have formed.
Morshed, 2020, p.7

Again, although the argument may have been very clear to the author, this seems incoherent to a reader. I think Dr Morshed may be arguing that unless atoms have totally symmetrical electrons distributions ("proportionally distributed along total 360 circulating area of atom") then when the ion is formed it will have a polarity. Yet, this seems entirely back to front.

If the atom to be ionised was totally symmetric (as Dr Morshed thinks it should be), then forming an ion from the atom would require disrupting the symmetry. Whereas, by contrast, in the current canonical model, we assume most atoms are not symmetrical, and the formation of simple ions leads to a symmetric distribution of electrons (but unlike in the noble gas atoms, a symmetrical electron distribution which does not balance the nuclear charge).

Dr Morshad illustrates his idea:

Ionic bond formation represented by an non-viable interaction between atoms (Morshed, 2020, p.10)

Now these images show interactions between discrete atoms (a chemically quite unlikely scenario, as discrete atoms of sodium and chlorine are not readily found) that are energetically non-viable. As has often been pointed out, the energy released when the chloride ion is formed is much less than the energy required to ionise the sodium atom, so although this scheme is very common on the web and in poor quality textbooks, it is a kind of chemical fairy tale that does not relate to any likely chemical context. (See, for example, Salt is like two atoms joined together.)

The only obvious difference between these two versions of the fairly tale (if we ignore that in the new version both protons and neutrons appear to be indicated by + signs which is unhelpful) seems to be that the transferred electron changes its spin for some reason that does not seem to be explained in the accompanying text. The explanation that is given is

My new atomic model with identical electrons pair angle position is able to give logical solution to the problems of ion/ionic bond formation. As follows: The metallic atom which donate electrons during ion formation from outermost orbital, the electrons are arranged maintaining definite degree angle around 360° atomic mass body shown in (Figure 4). After the transformation the transferred electron take position at the vacant place of the transferred atoms outermost orbital, then instant the near most electrons/pairs rearrange their position in the orbital changing their angle position with the CPA [central point of the atom, i.e., the nucleus] due to electromagnetic repulsion feeling among the similar charged electrons/pairs. Thus the ionic atom gets equal electron charge density around whole of their 360° atomic mass body resulting the cation and anion due to the positive and negative charge difference in atomic orbital with their respective nucleus. Thus every ion becomes non polar ion to form ionic bond within two opposite charged ion (Figure 5).
Morshed, 2020, p.9

So, I think, supposedly part (b) of Dr Morshed's figure 5 is meant to show, better than part (a), how the electron distribution is modified when the ion is formed. It would of course be quite possible to show this in the kind of representations used in (a), but in any case it does not look any more obvious in (b) to my eye!

So, figure 5 does not seem to show very well Dr Morshed's solution to a problem I do not think actually exists in the context on a non-viable chemical process. Hm.

Finding space for the forces

Another problem with the conventional models, according to Dr Morshed, is that, as suggested in his figures 6 and 7 is that the current models do not leave space for the 'intermolecular' [sic, intramolecular] force of attraction in covalent bonds.

In current models, according to Morshed's paper, electrons get in the way of the covalent bond (Morshed, 2020, p.11)

Dr Morshad writes that

According to present structural presentation of shared paired electrons remain at the juncture of the bonded atomic orbital, if they remain like such position they will restrict the Inter [sic] Molecular Force (IMF) between the bonded atomic nuclei because the shared paired electron restricts the attraction force lying at the straight attraction line of the bonded nuclei the shown in (Figure 6a).
Morshed, 2020, p.11

There seem to be several alternative conceptions operating here – reflecting some of the kind of confusions reported in the literature from studies on students' ideas.

Just because the images are static two dimensional representations, this does not mean electrons are envisaged to be stationary at some point on a shell;
and just because we draw representations of atoms on flat paper, this does not mean atoms are flat;
The figure is meant to represent the bond, which is an overall configuration of the nuclei and the electrons, so there is not a distinct intramolecular force operating separately;
Without the electrons there would be no "Inter [sic] Molecular Force (IMF) between the bonded atomic nuclei" as the nuclei repel each other: the bonding electrons do not restrict the intramolecular force (blocking it, because they lie between the nuclei), but are crucial to it existing.

Regarding the first point here, Dr Morshed suggests

Covalent bonds are formed by sharing of electrons between the bonded atoms and the shared paired electrons are formed by contribution of one electron each of the participating atoms. The shared paired electrons remain at the overlapping chamber (at the juncture of the overlapped atomic orbital).
Morshed, 2020, p.9

That is, according to Dr Morshed's account of current atomic theory, in drawing overlapping electron shells, the electrons of the bond which are 'shared' (and that is just a metaphor, of course) are limited to the area shown as overlapping. This is treating an abstract and simplistic representation as if it is realistic. There is no chamber. Indeed, the molecular orbital formed by the overlap of the atomic orbitals will 'allow' the electrons to be likely to be found within quite a (relatively – on an atomic scale) large volume of space around the bond axis. Atomic orbitals that overlap to form molecular orbitals are in effect replaced by those molecular orbitals – the new orbital geometry reflects the new wavefunction that takes into account both electrons in the orbital.

So, if there has been overlap, the contributing atomic orbitals should be considered to have been replaced (not simply formed a chamber where the circles overlap), except of course Dr Morshed 's figures 6 and 7 show shells and do not actually represent the system of atomic orbitals.

Double bonds

This same failure to interpret the intentions and limitation of the simplistic form of representation used in introductory school chemistry leads to similar issues when Dr Morshed considers double bonding.

A new model of atomic structure suggests an odd geometry for pi bonds (Morshed, 2020, p.12)

Dr Morshed objects to the kind of representation on the left in his figure 8 as two electron pairs occupy the same area of overlap ('chamber'),

It is shown for an Oxygen molecule; two electron shared pairs are formed and take place at the overlapping chamber result from the outermost orbital of two bonded Oxygen atoms. But in real séance [sic?] that is impossible because two shared paired electrons cannot remain in a single overlapping chamber because of repulsion among each pairs and among individual electrons.
Morshed, 2020, p.12.

Yet, in the model Dr Morshed employs he had claimed that electron pairs do not repel unless they are aligned to allow a direct line of sight between their CNPs. In any case, the figure he criticises does not show overlapping orbitals, but overlapping L shells. He suggests that the existing models (which of course are not models currently used in chemistry except in introductory classes) imply the double bond in oxygen must be two sigma bonds: "The present structure of O₂ molecule show only two pairs of electron with head to head overlapping in the overlapping chamber i.e., two sigma bond together which is impossible" (p.12).

However, this is because a shell type presentation is being used which is suitable for considering whether a bond is single or double (or triple), but no more. In order to discuss sigma and pi bonds with their geometrical and symmetry characteristics, one must work with orbitals, not shells. ⁶

Yet Dr Morshed has conflated shells and orbitals throughout his paper. His figure 8a that supposedly shows "Present molecular orbital structural showing two shared paired electrons in the same overlapped chamber" does not represent (atomic, let alone molecular) orbitals, and is not intended to suggest that the space between overlapping circles is some kind of chamber.

"The remaining two opposite spin unpaired electrons in the two bonded [sic?] Oxygen's outer- most orbital [sic, shell?] getting little distorted towards the shared paired electrons in their respective atomic orbital then they feel an attraction among the opposite spin electrons thus they make a bond pairs by side to side overlapping forms the pi-bond"
Morshed, 2020, p.12.

It is not at all clear to see how this overlap occurs in this representation (i.e., 8b). Moreover, the unpaired electrons will not "feel an attraction" as they are both negatively charged even if they have anti-parallel spins. The scheme also makes it very difficult to see how the pi bond could have the right symmetry around the bond axis, if the 'new molecular orbital structure' was taken at face value.

Conclusion

Dr Morshed's paper is clearly well meant, but it does not offer any useful new ideas to progress chemistry. It is highly flawed. There is no shame in producing highly flawed manuscripts – no one is perfect, which is why we have peer review to support authors in pointing out weaknesses and mistakes in their work and so allowing them to develop their ideas till they are suitable for publication. Dr Morshed has been badly let down by the publishers and editors of Annals of Atoms and Molecules. I wonder how much he was charged for this lack of service? ⁷

Publishing a journal paper like this, which is clearly not ready to make a contribution to the scholarly community through publication, does not only do a disservice to the author (who will have this publication in the public domain for anyone to evaluate) but can potentially confuse or mislead students who come across the journal. Confusing shells with orbitals, misrepresenting how ionic bonds form, implying that covalent bonds are due to a force between nuclei, suggesting that electron pairs need not repel each other, suggesting a flat model of the atom with four poles… there are many points in this paper that can initiate or reinforce student misconceptions.

Supposedly, this manuscript was handled by a member of the editorial board, sent to peer reviewers and the publication decision based on those review reports. It is hard to imagine any peer reviewer who is actually an academic chemist (let alone an expert in the topics published in this journal) considering this paper would be publishable, even with extensive major revisions. The whole premise of the paper (that simple representations of atoms with concentric shells of electrons reflect the models of atomic and molecular structure used today in chemistry research) is fundamentally flawed. So:

were there actually any reviews? (Really?)
if so, were the reviews carried out by experts in the field? (Or even graduate chemists or physicists?)
were the reviews positive enough to justify publication?

If the journal feels I am being unfair, then I am happy to publish any response submitted as a comment below.

Dr Menaa, Prof. Ibrahim, Prof. Yoon, Dr Parigger, Dr El-Behaedi…

If you were the Board Member who handled this submission and you feel my criticisms are unfair, please feel free to submit a comment. I am happy to publish your response.

Or, if you were not the Board Member who (allegedly) handled this submission, and would like to make that clear…

Works cited:

Gilbert, W. (1600/2016). On the Magnet, Magnetic Bodies, and the Great Magnet of the Earth. A new science, with many both arguments and experiment proofs. (V. Wilmont, Trans.): Lulu.com.
Morshed, A. M. A. (2020a). New Atomic Model with Identical Electrons Position in the Orbital's and Modification of Chemical Bonds and MOT. Annals of Atoms and Molecules, 2(1), 6-13.
Morshed, A. M. A. (2020b) Electrons Charge Magnitudes (ECM) are Dissimilar for Different Mass Atoms'. https://www.researchgate.net/project/Electrons-Charge-MagnitudesECM-are-Dissimilar-for-Different-Mass-Atoms
Taber, K. S. (2013, 29th November). Challenges to academic publishing from the demand for instant open access to research. Chinese Social Sciences Today, p. A06.

Note:

¹ I thank Professor Eric Scerri of UCLA for bringing my attention to the deliciously named 'Annals of Atoms and Molecules', and this specific contribution.

² That is my reading of the abbreviation, although the author uses the term a number of times before rather imprecisely defining it: "Similar solution can be made for molecular orbital (MOT) as such as: The molecular orbital (MO) theory…" (p.10).

³ Renormalisation is the name given to a set of mathematical techniques used in areas such as quantum field theory when calculations give implausible infinite results in order to 'lose' the unwanted infinities. Whilst this might seem like cheating – it is tolerated as it works very well.

⁴ I was intrigued that 'Prof.' Farid Menaa seemed to work for a non-academic institution, as generally companies cannot award the title of Professor. Of course, Prof. Meena may also have an appointment at a university that partners the company, or could have emeritus status having retired from academia.

I found him profiled on another publisher's site as "Professor, Principal Investigator, Director, Consultant Editor, Reviewer, Event Organizer and Entrepreneur,…" who had worked in oncology, dermatology, haemotology (when "he pioneered new genetic variants of stroke in sickle cell anemia patients" which presumably is much more positive than it reads). Reading on, I found he had 'followed' complementary formations in "Medecine [sic], Pharmacy, Biology, Biochemistry, Food Sciences and Technology, Marine Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Nano-Biotechnology, Bio-Computation, and Bio-Statistics" and was "involved in various R&D projects in multiple areas of medicine, pharmacy, biology, genetics, genomics, chemistry, biophysics, food science, and technology". All of which seemed very impressive (nearly as wide a range of expertise as predatory journal publishers claim for me), but made me none the wiser about the source of his Professorial title.

⁵ Today. Although interestingly, in the first major comprehensive account of magnetism, Gilbert (1600/2016) tended to draw the North-South axis of the earth horizontally in his figures.

⁶ The representations we draw are simple depictions of something more subtle. If the circles did represent orbitals then they could not show the entire volume of space where the electron might be found (as this is theoretically infinite) but rather an envelope enclosing a volume where there is the highest probability (or 'electron density'). So orbitals will actually overlap to some extent even when simple images suggest otherwise.

⁷ I wonder because the appropriate page, https://scholars.direct/publication-charges.php, "was not found on this server" when I looked to see.

Any (sophisticated) old iron?

Do I have any old spectrometers lying around that I no longer need?

Keith S. Taber

"Any old iron, any old iron
Any, any, any old iron
An old iron pot, an old iron cot
An old iron bicycle or anything you've got
An old iron plate, an old iron grate yer mother used to fry on
And I'm going to let my country have me old watch-chain!
Old iron, old iron!"
From 'Any old iron' – a music hall song written by Harry Champion in 1911. 'Any old iron' was (is?) a traditional call used by scrap merchants collecting unwanted items that could be melted down for recycling

An email offers to help me 'get rid of' obsolete lab equipment:

An email asking if I have any old lab apparatus to dispose of. The opening claim is false – none of my research works mention this brand of lab. instruments. Clearly, if Andreas had read my research, he would not be contacting me in this way. (Why is it so acceptable nowadays to simply lie when approaching people?)

Dear Andreas
Thank you for your message, enquiring about instrumentation you suggest I referred to in my recent published work. It is pleasing to think you are looking at my work. However, I am not sure which study you are referring to:
Was this the perspective piece discussing the likely effect of the global pandemic on the more progressive aspects of science education?
Or perhaps the essay review of the textbook on pedagogy.
Or, as you are interested in my analytical work, I wonder if perhaps you mean my analysis of the errors and lack of coherence in the chemistry content specified in the English National Curriculum?
Whichever article it was, I do hope you found it of interest.
Best wishes
Keith

I have *written about* analytical instruments used in the laboratory – but analysis in my *educational research* did not use them (figure from Taber, 2012)

Work cited:

Taber, K. S. (2012). Key concepts in chemistry. In K. S. Taber (Ed.), Teaching Secondary Chemistry (2nd ed., pp. 1-47). London: Hodder Education.

Seeking interspecies transmission of Covid-19 from academics…

Responding to the spin in Inospin

Dear Claire
Thank you for your message.
You tell me that you have reviewed my research, and yet you feel I would be in a good position to submit a research proposal on canine cancer cell lines to your pharma company.
I cannot see how anyone who genuinely had reviewed my research/publications and was in any way competent to undertake this kind of search on behalf of an industrial partner could possibly have come to that conclusion.
I had intended to suggest that, assuming you would are both honest and competent, you might wish to explain on what basis you feel my research makes me a suitable candidate for this kind of work. However, checking my email records, I find I sent you a similar email when you invited me to propose a project about manufacturing connectors for textiles and composite foils that would not change the thickness while maintaining flexibility for the automotive industry, which I do not yet seem (?) to have received a reply to. That invitation was also supposedly based on your looking at my research. I struggle to see how you could feel my research is relevant to either of these fields, let alone both of them.
You also claimed to have looked at my research when you 'reached out' to me when you had been "asked by an innovative specialty pharma company to look for proposals on the interspecies transmission of Covid-19 from academics…" (which seemed somewhat unfair to academics).
So, I hope you will understand why I will be dismissing your footer informing me that "any unauthorized review, copying, disclosure or any other use of this information is strictly prohibited" as I suspect that is intended to deter scholars from warning each other that Inospin is not a reputable company that follows careful ethical procedures, but rather that although you present as tagetting your marketing based on scrutiny of researchers' areas of work, this is not true and you are simply sending out spam.
Best wishes
Keith

November 2021: Inospin seeks experts on **canine cancer**– so, after looking at my research, they contact me

August 2021: Inospin seeks experts on **interspecies transmission of COVID-19** – so, after looking at my research, they contact me

Dear Claire
Thank you for the invitation.
I am really intrigued. I would be really fascinated to know what it was, in "Looking at [my] research", that prompted you to reach out to me in particular for help with "connectors for textiles and composite foils that would not change the thickness while maintaining flexibility"?
(Whilst I at least understand what "stable, flexible connectors for textiles and composite foils (PVC, TPO, PU)" means, I struggle to appreciate in what sense these connectors might also be quick: "quick, stable, flexible connectors for textiles and composite foils (PVC, TPO, PU)".)
Best wishes
Keith

June 2021: Inospin seeks experts on **textiles and composite**s – so, after looking at my research, they contact me

Addenda

January 2022: Inospin seeks experts on **sound isolation materials** – so, after looking at my research, they contact me

January 2022: Inospin seeks experts on **pathophysiological mechanisms of equine metabolic syndrome** – so, after looking at my research, they contact me

February 2022: Inospin seeks experts on **gene modification** – so, after looking at my research, they contact me based on my expertise

Can academic misconduct be justified for the greater good?

Is Rahul Hajare the Alan Sokal for the Open Access era?: Part 2

Keith S. Taber

the Journal of Dermatology Sciences Research Reviews & Reports managed to not spot that an article supposedly about safety precautions taken by sex workers in India during the COVID pandemic, but actually about anger management in the workplace, was illustrated by a news bureau's photographs from Bolivia, and made wholesale use of text from a U.S. business association website

In the first part of this article, I discussed some of the publications of Dr Rahul Hajare who has made a habit out of publishing dubious articles in predatory journals that only superficially mimic genuine research journals. I would suspect that most people who publish their research in such predatory journals do so either

in good faith, not realising they are submitting to a journal that only pretends to apply rigorous editorial and peer-review procedures, or
realising that they are in effect simply paying for publication, but enter into an unspoken (and unwritten) conspiracy with the journals by sending manuscripts that at least have a prima facie appearance of being serious work

Dr Hajare does not seem to fall into either category. I do not think he can believe the work he is submitting reflects high quality scholarship, and yet nor does he make an effort to give a superficial impression of proper research writing.

Quite the opposite.

Instead:

He often provides long convoluted titles that seem to juxtapose unrelated items, or short titles that are provocative;
He sometimes compiles papers from segments that seem to be about totally different topics and studies;
He ignores normal paper structures – as when proceeding directly from an introduction § to a conclusion § omitting everything that usually goes between, or writing an abstract which is much longer than the main text of the paper;
He includes nonsense sentences (sometimes very early in the text);
He interjects sentences on unrelated topics;
He makes fantastic or counterfactual claims;
He drops leitmotifs into his work – incongruous references to colours, sunlight, pharmacy institutions …

It would, surely, actually be easier to write articles which were, superficially at least, canonical – and which were coherent and non-contentious. Hajare seems to be deliberately bringing attention to problems in his work as if he is telling his readers – "you cannot take this seriously – do you get the joke'?"

My best assumption is that Hajare is seeking to call out predatory journals for what they are – making it very clear that either:

no editor or expert reviewer has ever read his submissions carefully before publication; or
if his works have been evaluated, they passed an extremely low bar (publication criteria along the lines 'it has (a) a title and (b) some text, and so we can charge a publication fee')

Nobody reading across Hajare's canon could possibly think his work (or at least a large part of it over the last few years) is serious scholarship, or that any results he reports in his hoax papers can be considered reliable. But what he has shown very clearly is that the journals publishing his submissions are not even trying to be serious research journals.

That is very useful, as it could always be claimed that

predatory journals may have inexperienced editors, or struggle to persuade suitable experts to carry out reviews, which is why some poor quality work gets published, yet they are doing their best and will look to improve their standards.

The Hajare hoax makes it clear that that explanation will not do. Any well educated person reading his work will see that there are obvious problems with his manuscripts (obvious, I suspect, because Hajare has made sure they are obvious) and these papers clearly should not stand as part of the research literature.

That's the argument that informed the first part of this article, where it was supported by a range of examples from a selection of Hajare's articles in outlets self-describing as research journals .

However, as I dug into Hajare's outputs, and after a very minimal due diligence (a few quick web searches), I soon found that Hajare's hoax seemed to rely on another feature as well: plagiarism. That is, presenting other people's work as your own.

Can you have a well-meaning plagiarist?

I am sure I must have have plagiarised other people's work.

Certainly not intentionally. But if we are meant to acknowledge sources which we have drawn upon in the thinking that we represent in texts, this is surely inevitable. I recognised this as part of the acknowledgements for one of my books:

I am aware that I inevitably own an enormous debt to the authors of many things I have read over the years that are not cited here as well as to colleagues and students for things I have heard in presentations and in conversations in both formal and informal contexts. I have sought to acknowledge those key sources I am aware have informed my thinking, and I would here like to acknowledge that I am aware that I am surely drawing on many other sources that I either no longer specifically recall or have simply not recognised as influences in writing this book.
I suspect there may even be some good ideas in here that I present as if original, but which have worked their way into my consciousness so slowly that I was unaware that their original inspiration was something I had long ago read or heard. I take some comfort in knowing that if this is indeed so, my failure is probably not so unusual, as is indicated by occasional high-profile examples such as when George Harrison was sued for a great deal of money for not acknowledging a highly popular song was very similar to an earlier hit written by someone else. At least working in the academic world, rather than 'the material world', such unconscious plagiarism is unlikely to lead to claims for vast amounts of unpaid royalties.
Taber, 2013, xi-xii

Deliberate plagiarists, at least if they do not want to be caught, will make sure they change enough so that it is not obvious (especially in terms of being identified by software tools used by publishers) that they are copying.

Students are trained not to work with many long quotes of other people's work (as cutting and pasting is not a high level cognitive skill!) but should paraphrase in their own words as much as possible (so processing the information, thinking about its meaning, relating it to their own prior knowledge to make it meangful – and so having some chance of understanding and remembering it) – and just use a few select quotes that are seen as seminal, punchy, or worth repeating for some other reason. But, the important thing, is: even when paraphrasing, you cite the original sources.¹

Someone who draws upon an other's ideas without citing them may have forgotten the original source or may consider their own ideas are sufficiently different, or believe the background ideas are so much part of what is taken for granted that no citation is needed. (In some fields people still regularly cite Plato and Aristotle, whereas in the natural sciences it would be rare for anyone to cite scientists who introduced foundational ideas that are still underpinning research today when the original publications were decades, and certainly centuries, old.)

It is different with text (or figures). Presenting someone else's text as your own is either due to poor scholarship habits (moving quotations around in a document or between files without the citation so that later it looks like original text) or just deliberate stealing.

Journal norms on reuse of text

There are two issues relating to copying someone else's text or images. Plagiarism and copyright. Plagiarism is a moral issue – a matter of scholarly standards and academic norms. These are socially constructed of course. ²

Today, however, the rules are very clear. An author's text should be her own, except where other work is quoted, in which case there are typographic conventions (quotation marks or block quotes indented from the main text) and the source must be cited. To simply present some else's text as your own is plagiarism: cheating, stealing intellectual property, dishonesty: indeed academic malpractice.

It may also be illegal. An author has copyright in their text. This gives them the right to have it published – or indeed not to allow it to be published. They also have the right to be acknowledged as the author of the text (unless they choose to be anonymous) when their work is published, and they have the right to have the integrity of their text respected: so an editor cannot make substantial changes to work appearing under the author's name without their permission. (Even if some publishers, such as Oxford University Press, will sometimes try to persuade authors to sign away the legal right to protect the integrity to their work.)

Traditionally, publishers have been very fussy to make sure authors assure them that they own the copyright in their submitted works, and that they have not already licensed the rights to another publisher. This is why journals usually insist that authors submitting manuscripts can only send in work that is unpublished and not being considered by another publisher. Traditionally, on publication, the rights in an academic work either transfer to the publisher or the publisher is granted an exclusive license to publish (according to the publication agreement {'contract'} between the parties).

A journal publishing already published work was likely to be infringing another publisher's copyright – and potentially subject to legal redress.

Copyright and open access

Increasingly, research reports are published open access, which normally means that there is a license granted by the author which acknowledges the author's copyright, but allows reuse of the material. Anyone else can copy, and republish, the text in whole or part as long as they do not distort it, and they acknowledge the original source and the license.

So, there is usually no legal barrier to someone republishing an open access article.

However, serous journals do not want to republish material already in the public domain (except sometimes where it is considered a classic paper worth republishing with commentaries, or something was originally published in an obscure source that is not easily accessed). So, a serious research journal is still likely to insist that it will normally only consider publishing previously unpublished material that is not currently under consideration elsewhere.

Hajare's multiple publications

As I demonstrated in the first part of this article, Hajare will sometmes publish the same material, or substantially the same material, in several journals.

"*An attempt to Characterize Street Pharmaceutical Teachers Abusing Drugs and Aspect of Allergy Among Adult Men Attending Long Distance Institutions in Pune, India*" – well, actually, three attempts?

As these are open access journals, this does not breach copyright. It does however go against academic norms. Even predatory journals will usually claim they only accept original material, although one might suspect that is mainly part of the pretense of being serious research journals. Serious journals usually have systems that can check submissions against published work and spot obvious cases of reuse of text, but, presumably, predatory journals would rather have the publication fee than notice this issue.

Hajare's multiple publication habit does not really offer evidence on this, however, as he seems to send copies of manuscripts to different journals almost simultaneously before there is a copy in the public domain to be included in the corpora compiled for plagiarism-detection systems.

Another example would be the article "In Vitro, Widowed and Curse Words form [sic, from?] Principal during Unplanned Meeting of the College in Private Pharmaceutical Instituions [sic] in Pune University India: An Attractive Study", which was such 'an attractive study' that it attracted publication in two journals (Journal of Natural & Ayurvedic Medicine; Current Opinions in Neurological Science) almost simultaneously (on the 1^st and 3^rd July, 2018).

Perhaps the 'In vitro' reference in the article(s) title was a deliberare nod to the study being a hoax. Neither journal seems to have queried why research with human participants might be carried out in vitro rather than, as is customary in the social sciences, in vivo.

"*In Vitro*, Widowed and Curse Words form Principal during Unplanned Meeting of the College in Private Pharmaceutical Instituions [sic] **in Pune University India: An Attractive Study**" was submitted to two journal eight days apart. [Use the 'slider' the see the full images.]

This article(s?) is somewhat longer than most of Hajare's recent output and included a table of results, and even a pie chart supposedly reporting the outcome of 'multivariable analysis':

The results of multivariable analysis – a pie chart from "*In Vitro, Widowed and Curse Word…*"

This study seems (to the best of my understanding) to be about how widows are subject to domestic violence, and in particular being sworn at (which is certainly not acceptable, but perhaps diminishes the seriousness of actual domestic violence if being conflated with it?), by (I think) Pharmacy college principals. Like many of Hajare's articles much of the text is (deliberately?) obscure. And as with many of his studies he seems to leave a large clue that we should not be trying too hard to make sense of the work:

For in the Methods § the reader is told that,

"Using two-stage time location eight clusters sampling, we recruited limited sample size 100 of FAWPPIs [female adults widowed in private pharmaceutical Institutions], ages 21-49 years, who had purchased respect from FAWPPIs in the past month."
p.542 [Current Opinions in Neurological Science version]

Yet in the Executive Summary the reader is instead told,

"This study of 40 homosexual adults aged 24 to 49 years comprised widowed, and cohabiting participants from three occupational groups, and concerned curse risk within this sample."
p.544 [Current Opinions in Neurological Science version]

So, as in other exmples of Hajare's work, there is an inconsistent account of the study being reported.

The versions of the paper in the two journals are not entirely the same, as the version in Current Opinions in Neurological Science places the Executive Summary at the very end of the paper, following the Conclusions. However, the version in Journal of Natural & Ayurvedic Medicine has an extra section. Here the Executive Summary follows the section Conclusions, but precedes a section called Conclusion which repeats the text of the Executive Summary.

The '**Conclusion**' § is different from the '**Conclusions**' § – but the same as the '**Executive Summary'**

Stealing work from other scholars

In any case, re-using one's own work is a rather different matter than genuine plagiarism, where someone else's work is passed off as your own. Sadly, during my preparation of this article it became clear that there was strong evidence suggesting that Hajare is using the work of others and claiming it as his own.

Given that prestige is so important to academics, and this depends to a large degree (although of course not entirely) on respect for published works, to deliberately present someone else's research or scholarship as your own is a serious breach of academic standards, and is a form of misconduct that opens an academic officer to disciplinary action.

Face recognition, IQ scores and the missing Trojans

A diatribe against facial recognition systems … and *the same* diatribe but against IQ scores!

In part 1, I described one of Hajare's papers ("Facial Recognition Technology and Detection of Over Sexuality in Private Organizations Combined with Shelter House. Baseline Integrated Behavioural and Biological Assessment among Most at-Risk Low Standards Hope Less Institutions in Pune, India") in Advanced Research in Gastroenterology & Hepatology which included some very bizarre material, but where the main text offered quite a serious and cogent argument about the dangers of widespread use of facial recognition software.

I also described a very similar paper, also by Hajare, with a very different title ("Detection of Progression over Sexuality in Indian Students and Teachers Combined") in the Journal of Gastrointestinal Disorders and Liver function.

I displayed selected text from the two papers to show they made precisely the same argument with almost the same wording – except where one paper was an argument about the potential threat of facial recognition software, the other made the same argument, in the same terms, but now the threat to society and freedom had become IQ scores.

The same argument – but highlighting a different perceived menace

There are certainly reasons to be suspicious of some uses of IQ, but any editor or reviewer should have questioned the specific claims made in the the Journal of Gastrointestinal Disorders and Liver function (as well as its relevance to that specialist journal of course!)

"such a grave threat to privacy and civil liberties, measured regulation should be abandoned in favour of an outright ban…IQ score is the most uniquely dangerous surveillance mechanism ever invented…IQ score is a menace disguised as a gift…Because IQ score poses an extraordinary danger…IQ score will continue to be marketed as a component of the latest and greatest apps and devices. Apple is already pitching IQ, ID as the best new feature of its new iPhone…the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology's report proposes significant restrictions on government access to IQ-print data-bases as well as meaningful limitations on use of real-time IQ score. Tragically, most of these existing and proposed requirements are procedural, and in our opinion they won't ultimately stop surveillance creep and the spread of IQ-scanning infrastructure…Because IQ score holds out the promise of translating who we are and everywhere we go into track able information that can be nearly instantly stored, shared, and analyzed, its future development threatens to leave us constantly compromised. The future of human flourishing depends upon IQ score being banned before the systems become too entrenched in our lives"
Part of the rationale for banning IQ scores that was considered publishable scholarship in the Journal of Gastrointestinal Disorders and Liver function

Actually, I do not now think Hajare did construct this argument, as it seems to have been taken from a blog posting on the site 'Medium' written by a professor of law and computer science with a professor of philosophy. Hajare seems to have taken much of the original text, removed (some, but not all of the) references to the U.S. context and made the occasional tweak to the text. That posting starts

"With such a grave threat to privacy and civil liberties, measured regulation should be abandoned in favor of an outright ban
The Trojans would have loved facial recognition technology.
It's easy to accept an outwardly compelling but ultimately illusory view about what the future will look like once the full potential of facial recognition technology is unlocked. From this perspective, you'll never have to meet a stranger, fuss with passwords, or worry about forgetting your wallet. …"
Hartzog & Selinger, 2018

Here, Hajare seems to have changed the word 'Trojans' in the original text to 'species' for some reason – perhaps a deliberate nod to the hoax . So, when 'his' text reaches the "And that is how the trap gets sprung and the unfortunate truth becomes revealed: IQ score/facial recognition is a menace disguised as a gift…." the original resonance with 'Greeks bearing gifts' is missing.

Text	Date
Hartzog & Selinger, 2018	Published: 2nd August 2018
Journal of Gastrointestinal Disorders and Liver function paper apparently based on Hartzog & Selinger text	Submitted September 9th 2018
*Advanced Research in Gastroenterology & Hepatology* paper apparently based on Hartzog & Selinger text	Submitted September 24th 2018

Chronology for the three publications

Clearly the editors of 'Journal of Gastrointestinal Disorders and Liver function' had no reservations about publishing a paper supposedly about 'over sexuality' which was actually an extended argument about the terrible threat to our freedoms of…IQ scores, and which seems to have been plagiarised from a source already in the public domain when Hajare submitted his version (as it did not take me long to spot with a simple web search). That this make no sense at all, is just as obvious as that it has absolutely nothing to do with gastrointestinal disorders and liver function!

Sadly, this was not the only example of Hajare seemingly plagiarising other sources that I came across.

An empirical study, lablelled as a review article,in the jouran **COJ Nursing & Healthcare**

A paper in COJ Nursing & Healthcare had the unwieldy title "Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Variation of High Risky Behaviour in Private Pharmacy Institutional Principal and Assistant Professor Combined Attending from Long Distance Driver Role in Pune University, India: An Attractive Findings", and the abstract claimed

"The study employed a concurrent triangulation research methodology where both descriptive cross sectional survey and naturalistic phenomenology designs have used. Probability and non-probability sampling methods have used to sample 120 adults from 4 degree course B. Pharmacy Colleges within Pune University. Data has collected using questionnaires to gather information from the teachers (sample size). …"
p.1/6

So, the sample seems to have been 120 teachers in Pharmacy Colleges in the University cited in the title of many Hajare papers. This seems to be confirmed later: "Probability and non-probability sampling methods were used to sample 120 teaching staffs from 28 colleges within Pune University India" (p.417). Despite references to "quantitative data obtained from the sample and the qualitative data generated from interview respondents who were the guidance and counseling" the paper does not offer any detail of interviews, and only seems to report statistical data and analysis.

The article itself begins "The world health organization recognizes emotional suicide as one of the world's leading causes of death" (p.1/6, emphasis added). The paper goes on to give more detail of the statistics around 'emotional [sic] suicide'. Unlike much of Hajare's recent output, this paper offers a full account of an empirical study over 6 pages, including tables of statistical results.

The Introduction to the paper includes a paragraph

"It has investigated the relationship between trait emotional intelligence and resilience with suicidal ideation [1,2]. Moreover, the study hypothesized that emotional intelligence and resilience would be correlated with each other and that they have moderating variables between stressful life events due to long distance driver role and suicidal ideation. A total of 277 male and female attending inconsistently on biometric without current psychiatric diseases have recruited per online questionnaire asking for lifetime and 4-weeks suicidal ideation and demographic data and containing the Resilience Scale of Wagnild and Young, the Connor Davidson Resilience Scale and, for the measurement of trait emotional intelligence, the Self-Report Emotional Ability Scale. Additionally, researcher applied the Social Readjustment Rating Scale to assess stressful life events."
p416

This seems to be reporting a study by Sojer and colleagues (2017). Yet Hajare cites two of his own papers (entitled [1] "Detection of high addictive habits circulating office in charge of private pharmacy institutions in Pune university India (Evidence Based Study of Late Report Office In Charge to College)" and [2] "Men Residing in Slums Correlate Pharmaceutical Institution in South West Pune") as the sources for this study.

Hajare then refers to

"A study by WHO aimed to investigate the relation between emotional intelligence and instable personality in substance abusers. The present [sic] correlational study selected 80 male addicts through available sampling [3,4]. The subjects referred to the community center. Their emotional intelligence and personality have evaluated by Baron [sic, Bar-On: after Reuven Bar-On] Questionnaire and Eysenck personality questionnaire (EPQ) for adults male, respectively. Pearson's correlation coefficient has used to assess the correlations between different factors."
p.416

This seems to refer to a study by Hosseini and Anari (2011) – who claim no affiliation in their study to WHO – but again Hajare cites two of his own articles as the source (entitled [3] "Understanding academic and educational problems fit for purpose in the contributing to attentional and learning difficulties in our children?" and [4] "Live and let live: acceptance of learning disability of people living with co-educational pharmaceutical institute selffinanced and privately managed remote areas in India where stigma and discrimination persist").

In both cases the Hajare works cited as sources seem to be on themes unrelated to the studies discussed.

Relocating photographs

A 'research article' entitled "Evaluation of Disposable Bed Sheets and Safety Guidelines for Black Dog Sex Workers Resumes in the New Normal Living with Burnside Pharmacy Institute in Pune University" published in the Journal of Dermatology Sciences Research Reviews & Reports includes two photographs that are labelled:

Sex workers wearing protective face masks and face shields wait for customers.
Sex worker wearing a protective face mask and a face shield disinfects bedfellow employees at room.

I found the same photographs, which Hajare's article implies were of sex workers based at a Pharmacy Institute in India (did that not seem odd to the journal editor?) on a website of the news organisation Reuters, which reported they were not taken in India at all, but rather in Bolivia:

Sex workers wearing protective face masks and face shields wait for customers at a club, amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in El Alto outskirts of La Paz, Bolivia, July 15, 2020.
A sex worker wearing a protective face mask and a face shield disinfects a room at a club, amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in El Alto outskirts of La Paz, Bolivia, July 15, 2020.

Hajare's text also included major elements with a very close match to a previously published work: a website report discussing a published study (Motro et al, 2018):

From Hajare's text	From The Connecticut Business & Industry Association website
Angry employees has more likely to engage in unethical behaviour at work, a new study has revealed…. even if the source of their anger has not job-related.	Angry employees are more likely to engage in unethical behavior at work, even if the source of their anger is not job-related, according to new research, published in the Journal of Business Ethics.
At the same time, when employees have feeling guilty, they have far less likely to engage in unethical behaviour than those in a more neutral emotional state, researchers found.	At the same time, when employees are feeling guilty, they are far less likely to engage in unethical behavior than those in a more neutral emotional state, researchers found.
Unethical workplace behaviour, ranging from tardiness to theft, costs businesses billions of dollars a year, so it has important for managers to recognise how emotions may drive on the job behaviour.	Unethical workplace behavior, ranging from tardiness to theft, costs businesses billions of dollars a year, so it's important for managers to recognize how emotions may drive on-the-job behavior, says lead study author Daphna Motro, a doctoral student in management and organizations in the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management.
At every level of an organisation, every employee has experiencing emotion, so it has universal, and emotions have really powerful they can overtake and make do things never thought were capable of doing," [sic, no open inverted commas] a doctoral student in pune university and organisations in the pune university	"At every level of an organization, every employee is experiencing emotion, so it's universal, and emotions are really powerful–they can overtake you and make you do things you never thought you were capable of doing," Motro says.
While research often looks at "negative emotions" as a whole, work that not all negative emotions work in the same way. While anger and guilt has both negative feelings, they have very different effects on behaviour.	While research often looks at "negative emotions" as a whole, Motro illustrates in her work that not all negative emotions work in the same way. While anger and guilt are both negative feelings, they have very different effects on behavior.
The reason for the difference It has how the two emotions impact processing [1]. [1 is a citation to another (unrelated) Hajare paper entitled "Scientology applied to the workday of women feels just as good as sex: Non clinical examination of less sunlight habit"]
"We found that anger was associated with more impulsive processing, which led to deviant behaviour, since deviant behaviour has often impulsive and not very carefully planned out. Guilt, on the other hand, has associated with more careful, deliberate processing, trying to think about what they have done wrong, how to fix it and so it leads to less deviance.	"We found that anger was associated with more impulsive processing, which led to deviant behavior, since deviant behavior is often impulsive and not very carefully planned out," Motro says. "Guilt, on the other hand, is associated with more careful, deliberate processing–trying to think about what you've done wrong, how to fix it–and so it leads to less deviance."
Researcher findings come from two studies, in which she [sic, not Hajare] and her collaborators used writing prompts to induce the desired emotion. Study participants have asked to write about either a time when they felt very angry or a time when they felt very guilty.	The First Study Motro's findings come from two studies, in which she and her collaborators used writing prompts to induce the desired emotion. Study participants were asked to write about either a time when they felt very angry or a time when they felt very guilty.
etc.	etc.

Hajare's August 2020 publication seems to match text from a 2016 website posting with only minor modifications.

So, the Journal of Dermatology Sciences Research Reviews & Reports managed to not spot that an article supposedly about safety precautions taken by sex workers in India during the COVID pandemic, but actually about anger management in the workplace, was illustrated by a news bureau's photographs from Bolivia, and made wholesale use of text from a U.S. business association website.

Text on The Connecticut Business & Industry Association website	Reuter's website article with photographs	Hajare's text
Published: 16th November, 2016	Published: July 14th, 2020	Submitted for publication: August 13, 2020

Chronology of article component

I soon found other examples of copying work from other source in Hajare's publications.

Diabetes becomes dullness

As reported in Part 1 of this article, in "Guessing Game And Poor Quality Teaching Staffs Study Of Less Sunlight Private Pharmacy Institution In Pune University" published in Advances in Bioengineering & Biomedical Science Research, Hajare describes 'dullness' as a serious medical condition,

"The study suggests that mentally draining work such as teaching may increase the risk of dullness in women. According to the research, employers and women should be more aware of the potential health risks associated with mentally tiring work.
Dullness is an increasingly prevalent disease that places a huge burden on patients and society and can lead to significant health problems including heart attacks, strokes, blindness, and hair fall, mouth odour, under eye blackness, pelvis dislocation, one sided vagina, and kidney failure.Numerous factors can increase the risk of developing dullness including obesity, diet, exercise, smoking or a long term family history of the disease."
p.1

I recognised that although the list of 'problems' seemed bizarre, it included a number of complications of diabetes. So that gave me a hint for doing a web search. With this clue I soon found a website that reported on a genuine research study,

"The study findings suggest that mentally draining work, such as teaching, may increase the risk of diabetes in women. This suggests that employers and women should be more aware of the potential health risks associated with mentally tiring work.
Type 2 diabetes is an increasingly prevalent disease that places a huge burden on patients and society, and can lead to significant health problems including heart attacks, strokes, blindness and kidney failure. Numerous factors can increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes including, obesity, diet, exercise, smoking or a family history of the disease.
https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/mentally-tiring-work-like-teaching-increases-type-2-diabetes-risk-in-women

Again, Hajare's text appears to be a slightly adulterated version of previously published material:

What Hajare claimed as his own study	Scimex website report of a study in European Journal of Endocrinology
In the study, Dr Rahul Hajare from the Indian Council of Medical Research Batch 2013	In a French study, Dr Guy Fagherazzi and colleagues from the Centre for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health at Inserm,
examined the effect of mentally tiring work on dullnessincidence [sic] in over 20 women, during a 22- 32 year period.	examined the effect of mentally tiring work on diabetes incidence in over 70,000 women, during a 22-year period.
Approximately 75 per cent of the women were in the teaching profession and 24 per cent reported finding their work very mentally tiring at the beginning of the study due to lack of complete knowledge,	Approximately 75% of the women were in the teaching profession and 24% reported finding their work very mentally tiring at the beginning of the study.
The study has found that women were 21 per cent more likely to develop no happiness if they found their jobs mentally tiring at the start of the study.	The study found that women were 21% more likely to develop type-2 diabetes if they found their jobs mentally tiring at the start of the study.

Hajare's account of 'his' research into the medical condition he calls 'dullness' seems to be a modified copy of an acount of someone else's research into a more widely recognised medical condition, type-2 diabetes

To claim someone else's research as your own is serious academic malpractice, although here Dr Hajare could reasonably claim that he had made the study seem so ridiculous that no one could seriously think it was genuine (except perhaps the editor at Advances in Bioengineering & Biomedical Science Research?)

In any case, the main text of this journal paper had nothing to do with diabetes (or 'dullness') but the association between how a person makes pancakes and how much sexual activity they engage in. This reads like a good spoof, but sadly, seems again to be stolen goods. The story is reported on a number of websites, including that of the popular UK tabloid newspaper 'the Sun' which ran the story (illustrated by a photograph of an apparently naked couple in an intimate embrace) under the heading "Tossers get more sex", and rather than cite Hajare as the source claimed that the 'research' was a "poll of 2,000 Brits by Clarks Maple Syrup" – so a marketing ploy to sell more pancake syrup.

The 'Concussion' [sic] to the same paper seems to have nothing to do with pancakes or diabetes, but seems to 'borrow' two snippets of text from a web article "How a DNA test can help you deal with depression" by Matthew Hutson.

'Concussion' § of Hajare's paper	Hutson text (dated November 8, 2018)
Finding the right person is a guessing game. A researcher prescribes one, and after giving it six weeks to take effect, the patient might find it is not doing anything. So the patient tries another one and waits six weeks. And might need to do it again, and again, in a process that can take months. For me, the fourth drug hit the mark, but some people give up before making it that far.	Finnding the right antidepressant is a guessing game. A doctor prescribes one, and after giving it six weeks to take effect, the patient might find it's not doing anything. So the patient tries another one and waits six weeks. And might need to do it again, and again, in a process that can take months. For me, the fourth drug hit the mark, but some people give up before making it that far.
For example, Color Genomics added a PGX-for-reduce depression element to its popular gene-testing kit.	… For example, Color Genomics added a PGx-for-depression element to its popular $249 gene-testing kit in September.

Hajare also includes text very similar to that from a third source.

So, "Guessing Game And Poor Quality Teaching Staffs Study Of Less Sunlight Private Pharmacy Institution In Pune University" was an article which made no reference to poor quality teaching, or to sunlight, but seems to be compiled from other people's texts about diabetes, making pancakes, and anti-depressant drugs, mixed together with a few absurdist changes and flourishes. Yet it still passed peer review at Advances in Bioengineering & Biomedical Science Research.

A 'short communication' with the same title, "Guessing game and poor quality teaching staffs study of less sunlight private pharmacy institution in Pune University" was also published by Hajare in the Journal of Forensic Pathology.

The entire article is labelled as Abstract, and is broken down into two paragraphs. I have copied the entire text below (the article is again open access allowing unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction), but have broken the text in a different place (as Hajare breaks paragraph in the middle of a sentence).

Text of "Guessing game and poor quality teaching staffs study of less sunlight private pharmacy institution in Pune University" (*Journal of Forensic Pathology* version)	Abstract from (Magno & Golomb, 2020)
	[Title" "*Measuring the Benefits of Mass Vaccination Programs in the United States*"]
Measuring the Benefits of Mass Vaccination Programs in the United States: Since the late 1940s, mass vaccination programs in the USA have contributed to the significantly reduced morbidity and mortality of infectious diseases. To assist the evaluation of the benefits of mass vaccination programs, the number of individuals who would have suffered death or permanent disability in the USA in 2014, had mass vaccination never been implemented, was estimated for measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, polio, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), hepatitis B, varicella, and human papillomavirus (HPV). The estimates accounted for mortality and morbidity trends observed for these infections prior to mass vaccination and the impact of advances in standard of living and health care. The estimates also considered populations with and without known factors leading to an elevated risk of permanent injury from infection. Mass vaccination prevented an estimated 20 million infections and 12,000 deaths and permanent disabilities *[there is a paragraph break here in Hajare's article]* in 2014, including 10,800 deaths and permanent disabilities in persons at elevated risk. Though 9000 of the estimated prevented deaths were from liver cirrhosis and cancer, mass vaccination programs have not, at this point, shown empirical impacts on the prevalence of those conditions. Future studies can refine these estimates, assess the impact of adjusting estimation assumptions, and consider additional risk factors that lead to heightened risk of permanent harm from infection.	Since the late 1940s, mass vaccination programs in the USA have contributed to the significantly reduced morbidity and mortality of infectious diseases. To assist the evaluation of the benefits of mass vaccination programs, the number of individuals who would have suffered death or permanent disability in the USA in 2014, had mass vaccination never been implemented, was estimated for measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, polio, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), hepatitis B, varicella, and human papillomavirus (HPV). The estimates accounted for mortality and morbidity trends observed for these infections prior to mass vaccination and the impact of advances in standard of living and health care. The estimates also considered populations with and without known factors leading to an elevated risk of permanent injury from infection. Mass vaccination prevented an estimated 20 million infections and 12,000 deaths and permanent disabilities in 2014, including 10,800 deaths and permanent disabilities in persons at elevated risk. Though 9000 of the estimated prevented deaths were from liver cirrhosis and cancer, mass vaccination programs have not, at this point, shown empirical impacts on the prevalence of those conditions. Future studies can refine these estimates, assess the impact of adjusting estimation assumptions, and consider additional risk factors that lead to heightened risk of permanent harm from infection.
The researchers concluded that the finger have important implications for policy and prevention and should inform the creation of more effective sexual health education programs and interventions. Sex can accepted as non-negotiation strategies to sex. Hot have many perceptions. Black and whitish both can be hot. A HOT thinking is higher-order thinking, known as higher order thinking skills (HOTS). Old fat clothes women who find their mentally tiring are at increased risk of developing dull, a new study has found. The study suggests that mentally draining work such as teaching may increase the risk of dullness in women. According to the research, employers and women should be more aware of the potential health risks associated with mentally tiring work. Dullness is an increasingly prevalent disease that places a huge burden on patients and society and can lead to significant health problems including heart attacks, strokes, blindness, hair fall, mouth odour, under eye blackness, pelvis dislocation, one sided vagina, and kidney failure. Numerous factors can increase the risk of developing dullness including obesity, diet, exercise, smoking or a long term family history of the disease. In the study, Dr Rahul Hajare from the Indian Council of Medical Research Batch 2013 examined the effect of mentally tiring work on dullness incidence in over 20 women, during a 22- 32 year period. Approximately 75 per cent of the women were in the teaching profession and 24 per cent reported finding their work very mentally tiring at the beginning of the study due to lack of complete knowledge, The study has found that women were 21 per cent more likely to develop no happiness if they found their jobs mentally tiring at the start of the study. Skin turns out as baggy as their old "fat clothes. Under normal circumstances, seen no sexual desire or waiting for call.
Submitted for publication: 5th March 2021	Published: 29 September 2020

Two contrasting styles of writing in Hajarre's short piece in the Journal of Forensic Pathology.

The second part of Hajare's text is the same nonsense mixed with a fabricated new medical condition that comprised the 'Summary' of the Advances in Bioengineering & Biomedical Science Research article with the same name. However, the rest of that article (the 'pancake' material for example) is not reproduced in the version published in the Journal of Forensic Pathology.

Instead, that piece starts with writing in a very different style: a coherent segment of text about the value of mass vaccination. A segment of text which bears a remarkable similarity (or at least it would be a remarkable similarity if this were a coincidence) to the abstract of a genuine academic study published in a serious research journal, Vaccines (Magno & Golomb, 2020).

Dangerous fabrication of science

It is unlikely that even the casual reader will be persuaded of the dangers of a severe medical condition called 'dullness' by reading Hajare's strange patchwork quilts of different texts on different themes. However, what about a suggestion that there is a link between domestic violence and epilepsy. Might that seem plausible?

Certainly that is what is suggested by Hajare in "Co- Relation of Domestic Violence and Epileptic Seizure ("Fit") Experience among Recently Married Women Residing Inslums [sic] Communities' Pharmaceutical Institutions in Pune District, India" – an article in the journal Research & Investigations in Sports Medicine.

In this article Hajare suggests that women who are subjected to violence by their partners are at higher risk of having epileptic fits, that their children will also suffer more epilepsy symptoms, and that "women who reside in India's slums pharmaceutical institutions are among those at greatest risk" (p.226).

Now, if these were claims that had just been copied from elsewhere, (as his claims about about pancake preparation techniques seem to be) then it would not add to the level of low quality information in circulation. However, here Hajare seems to be fabricating a connection between two serious topics based on no evidence whatsoever.

This becomes clear when doing a quick web search for extracts from his text. The table below show the text from the start of Hajare's article (first column), juxtaposed with text from two other sources. One of these is a serious academic study that reports empirical research with a "sample of 100 recently-married women residing in slums in Pune, India" (Kalokhe et al 2018). (This perhaps explains the reference to 'Recently Married Women' in Hajare's title, which does not relate to anything in his short text.)

Hajare's text relating domestic violence and epilepsy	Detcare (Doctors for ethical care) website page providing information on epilepsy	Kalokhe et al 2018 text from a study about domestic violence experience among recently-married women residing in slums in Pune, India
In many cases, the exact cause is not known. Some people have inherited genetic factors that make epilepsy more likely to occur.	In many cases, the exact cause is not known. Some people have inherited genetic factors that make epilepsy more likely to occur.
Other factors that may increase the risk include: head trauma, for instance, during a car crash, stroke infectious diseases, for instance, AIDS and viral encephalitis, developmental disorders, for instance, autism or neurofibromatosis.	Other factors that may increase the risk include: • head trauma, for instance, during a car crash • brain conditions, including stroke or tumors • infectious diseases, for instance, AIDS and viral encephalitis • prenatal injury, or brain damage that occurs before birth • developmental disorders, for instance, autism or neurofibromatosis
It is most likely to appear in children under 2 years of age very rare, middle age and adults over 65 years.	It is most likely to appear in children under 2 years of age, and adults over 65 years.
What a patient with epilepsy experiences during a seizure will depend on which part of the brain is affected, and how widely and quickly it spreads from that area.	What a patient with epilepsy experiences during a seizure will depend on which part of the brain is affected, and how widely and quickly it spreads from that area.
The incomplete note of medical sciences that the condition "is not well understood." Often, no specific cause can be identified.	The CDC note that the condition "is not well understood." Often, no specific cause can be identified.
Intimate partner violence (IPV), defined as the physical, sexual, psychological abuse, and control perpetrated against an intimate partner, is highly prevalent and cannot ignore for epilepsy epidemic.		Intimate partner violence (IPV), defined as the physical, sexual, psychological abuse, and control perpetrated against an intimate partner, is highly prevalent globally.
Approximately one in ten of women reporting physical and abuse by their partner during their lifetime, violation of human rights that often results in physical injury can lead neurological disturbances (trauma).		Approximately one- third (30%) of women reporting physical and/or sexual abuse by their partner during their life- time. Not only is IPV a violation of human rights that often results in physical injury;
Women who experience IPV have higher odds of depression, anxiety and other mental health disorders, sexually transmitted infections including HIV chronic pain disorders and gynaecologic morbidity among other chronic disease states lead the epileptic seizure ("fit").		women who experience IPV have higher odds of depression, anxiety and other mental health disorders, sexually transmitted infections including HIV, chronic pain disorders, and gynecologic morbidity among other chronic disease states.
Additionally, their children suffer from greater symptom of epilepsy morbidity and mortality.		Additionally, their children suffer from greater morbidity and mortality.
In India, although national estimates suggest decreasing frequency, one in three women still report having been abused by their spouses during their lifetime. Further, this figure is likely an underestimate of the abuse women suffer post-epileptic seizer [sic] or other members of the husband's family, hereafter termed domestic violence (DV).		In India, although national estimates suggest decreasing frequency, one in three women still report having been abused by their spouses during their lifetime. Further, this figure is likely an underestimate of the abuse women suffer post-marriage, as it did not survey violence perpetration by the mother- in-law or other members of the husband's family, hereafter termed domestic violence (DV).
Women who reside in India's slums pharmaceutical institutions are among those at greatest risk of high fever with epilepsy-like symptoms.		Women who reside in India's slums are among those at greatest risk of DV, with lifetime estimates of 21-99%.
Submitted for publication, 4th June 2018	Website © 2016-2021	Published 2nd April 2018

Hajare's text (opening segment shown here) draws on different sources, and makes factual changes to source information

Hajare seems to have taken text about epilepsy, made small changes (such as removing the reference to the U.S. based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC), then shifted to a text about domestic abuse, but gratuitously made claims about links to epileptic fits not found in the original study.

Whatever Hajare's true motives here, there can be no excuse for deliberately putting false medical information into the public domain.

I expect with some more digging I could find more examples of how portions of Hajare's published work draw upon other work already in the public domain, without acknowledgement.

However, I think the point has been made, and I will end with one especially intriguing example.

Is the Nobel Prize going to the dogs?

Hajare has contributed an editorial article with the curious title "Sensitivity and Specificity of the Nobel Prize Testing to the Dogs" in the journal Advances in Biotechnology & Microbiology.

A little over a month before Hajare submitted his manuscript to Advances in Biotechnology & Microbiology, another journal, the Peer Reviewed Journal of Forensic & Genetic Sciences, published an opinion piece by Seun Ayoade.

Ayode's peice is hardly the stuff of serious research journals, being very journalistic even for an opinion piece,

"the Nobel Prize has been hijacked by an evil left- wing cabal… The final nail however was the award to a musician-Bob Dylan of the literature prize. I nearly threw up when I heard the announcement…Does the word 'Kardashian' ring a bell? The moral depravity of the Nobel Committee has reached such scandalous levels that no literature prize was awarded in 2018 because of licentious assault accusations"
Ayode, 2018: 151

However, it was a coherent piece.

Hajare's editorial seems to comprise of the same text as Ayode's, with some additions – it seems that as well as changing the title to something more obscure, Hajare has added:

1. An incoherent 'executive summary'

"Has the Nobel Prize gone to the dogs? Nobel Prize has been accepted as an uncountable value, however difficult to eliminate. The hope for possible selection without power politics has stemmed from the reports of the populations at high risk of malign the credibility of noble remaining free of selection. A number of host factors associated with lower selection to higher selection and better control on conflict multiplication have been reported. However, the correlates of protection from encroachment have eluded the scientific community. This has been a significant barrier in developing effective award to protect against infection. On the contrary, a spectacular success has been achieved in the field of noble award treatment."
p.0041

2. An odd list of keywords

Power politics;
Protection;
Encroachment;
Infection;
Realizable assets;
Physiological;
Stockholm;
Instrumentation

3. An incoherent 'Summary and Conclusion'

"The findings revealed high awareness of noble [sic] is high, its causes, impacts, methods of financing; and prevention. It has seen most award has abusing. The attitude towards it is mixed."
p.0042

4. A splattering of self-citations

Hajare omits the three references in Ayode's article, and replaces them with a raft of references to his own articles on a wide range of topics.

Part of Hajare's reference list for the article about the Nobel prize.

So, it looks as if Hajare has just taken the published text of Ayode's article, which – even if not exactly written in academic language – offered a coherent argument and (deliberately?) spoilt it by topping and tailing it with some nonsense text. If the editors of Advances in Biotechnology & Microbiology did not do plagiarism checks to look for previously published work, then Hajare had (as usual, see Part 1) offered plenty of clues that something was off here. Yet, even the addition of gibberish did not present re-publication.

Perhaps Hajare thinks that as he has done his best to prevent anyone taking his work seriously, it does not matter that he is using other people's work as the basis for some of his hoax articles. Yet, he is still using work without acknowledgement, and passing it off as his own writing. That is usually considered a serious academic offence.

Coda

It looks like Hajare lifted Ayode's complete article for his editorial.

But, of course, that is assuming that Rahul Hajare from India and Seun Ayoade from Nigeria are real people, and also that they are not actually the same person.

That may seem an odd point to make. But as I was writing this article, I thought that the name Seun Ayoad looked somewhat familiar.

In Part 1 of this article, I pointed out that I become intrigued about (if not for a while obsessed with) Hajare's output after having reason to check out the journal Petroleum and Chemical Industry International. I had quickly found in looking at this journal two articles which seemed to have nothing to do with the supposed scope of the journal.

One of these was Hajare's "An attempt to Characterize Street Pharmaceutical Teachers Abusing Drugs and Aspect of Allergy Among Adult Men Attending Long Distance Institutions in Pune, India".

The other was "Was glass the classical currency of the yoruba?". That was written by one…Seun Ayoade. Is it a coincidence that I've found these two names associated again?

Perhaps it is just that.

Ayoade's (and so therefore Hajare's) diatribe against the Nobel prize choices included a slightly odd aside:

"By the way the "scientists" of the Nobel prize committee are among the many "scientists" that continue to deny the existence of the microzymas. No surprise there."
p.151

Actually, virtually all current mainstream biologists and medical scientists today "deny the existence of the microzymas" as other entities are considered to better explain the phenomena that microzymas were introduced to explain. ³

Just as Hajare has his own themes that recur in his work (see Part 1 for examples), Ayoade has written a number of pieces on microzymas – promoting microzymas as the future of medicine, and as possible candidates for the universe's 'missing' mass.

So, I do not think Hajare and Ayoade are the same person. Just as well for the predatory journals, as even with Hajare's flow of incoherent and obscure pieces rehashing his preferred themes, his output is never going to be sufficient to support all those predatory journals prepared to publish anything submitted to them regardless of the level of scholarly merit.

Work cited:

Haj Hosseini, F. and Mehdizadeh Zare Anari, A. M. (2011) The Correlation between Emotional Intelligence and Instable Personality in Substance Abusers, Addict & Health, 3(3-4): 130-136, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/33489654.pdf
Hartzog, W., & Selinger, E. (2018). Facial Recognition Is the Perfect Tool for Oppression. Retrieved from https://medium.com/s/story/facial-recognition-is-the-perfect-tool-for-oppression-bc2a08f0fe66
Kalokhe, A. S., Iyer, S. R., Kolhe, A. R., Dhayarkar, S., Paranjape, A., del Rio, C., et al. (2018) Correlates of domestic violence experience among recently-married women residing in slums in Pune, India. PLoS ONE 13(4): e0195152. https://doi.org/ 10.1371/journal.pone.0195152
Magno, H., and Golomb, B. 2020. Measuring the Benefits of Mass Vaccination Programs in the United States. Vaccines 8, no. 4: 561. https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines8040561
Motro, D., Ordóñez, L.D., Pittarello, A. et al. (2018) Investigating the Effects of Anger and Guilt on Unethical Behavior: A Dual-Process Approach. Journal of Business Ethics, 152, 133-148 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-016-3337-x
Sojer, P., Kainbacher, S., Kemmler, G., Freudenthaler, H. & Deisenhammer, E. (2017) The impact of trait emotional intelligence and resilience on suicidal behavior in university students. European Psychiatry 41S (2017) S365-S404
Taber, K. S. (2013). Modelling Learners and Learning in Science Education: Developing representations of concepts, conceptual structure and conceptual change to inform teaching and research. Dordrecht: Springer.

Notes

¹ Cutting and pasting has its place. When studying a new topic it may be very useful to cut and paste sections from key sources as a first stage in compiling ideas on the topic. However, this is an initial stage in a process of moving from the sources to a personal take on a topic (perhaps a conceptual framework to inform a research study). One moves from a large number of discrete segments of other people's scholarship to a coherent personal account presented in a single voice. This is somewhat akin to the analytical process in grounded theory work which moves from the discrete data through increasing stages of generalisation and abstraction towards a 'grounded theory'.

² In the Medieval period it was quite normal for people to copy out the texts of others – before printing the only way books were copied was by hand. Monks famously made copies of texts – but intellectuals also sometimes copied texts that they wanted to have their own copy of. Downloading the pdf simply was not an option. Copying a book is a big job – so often people would compile their own books by just copying selected material of particular interest from other texts, rather than complete books. Sadly for historians, even though a lot of this material is still extant, there was no widely accepted scholarly standard about acknowledging authors: so, manuscripts do not always report the source being copied and who the original author was. For that matter, manuscripts do not always report who actually did the copying. Where there are names these sometimes report ownership which may not reflect the original author or the scribe.

³ Microzymas were hypothetical, non-destructible units that were conjectured to make up living things and other matter. The theory fell into disuse when cell theory was found to offer a better basis for understanding the structure of complex organisms, and germ theory was found to better explain infectious diseases.

Hoaxing the post-truth journals

Is Rahul Hajare the Alan Sokal for the Open Access era?: Part 1

Keith S. Taber

…the editors of the Journal of Gastrointestinal Disorders and Liver function had no reservations about publishing a paper supposedly about 'over sexuality' which was actually an extended argument about the terrible threat to our freedoms of…IQ scores. That this makes no sense at all, is just as obvious as that it has absolutely nothing to do with gastrointestinal disorders and liver function!

Rahul Hajare is a much published academic who has written widely on topics related to aspects of health (especially sexual health) and behaviour but encompassing social issues (the treatment of old cows in India) and issues of personal freedom (the risks of facial recognition technology and IQ testing). In another posting, I have discussed in some detail an article which seems to suggest cancer is divine justice for sinning, and discusses a study which looks for improvement in liver disease among healthy people (!) subject to different work flow regimes. A lot of his writing seems initially to be nonsensical and fantastic – at least until one gets the 'jokes'.

He seems to be hoaxing open access journals ¹ that will publish for a price regardless of the quality of scholarship by seeing just how bizarre, and incoherent, and irrelevant, one can get before a journal looking for an author to pay a publication fee will 'draw the line' and reject nonsensical text and unsubstantiated claims. Based on Hajare's project, that line is sometimes drawn very low.

Why admire a hoaxer?

Should we admire someone who produces copious publications that are clearly of low quality, contain wild claims, obvious non sequiturs, and garbled text?

Normally, the answer would be obvious. But what if the author is testing out just how banal, illogical, and incoherent a manuscript needs to be before a predatory journal (a periodical pretending to be a serious research journal in order to charge authors for publishing their work) feels it cannot publish it. I think this is what Dr Rahul Hajare has been doing. And the results of his project should worry us all.

The Sokal affair

This reminds me of the Sokal hoax. Alan Sokal was a physicist who was so convinced that a lot of post-modern cultural studies literature was actually devoid of content and just consisted of flowery and impressive sounding rhetoric, that he wrote a paper about the 'hermeneutics of quantum gravity' (Sokal, 1996) which was published in a research journal despite Sokal himself believing it no had merits as an academic argument.

Sokal did a good job of adopting the literary style of much scholarship in the area he was lampooning, and some might claim he did too good a job and, without realising it, actually offered a meaningful account of some of the challenges in understanding the fundamental meanings of modern physics. Even a final flurry claiming that a 'liberatory science' would need a 'profound revision of the canon of mathematics' (p.26) was well enough contextualised to be read as a serious suggestion.

Sokal's hoax can be seen as part of the culture/science wars, which relate to such questions as the special nature of science and whether it offers us an account of reality which has more validity than alternative options (religions, philosophical systems, magic, astrology, homeopathy…). ² He thought that the authors and editors of journals such as Social Text did not apply the kind of critical thinking that is able to scrutinise an argument and recognise obviously flawed conclusions or analogies. However, I do not think he considered most of the academics concerned to be deliberately producing and publishing nonsense, rather just unable to see that the Emperor's new clothes offered nothing to protect their intellectual modesty.

Post-truth journals

There is a much more serious problem today: one that I have written about a lot in this blog. This is the large number of journals that publish nonsense not because they have not spotted that it is nonsense, but because they have not even checked to find out. They have not been taken in by flowery language, but by imprecise, ungrammatical, incomplete texts – or rather, not actually taken in, as they are simply not concerned. Perhaps they would rather not notice it is nonsense – although perhaps, more to the point, it is irrelevant to their business models.

Articles that are incoherent, poorly argued, illogical, counter to accepted wisdom, counter to common sense, and even blatantly counterfactual, bring in publication fees as well as any others. Indeed, authors of such poor quality work are more likely to be keen to pay such fees, as they would likely have found that competent research journals have no interest in publishing their work. These predatory journals sometimes even publish, word for word, material already published elsewhere (where genuine research journals actively avoid this). After all, if an author is foolish enough to pay several journals for publishing the same work then a re-publication is just as profitable as an original piece.

None of this would really matter if it was obvious which journals are spurious – but these predatory journals have titles similar to (sometimes almost copying) real research journals, claim to have serious academics editing them, claim to use rigorous peer review, claim they only want high quality original work, et cetera. And, of course, often serious scholars will submit their work in good faith to a dodgy journal and get it published. Some of these studies may be sound, even if the work was not tested, and therefore potentially strengthened, by genuine peer review.

So, a predatory journal may contain a lot of nonsense, but clearly not everything that reaches a very low standard will be of a very low standard. (For example, even I could jump the high jump if the bar was set at 0.5m – but, of course, so could the world champion. )

When an expert in a relevant field looks at one of these journals it soon become clear that much of their content cannot be relied upon – but as these journals are open access they can be read by any member of the public such as

children researching their science homework,
students researching topics,
ill people looking for medical advice,

as well people looking for scientific backing to

support belief in
- alien abductions, or in
- dangers of vaccination, or
to support denial of canonical scientific thinking:
- to deny moon landings, or
- to deny climate change, etc.

An academic's publication list may have a large number of articles in journals with very respectable-sounding title, indeed sometimes titles VERY similar to those of well-established, reputable journals. Would a potential employer or funder more likely hire or give a grant to the person with 12 research publications or the other applicant with 34 – if not equipped to spot that the longer list was made up of work of little merit?

Like many academics I get many invitations to send work to journals I have never heard of, across a great range of scholarly fields (regardless of my lack of qualifications in most of those fields), and I have sometimes been tempted to reply to an invitation to send in something, even just a two page article (a common ploy is to invite something this brief), before next week's deadline. It would not be difficult to test the claims of 'peer review' by writing something superficially scholarly but of no substantive intellectual content, to see if it was accepted. (What then? Do I want to put a worthless article out there under my name? Do I wish to part with hundreds of pounds just for the sake of proving the point?)

Anyway, I no longer need to consider this, as the work has been done. I think Dr Hajare has been showing up these journals for a while now.

Dr Rahul Hajare, who claims to be a fellow at the Indian Council of Medical Research, has quite a long publications list. From the titles, some of these publications seem to be serious scientific studies. However, many appear to be spoofs. Indeed Dr Hajare seems to have been playing a game of deliberately leaving clues that should be picked up with the most cursory editorial attention: the kinds of clues that should tell any reasonably informed reader not to take the work too seriously. Despite peppering his work with such hints, it still keeps getting published.

Convoluted titles

I first came across the Hajare hoax when I was invited to submit a medical article to a journal about petroleum. I had a look at what had been published, and found some examples of articles which seemed to have nothing to do with petroleum. One of these was "An attempt to Characterize Street Pharmaceutical Teachers Abusing Drugs and Aspect of Allergy Among Adult Men Attending Long Distance Institutions in Pune, India".

Characterising Street Pharmaceutical Teachers Abusing Drugs…

An article published in **Petroleum and Chemical Industry International** that was submitted on 23rd September 2018

What immediately struck me as most odd was that there seemed to be two very different things going in the title here:

Characterising Street Pharmaceutical Teachers Abusing Drugs
Aspects of Allergy Among Adult Men Attending Long Distance Institutions

So, how were these two themes linked?

Well, of course, they were not. The 'research article' did not discuss allergies. Indeed the ONLY reference to allergy in the paper was in the title. This seems to be one type of 'reveal' or 'giveaway' signal that Hajare will use, presumably to signify to anyone paying attention that the article is a hoax.

My initial reaction, however, was that perhaps this was some unfortunate production error, and the title of a completely different paper had been appended by mistake. So, I tried searching for the missing paper, instead found more of Hajare's output… and it was then I started to realise that Dr Hajare seemed to be a serial hoaxer.

It seems unlikely that the odd title was a journal error, when the same article has been published with the same title elsewhere:

An article published in ***Current Trends in Gastroenterology and Hepatology*** that was submitted on 25th September 2018 (two days after it was also submitted to ***Petroleum and Chemical Industry International***)

An article published in ***Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences Current Research*** that was submitted on 27th September 2018 (two days after it was also submitted to ***Current Trends in Gastroenterology and Hepatology*** and four days after it was submitted to ***Petroleum and Chemical Industry International***)

Dodgy definitions: teaching staff and van drivers

Hajare's study helpfully defined what he meant by 'street teachers'. (What did you think this term would mean, dear reader?)

"Street Teaching Staffs: any person (27 to 47 years) who spends majority of his time in car parks sometimes working or roaming; and have limited or no contact with a family and spend both days and nights in the car parks without returning to a family or a guardian."
p.2 (Emphasis added)

Hm. If we take this at face value the study sample would have excluded any 'street teacher' who spends their time teaching children on the streets (rather than in car parks) or who is 25 years old, or who has a home to go to at the end of the day. Are there really substantial numbers of people employed as teachers who might fit this definition?

Another term in this study was 'commercial van [sic, not bus or coach] driver', which was defined for this study (for some reason) as:

"Commercial Van Driver: any male person who control operation and movement of a motorized vehicle for transporting more than nine persons including himself on public road for payment and for a distance not more than 90 kilometers"
p.2 (Emphasis added)

What Hajare seems to be doing here is mimicking the way everyday terms need to be operationally defined in research – but in an absurdist way.

Some of his other productions offer similar kaleidoscopes of words masquerading as titles.

Facial Recognition Technology and Detection of Over Sexuality…

The journal Advanced Research in Gastroenterology & Hepatology was happy to publish work under the title "Facial Recognition Technology and Detection of Over Sexuality in Private Organizations Combined with Shelter House. Baseline Integrated Behavioural and Biological Assessment among Most at-Risk Low Standards Hope Less Institutions in Pune, India". What any of this might have to do with gastroenterology or hepatology is anyone's guess: not bothering to even offer some tenuous linkage to a journal's supposed scope seems to be part of the way Hajare metaphorically winks at his readership so they will share in the joke.

😉

Putting the clues up front

One type of spoof is written in such a way that it starts off being largely credible and gradually moves to the more obscure? The reader experiences a gradual realisation that they have been fooled. That can be clever – but is dangerous when hoaxing academic work, as someone dipping into the work may not read that far in.

Hajare, however, often uses techniques to warn readers up front about his intentions – such as including unrelated and irrelevant themes in his titles, the use of absurd statements in the abstract or executive summary or opening lines of an article. This particular article begins with an Executive Summary:

When this[*] occurs the over sexuality cells can travel away from the original sexuality and create more sexuality attraction when they settle and grow in a different part of the body. Any type of over sexuality can spread. This depends on several factors which include: The type of human, How aggressive it is, The duration one has had it before culture, Its environment, Its colour, Chronic inflammation, Modified sex signalling, Secretion of Connective Tissue-Dissolving Enzymes, Selection of food with colonial mind set. The following approaches will help prevent the formation, growth and spread of over sexuality in working place.
p.0050 [* n.b., no subject has yet been introduced!]

It is very hard to see how anyone reading about how 'over sexuality cells' move away from the 'original sexuality' is going to think this is a serious contribution to science. In case there is any doubt, we are told how the mobility of 'over sexuality' depends on a range of factors such as its colour (what colours does 'sexuality' come in?) and food tastes.

So what is wrong with facial recognition technology – and IQ testing for that matter?

In the main text Hajare constructs a detailed account of the uses, and in particular what he sees as the potential misuses, of facial recognition technology. ³ This seems at face value [no pun intended] to be a seriously held viewpoint (albeit having no connection with the 'over sexuality' theme of the Executive Summary)

However, this seems less likely when one notices another of his publications in the Journal of Gastrointestinal Disorders and Liver function entitled "Detection of Progression over Sexuality in Indian Students and Teachers Combined". This repeats, virtually word for word, the same executive summary (except we now have 'acceptance sexuality cells' moving around the body).

This article, submitted to that journal on September 9th 2018 (about a fortnight before the 'facial recognition technology' article was submitted) offers virtually the same argument. The key differences is whereas in Advanced Research in Gastroenterology & Hepatology it is facial recognition technology which is the great menace, in the earlier submission to the Journal of Gastrointestinal Disorders and Liver function the target had been IQ scores:

Text [emphasis added] from Journal of Gastrointestinal Disorders and Liver function	Text from Advanced Research in Gastroenterology & Hepatology
With such a grave threat to privacy and civil liberties, measured regulation should be abandoned in favour of an outright ban. The species would have loved IQ score. It is easy to accept an outwardly compelling but ultimately illusory view about what the future will look like once the full potential of IQ score is unlocked. From this perspective, will never have to meet a stranger, fuss with passwords and unreal people, or worry about forgetting wallet …	With such a grave threat to privacy and civil liberties, measured regulation should be abandoned in favor of an outright ban. The species would have loved facial recognition technology. It is easy to accept an outwardly compelling but ultimately illusory view about what the future will look like once the full potential of facial recognition technology is unlocked. From this perspective, will never have to meet a stranger, fuss with passwords and unreal people, or worry about forgetting wallet. …
…We [sic] believe IQ score is the most uniquely dangerous surveillance mechanism ever invented. Tempted by this vision, people will continue to invite IQ score into colleges, homes and onto their devices, allowing it to play symmetrical role in ever more aspects of their lives. And that is how the trap gets sprung and the unfortunate truth becomes revealed: IQ score is a menace disguised as a gift….	…We [sic] believe facial recognition technology is the most uniquely dangerous surveillance mechanism ever invented. Tempted by this vision, people will continue to invite facial recognition technology into colleges, homes and onto their devices, allowing it to play symmetrical role in ever more aspects of their lives. And that is how the trap gets sprung and the unfortunate truth becomes revealed: Facial recognition technology is a menace disguised as a gift…
… Corporate leadership is important, and regulation that imposes limits on IQ score can be helpful. But partial protections and "well-articulated guidelines" will never be enough. Whatever helps legislation might provide, the protections likely won't be passed until IQ-scanning technology becomes much cheaper and easier to use. If IQ score continues to be further developed and deployed, a formidable infrastructure will be built, and we'll be stuck with it. …	…Corporate leadership is important, and regulation that imposes limits on facial recognition technology can be helpful. But partial protections and "well-articulated guidelines" will never be enough. Whatever help legislation might provide, the protections likely won't be passed until face-scanning technology becomes much cheaper and easier to use. If facial recognition technology continues to be further developed and deployed, a formidable infrastructure will be built, and we'll be stuck with it. …
… Because IQ score poses an extraordinary danger, society can't afford to have faith in internal processes of reform like self-regulation. Financial rewards will encourage entrepreneurialism that pushes IQ score to its limits, and corporate lobbying will tilt heavily in this direction. …	… Because facial recognition technology poses an extraordinary danger, society can't afford to have faith in internal processes of reform like self-regulation. Financial rewards will encourage entrepreneurialism that pushes facial recognition technology to its limits, and corporate lobbying will tilt heavily in this direction. …
… IQ score will continue to be marketed as a component of the latest and greatest apps and devices. Apple is already pitching IQ, ID as the best new feature of its new iPhone. …	…Facial recognition technology will continue to be marketed as a component of the latest and greatest apps and devices. Apple is already pitching Face ID as the best new feature of its new iPhone. …
[and so forth throughout]	[and so forth throughout]
… The future of human flourishing depends upon IQ score being banned before the systems become too entrenched in our lives. Otherwise, people won't know what it's like to be in public without being automatically identified, profiled, and potentially exploited. In such a world, critics of IQ score will be disempowered, silenced, or cease to exist.	…The future of human flourishing depends upon facial recognition technology being banned before the systems become too entrenched in our lives. Otherwise, people won't know what it's like to be in public without being automatically identified, profiled, and potentially exploited. In such a world, critics of facial recognition technology will be disempowered, silenced, or cease to exist

Is the IQ score the most uniquely dangerous surveillance mechanism ever invented? [Note: the source text on which these papers were based may be the copyright of Woodrow Hartzog
and Evan Selinger ³]

This looks very much as if having constructed an argument for the menace of face recognition systems (a concern shared by many), Hajare simply copied the text to a new file, and began a new article substituting IQ scores for face recognition technology. (That the variant published first seems to be the more derivative text is promising – does it mean at least one journal rejected the face recognition paper before it was accepted elsewhere?) ³

Clearly the editors of the Journal of Gastrointestinal Disorders and Liver function had no reservations about publishing a paper supposedly about 'over sexuality' which was actually an extended argument about the terrible threat to our freedoms of…IQ scores. That this makes no sense at all, is just as obvious as that it has absolutely nothing to do with gastrointestinal disorders and liver function!

Depression, Cursing, Pharmaceutical Institutions and Sanitation

Another Hajare article in the same journal, has the convoluted title: "Assessment of the Depression-Level Effectiveness of the Curse Words in Young Adults in Private Co-Educational Pharmaceutical Institutions in Pune University Pharmaceutical Institutions Living With Poor Sanitation, India: A Pre-planned, Causal-Pathway-Based Analysis". No one at the journal (editor, reviewer, production department) seems to have thought to ask if the nesting of "…Pharmaceutical Institutions in Pune University Pharmaceutical Institutions…" was an error.

This paper looks superficially like a serious study, and deals with very serious and important issues. Yet, like most of Hajare's articles I looked at, he cites no work by anyone else (see the appendix below), and again he starts the paper with a little clue that this is a hoax article: "As we aware sex lives in black mind".

There might also be a subtle clue in the brisk description of the research procedure:

"Participants viewed the invitation to participate in the study on SONA [n.b., not defined], which directed them to the survey which was implemented with a professional license of Surveymonkey.com. Additional information collected from college muster, signature style, colour of signature, font size and treatment received by administrative officer while signed the muster."

Although survey monkey is an on-line tool "Data was collected…in private by a trained male female staffs study team member", but regardless of whether there really was a physical person collecting data and asking for a signature, or whether the 'muster' refers to a previous college registration procedure, the way in which 'colour of signature' might have been used in analysis is not explained. But colour seems to be one of the code words that Hajare uses to acknowledge the nature of his hoax articles (e.g., sexuality had a colour, and "sex lives in black mind"; in another article Hajare points out – as an apparently arbitrary statement with no context – that blood plasma is yellow).

This is a concern though – if I am using a form of hermeneutics to interpret texts within a wider canon, then, even if I am right, this is not something available to the causal reader looking for reliable information and coming across an isolated journal article. This paper has indications of being a haox, rather than simply incompetent scholarship, but I was not entirely sure if it is meant as one.

I think, even though I had started exploring more of Hajare's work on the assumption he was producing hoax articles, there was still a nagging doubt: if the reviewers and editor of a journal, even a sloppy and lax journal, thought this made sense (surely, someone at these journals must read the submissions before accepting them for publication?), then could it just be me? Am I just ignorant about topics and conventions out of my specialism? Am I not being forgiving enough for someone from another culture who is perhaps having to write in a language that is not the one in which he is most fluent? Am I going to publish and provoke lots of comments on the blog from people who think Hajare's articles make perfect sense?

Yet, there is another dodgy definition

"Depression is defined as, 'Any act on the part of the husband, partner or family which causes physical, mental, social or psychological trauma to the woman and prevent sher [sic] from developing her personality' "
p.6

That may be a good definition -but it is not a definition of depression. It seems to relate more to the theme of another Hajare publication in the journal Research & Investigations in Sports Medicine…

This opinion article, "Co- Relation of Domestic Violence and Epileptic Seizure ("Fit") Experience among Recently Married Women Residing Inslums Communities' Pharmaceutical Institutions in Pune District, India", unlike some of Hajare's work, seems largely to consist of coherent passages – although the linkage between the two key themes (domestic violence and epilepsy) was not clear, and seemed somewhat gratuitous. ³ There were also a number of common Hajare features:

the reference to recently married women in the title did not seem to be followed up in the main text
the work seems to be set in a community within pharmaceutical institutions ("Women Residing Inslums [sic] Communities' Pharmaceutical Institutions…", "Women who reside in India's slums pharmaceutical institutions…")
the only work cited was by 'Rahul H'

And, of course, the article did not seem to have any obvious linkage to sports medicine – the supposed topic of the journal.

Unrelated jibberish

Hajare produces text that in places seems like some kind of obscure poetry or the output of a very poor AI system (even worse than the digital helper offered by my bank). In extremis, Hajare has produced publications where the different sections not only make little sense, but seem unrelated to each other.

Dullness – a serious disease

So in "Guessing Game And Poor Quality Teaching Staffs Study Of Less Sunlight Private Pharmacy Institution In Pune University" published in Advances in Bioengineering & Biomedical Science Research, we have another obscure heading. The first paragraph of the 'Summary' tells readers that

"The researchers concluded that the finger have important implications for policy and prevention and should inform the creation of more effective sexual health education programs and interventions…"
p.1

Huh? Which editor or peer reviewer thinks that makes sense to readers?

And the second paragraph of the summary starts,

"Dullness is an increasingly prevalent disease that places a huge burden on patients and society and can lead to significant health problems including heart attacks, strokes, blindness, and hair fall, mouth odour, under eye blackness, pelvis dislocation, one sided vagina, and kidney failure."
p.1

So, 'dullness' is a disease, and moreover, one associated with a wide range of seemingly unrelated medical conditions – though some (not all) of these are associated as being complications of diabetes. One of the conditions listed appears to be an anatomical impossibility (or is a one-sided tube just a topological tautology?) Dullness is certainly not something one associates with Dr Hajare's writing. One wonders how anyone reading this summary could recommend, or even think it was ethically acceptable, to publish this article.

In case the nonsensical, and medically incorrect, aspects of this study (supposedly by a Fellow of the Indian Council of Medical Research, remember) are not considered a reason to reject it, Hajare throws in unscholarly expression:

"The study has found that women were 21 per cent more likely to develop no happiness if they found their jobs mentally tiring at the start of the study. Skinturns [sic] out as baggy as their old fat clothes. Under normal circumstances, seen no sexual desire or waiting for call."
p.1

The reader is also told that

"In the study, Dr Rahul Hajare from the Indian Council of Medical Research Batch 2013 examined the effect of mentally tiring work on dullness incidence in over 20 women, during a 22- 32 year period"
p.1

The editor apparently had no difficultly in understanding and believing that this study had been carried out over "a 22- 32 year period"!

So what is the study about?

Making pancakes

The 'introduction' section of the article is about making pancakes, book-ending with what is presumably a deliberately eye-catching claim (another nod to the hoax?)

"Those who tossed their pancakes have double the amount of sex than those who turned it. A recent study in aimed to find out if there was any relation between the way people cooked their pancakes and treated their relationship …The findings suggested that people who turned their pancakes were either shy or scared to experiment (feared risk of dropping pancakes). Those who tossed came across as fun loving and enjoyed more success in bed. The study concluded that those who tossed their pancakes have double the amount of sex than those who turned their pancakes."
p.1

The 'introduction' of the study is followed by …a paragraph headed 'Concussion' (is it the conclusion?) which makes no reference to concussion – nor indeed the pancake study, but seems to be about dating and medications ("For me, the fourth drug hit the mark…"). The article ends with a list of recommendations…apparently for carrying out a research study:

Do not forcefully register any menwomen [sic] in study.
Do not touch any men women without permission.
Use sax while performing a study.
If someone contact any bad intension [sic] contact pure head of the
Institutions. (p.1)

How does sunlight fit in? Well, this is only mentioned in the article title – no where else. To be fair, sunlight does make an appearance in the 'research article' "Why Black Died by White Study of Totally Less Sunlight Pharmacy Institutions in Indian University India" in the Journal of Physical Medicine Rehabilitation Studies & Reports.

The abstract for this article begins:

"Fake can personality and personality is divine. According to a new research from Pune University teacher, living at higher latitudes, where there has also less sunlight, could result in a higher prevalence rate of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) increase sexual desire focus on the less teaching link up and more exchange skin in the game either or."
p.1

Again, Hajare seems to be telling readers right at the start that this is not a serious academic work. This also illustrates a common trope in Hajare's method, which is to use a journalistic style ("According to a new research from Pune University teacher…") to refer to his studies. In case anyone misses these clues, there is an obviously nonsensical 'executive summary' to reinforce the point:

"Underground abortions work has a threat. Recent technical advancement may disrupt oppressive laws, if they go through in real. Best practice with sexual satisfaction has no one goes to office every day. It has true. Why did happy man continue to dance in the heart even though he had a hole in his heart?"
p.1

The 'Introduction' to the article starts "Cheek pulp has sexual honesty called Anti-Abortion extremism" and the section reporting the sample begins "Dark privilege has hunger for sexual satisfaction."

Journalistic writing

Some of Hajare's writing is so journalistic that it would fit better in popular magazines.

For example, his piece in Advances in Neurology and Neuroscience entitled, deep breath, "Non-Medical Basis Characterization of Orgasm Associated with Approach Sex Can Last Up to 20 Seconds to 15 Minutes, Eligible Women Individuals' Poor Transportation Facility of Private Pharmacy Institutions in Pune, India" offers editors a big clue to his approach at the start of the piece ("Non-medical basis…"). Gratuitous references to transportation and pharmacy institutions (both common Hajare themes) that seem to have nothing to do with the article are allowed as part of the title. A feeling for the writing style is offered by

"This climax combo can be achieved through certain positions, such as lying on office chair back with feet dangling over the edge of the bed. …Orgasms get better as age. Now here one good reason to look forward to golden years…Orgasms can last up to 20 seconds or 15 minutes, claims introvert technique…Everyone has faked an orgasm at least once but no need. If have faked it at least once. Other mums have faked it, too…But it is also important for him to calm his mind and to concentrate on close retina. This will take massive focus on his part, but the end result will be totally worth it!"
pp.1-2

And so forth. Suitable for Cosmopolitan? Perhaps. But published in a journal called Advances in Neurology and Neuroscience?

However, mixed in with this magazine copy are claims supposedly based on Hajare's research

"Researcher found, while 61 per cent of women ages 18 to 24 experienced orgasm the last time they had sex, 65 per cent of women in their 30s did and about 70 percent of women in their 40s and 50s…
Forty seven per cent of the study's participants reported orgasms worked faster than painkillers when it came to easing headaches…
While 85 percent of men thought their partner had an orgasm during their most recent episode of sex, only 64 percent of women reported having an orgasm."
pp.1-2

This 'short communication' in a supposed research journal includes absolutely no information on how the researcher 'found' these things. Not from the literature, presumably, as Hajare only cites his own papers. At one points he writes "According to Medical History Today,…" but he does not cite any such publication in his reference list. Indeed, I could not find any such publication on a basic search.

Again, Hajare leaves hints for his readers not to take his work too seriously. The quotation about headaches above was truncated – Hajare's text referred specifically to headaches one has when marking student work,

"Forty seven per cent of the study's participants reported orgasms worked faster than painkillers when it came to easing headaches
while checking sessional paper about same answers and not need take extra efforts."
p.1

The sunlight motif referred to above features in an article in the Journal of Gastrointestinal Disorders.

"Scientology applied to the workday of women feels just as good as sex: Non clinical examination of less sunlight habit Pharmacy Institute in Pune University" has a very short nonsense (and provocative) abstract:

"Black and white desire for sex. Open day meditation has the same effect on our brains as sex. 20 new normal orgasms in a research row and affordable in all color of skin."
p.1

The introduction to the article (that is, the section immediately before the conclusion!) ends with the claim that:

"Close monitoring MRIs and face recognition confirm that a particular part of the brain becomes most active when consumers get a great bargain or when they are having great sex."
p.2

This seems to be another 'in joke' for anyone who knows about MRI scanners. Moreover (yet another 'in joke'?) face recognition seems to be an approved research technique here, with no mention of how the author suggests elsewhere that "the future of human flourishing depends upon facial recognition technology being banned"!

MRI scanning – using nuclear magnetic resonance – requires the subject to be very still inside a large magnet. It is difficult to see how an MRI brain scan can be obtained during shopping or sexual intercourse. (Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay)

How is this study 'scientology'?

Scientology, according to the Church of Scientology International, is "a religion that offers a precise path leading to a complete and certain understanding of one's true spiritual nature and one's relationship to self, family, groups, Mankind, all life forms, the material universe, the spiritual universe and the Supreme Being". Scientology is a very contentious religion that is accused of being a kind of cult, but even on its own terms, it does not seem to be the basis for generating new scientific knowledge in gastrointestinal medicine. Needless to say, the article "Scientology applied to the workday of women…" does not actually seem to have anything to do with Scientology.

Perverting the structural conventions of academic writing

In some of these examples, Hajare seems to be taunting editors by deliberately ignoring the usual conventions on structuring research reports – such as papers that move from the 'Introduction' to the 'Conclusions' and 'Recommendations' without any intermediary sections.

Read about structuring research reports

One example of Hajare testing conventions to the limit is an article in the journal Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology Insights entitled "An Attempt to Eradicate Alcohol Dependency from Adult Men in Service Privately Managed Pharmaceutical Institutions in India". This paper has the following structure:

Section	Word count
Abstract	1028 words
Statement of Problem	323 words
Recommendation	48 words

The structure of a 'short communication' in 'Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology Insights'

The abstract of a paper is meant to be a brief summary of the key points in the main text. No reputable journal is likely to allow an abstract of over a thousand words – and an abstract well over twice the length of the substantive text is completely bizarre, and again absurd. But not so absurd it seems, that the editor of Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology Insights thought it was sensible to decline publication.

How does a journal editor not notice that the abstract of a study is a lot longer than the full report it is meant to summarise?

The 'abstract' reports a study where it is claimed "both male and men volunteers were asked to watch porn involving alcohol" (p.1, emphasis added). The statement of the problem included some more clues for the editors and peer reviewers who are supposed to ensure the quality of published research,

"In the new study, author introduces a alcohol dependency which ten folds into a helical structure that mimics surface features of the breakdown of health principal, and whose precise shape can be altered in a unparallel fashion by the attachment of various substituents diseases."
p.2

Apparently, if the editor of Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology Insights actually read this gibberish, he considered it made a useful contribution to the research literature. (And, as according to his twitter home page, https://mobile.twitter.com/yhasanen1 (accessed 26th November, 2021), he is "an independent researcher…not related to any university or medical institute" one would imagine he has sufficient time to read such short submissions quite closely.)

Hajare's recommendations to eradicate alcohol dependency include:

Mobile phone should be kept in the office.
Teachers are not allowed to give physical punishment to the students.
Fourth Saturday of the month is holiday.

These may not seem especially related to the theme, but then they are among points which Hajare includes in his recommendations across a range of articles supposedly about different issues.

Perhaps the reason for the odd structure of the Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology Insights article was to avoid this article seeming too similar to an article in Trends in Technical & Scientific Research.

This article is basically the same article, but swapped around, so what had been the Abstract in Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology Insights becomes the Introduction in Trends in Technical & Scientific Research – an Introduction which immediately precedes the same Recommendations as before.

Provocative titles

Not all of Hajare's works have convoluted titles: sometimes he seems to be going for shock value. So, one paper in the journal Current Trends in Gastroenterology and Hepatology is entitled "Doggy Style Sex Distorts the Appearance of Face":

Doggy Style Sex Distorts the Appearance of Face

Hajare tells readers that "There are more than 1000 types of autoimmune diseases including penile fracture". Unfortunately there really is a rare medical condition known as penile fracture, which is as unpleasant as the name suggests – but as the name might also suggest this is a trauma injury, not an autoimmune disease. One does not have to be a medical expert to to have queried that one. (But perhaps I am not qualified to make that discrimination, given my {entirely undeserved} reputation as an expert in areas such as regenerative medicine, otolaryngology, neuroscience and brain disorders, orthopedics…)

Cows Die from an Overdose of Love

A 'mini-review' published in Acta Scientific Nutritional Health (or possibly Acta Scientific Gastroenterology – the journal itself seems uncertain which it is), which is actually a one page personal anecdote (that does not review any literature), reaches the "Conclusion. Being (non) black is a personal choice" which does not seem to have anything to do with the topic of the article.

The publisher seems to be unsure about the name of its journal.

The header gives the journal title as 'Acta Scientific Gastroenterology' and the page footer as 'Acta Scientific Nutritional Health'.

(As far as I can see there is no journal called 'Acta Scientific Gastroenterology' although there is an 'Acta Scientific Gastrointestinal Disorders')

The anecdote concerns something of social significance in India (what should a poor person do when their cow no longer provides milk, but still needs feeding, in a cultural context where it is not acceptable to kill the cow?) but seems to have nothing to do with Gastroenterology and is only related to Nutritional Health by the vague link that cows produce milk which is used by humans as food.

Abortion Patient Whose Family Thinks She is a Virgin

The article "Abortion Patient Whose Family Thinks She is a Virgin" was published in the journal Pharmaceutical Sciences & Analytical Research Journal. There is no reference in the text of the article to abortion or any virgin. The 'executive summary' starts with the statement "Blood plasma is yellow in colour". As well as being another gratuitous colour reference (apparently one of Hajare's regular hints for knowing readers of his canon), the sentence has no connection to what follows. There are no other references to blood or plasma in the article.

Sex, sin and divine justice in a medical journal

A 'mini review' (which again does not actually offer a review of literature) on safe sex in the journal General Medicine Open does not limit itself to a non-judgemental, scientific approach:

"The best definition for safer sex is the statistic one in week – a reminder that beyond a point, one cannot control or ever completely prepare for the future. Believes unsafe sex afflicts those who have a sinful past, people cannot compensate for the sin against the unseen. But when you see the background, it will be found it was divine justice, nothing else."
p.1 (emphasis added)

So 'unsafe sex' is claimed to be divine justice for sinning. (Elsewhere, Hajare seems to suggest cancer is divine justice for sinning.)

An article with the provocative title "Why No More Apes Evolving Into Humans" in the journal Research in Medical & Engineering Sciences offers another special Hajare definition:

"The best definition for ape is the one by hundred – a reminder that beyond a point, one cannot control or ever completely prepare for the future."
p.1 (emphasis added)

I confess to having no idea what, if anything, was meant, but noticed the use of a key phrase across two papers supposedly discussing very different things.

Meanwhile a 'research article' entitled "Evaluation of Disposable Bed Sheets and Safety Guidelines for Black Dog Sex Workers Resumes in the New Normal Living with Burnside Pharmacy Institute in Pune University" published in the Journal of Dermatology Sciences Research Reviews & Reports seems to genuinely report some real research.

The title and the first paragraph of the abstract seems to refer to precautions being taken in the light of COVID to protect sex workers and their clients, and this is reinforced by photographs which supposedly show sex workers based at the Pharmacy Institute at a University [?] wearing protective clothing. ⁴ ⁵

However, the second half of the abstract ('summary') is incongruous with the first:

Indian government eased isolation measures and introduced social distancing, as bars and nightclubs nationwide reopened in Low to high side category employees can villain. This has undergone and final result has publishing after the examination of skin pulp of angry employees according to their physic and anatomy of hair.
Angry employees has more likely to engage in unethical behaviour at work, a new study has revealed. Researcher has seen poverty during early service. … To control crime researcher realised that they have to go to ethical college where they will get a mid-day meal.
p.1 ('Skin pulp' seems to be another of Hajare's recurring leitmotifs.)

[I have omitted a sentence that can be read as a serious claim of misconduct which if untrue could be libelous. ⁵]

However, the 'angry employee' theme does link to the main text which reports a research study discussing "how important it is for supervisors to pay attention to employees' emotions — especially when the emotion is anger" (p.1). Yet at the end of an extensive account of this study, Hajare adds a meaningless conclusion that was unrelated to the research discussed,

"Women have less regret if the sex has good, researcher report from Pune University data mining reveals fundamental pattern of Indian women thinking tooth decay has a powerhouse of sex regret. All colours can significant for sex. The benevolent behaviour may actually be playing into negative stereotypes. Sex with equality in more beneficial rather than non-human. Handicap sex through the course in life may be trusted."
p.2

So, obviously, more nonsense – but not so obviously nonsensical that the editor of the Journal of Dermatology Sciences Research Reviews & Reports thought it wiser not to publish it, or to ask for irrelevant material to be removed before publication.

A useful exercise in calling out poor academic standards – or just more noise clogging up the scholarly literature?

I have not exhausted the canon as there is plenty more in this vein, but I have commented on enough of Hajare's output to give a feel for the scale of the hoax. He has been consistently persuading incompetent journals to publish nonsense despite seeming to leave obvious as well as more subtle clues. When a journal editor does not notice that the the title of a submission does not relate to the theme of its content, and that neither are within the scope of the journal, then there are provocative, counterfactual, or simply obscure and absurd segments of text to push the point home.

In summary I found Hajare's project clever, and intriguing, and a well-targeted expose of some very poor journals. Once I started to see the patterns and so got the jokes, it was also at times amusing. Still, Hajare has surely achieved this at the cost of his own scientific reputation (how can anyone now take anything he writes seriously?), risking reputational damage to the Indian Council of Medical Research – and, when much of his work focuses on important health and social issues (drug abuse, domestic violence, sexual health, epilepsy…), he has managed to add to the vast amount of nonsense and misinformation to be found by the causal seeker after truth. All in all, even though Hajare has done a good job of demonstrating that certain journals (that claim peer review and high editorial standards and oversight by strong international boards) will publish work of no academic merit at all, even when it is blatantly incoherent and counterfactual, but only by feeding the parasitic publishers and further polluting the scientific literature.

Coda

As I did some due diligence in preparing this posting I discovered another issue with some of these publications that makes it even more difficult to be equivocal about Hajare's hoax. Sadly, even if his approach does show up some incompetent journals, he seems to have definitely stepped over the line of academic malpractice in doing so.

This raises the question (taken up in Part 2) of whether academic misconduct can be justified for the greater good?

Work cited:

Sokal, A. (1996). Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity. Social Text (46/47), 217-252.
Taber, K. S. (2013, 29th November). Challenges to academic publishing from the demand for instant open access to research. Chinese Social Sciences Today, p. A06.

Appendix: Excessive self-citation

Authors of scholarly works are expected to cite those works that they have drawn upon in their work. (Of course that is impossible: we are all influenced, sometimes profoundly, by things we have read but no longer specifically recall being the source of our ideas. Serious scholars at least do their best.) A well established researcher following a programme of research is likely to cite some of their earlier works that they are building upon, or which go into more detailed accounts of points passed over quickly in the current article as not so central to the present study.

Excessive self-citation is gratuitously citing your own work where it is not central, adds nothing to the present account, or is not the best source for what is being discussed.

I suspect there is a tendency for authors (who inherently know their own work more intimately than anybody else's) to see a logic to citing more of their own work than others may have thought optimal. (Mea culpa.) Peer reviewers are likely to comment if they feel that an article puts too much emphasis on the author's own work, and not that of other authorities.

Hajare's level of self-citation would be something that virtually any experienced peer reviewer would question, as the examples below suggest:

Article	N	N'
An attempt to Characterize Street Pharmaceutical Teachers Abusing Drugs and Aspect of Allergy Among Adult Men Attending Long Distance Institutions in Pune, India	13	11
Facial Recognition Technology and Detection of Over Sexuality in Private Organizations Combined with Shelter House. Baseline Integrated Behavioural and Biological Assessment among Most at-Risk Low Standards Hope Less Institutions in Pune, India	22*	22*
Detection of Progression over Sexuality in Indian Students and Teachers Combined	24	24
Assessment of the Depression-Level Effectiveness of the Curse Words in Young Adults in Private Co-Educational Pharmaceutical Institutions in Pune University Pharmaceutical Institutions Living With Poor Sanitation, India: A Pre-planned, Causal-Pathway-Based Analysis	12	12***
Guessing Game And Poor Quality Teaching Staffs Study Of Less Sunlight Private Pharmacy Institution In Pune University	4	4
Why Black Died by White Study of Totally Less Sunlight Pharmacy Institutions in Indian University India	6	6
Scientology applied to the workday of women feels just as good as sex: Non clinical examination of less sunlight habit Pharmacy Institute in Pune University	3	3
Characterization of Doggy Style Sex-Alcohol Dependent Inter Subtype Among Men Who Have Sex with Women Lead in Heart Disease for Men From India	6	6
Safe sex: the train your mind (revise)	3	2
Cows Die from an Overdose of Love	4	4
Doggy Style Sex Distorts the Appearance of Face	8	8
Abortion Patient Whose Family Thinks She is a Virgin.	10	10**
Why No More Apes Evolving Into Humans	6	5
An Attempt to Eradicate Alcohol Dependency from Adult Men in Service Privately Managed Pharmaceutical Institutions in India	6	6***
A Short Review on "Social and Behavioural Research: Tool for Identify Alcohol Dependency Adult Men in Service Privately Managed Pharmaceutical Institutions in India"	6	6***
Evaluation of Disposable Bed Sheets and Safety Guidelines for Black Dog Sex Workers Resumes in the New Normal Living with Burnside Pharmacy Institute in Pune University	4	4
Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence and Variation Of High Risky Behavior In Private Pharmacy Institutional Principal And Assistant Professor Combined Attending From Long Distance Driver Role In Pune University, India: An Attractive Findings	18	18***
J Nat Ayurvedic Med 2018, 2(6): 000143. In Vitro, Widowed and Curse Words form Principal During Unplanned Meeting of the College in Private Pharmaceutical Institutions in Pune University India: An Attractive Study	18	18***
Co- Relation of Domestic Violence and Epileptic Seizure ("Fit") Experience among Recently Married Women Residing Inslums Communities' Pharmaceutical Institutions in Pune District, India	5	5
There is no Cure for the Cancer of Stupidity	5	5
Non-Medical Basis Characterization of Orgasm Associated with Approach Sex Can Last Up to 20 Seconds to 15 Minutes, Eligible Women Individuals' Poor Transportation Facility of Private Pharmacy Institutions in Pune, India	3	3

N: Number of works cited; N': Number of self citations

* actually there are 28 references, but the author seems to have got bored of completing the bibliographic details, so only 22 report who wrote the work cited. (These omissions should have been spotted as 'author queries' in production had the work been sent to a competent research journal.) But I recognise some of those unattributed titles as Hajare outputs.

** 5 of these 10 outputs are co-authored by Hajare with other scholars.

*** Including one coauthored publication.

Notes

¹ I am certainly not suggesting all open access journals are like this. However the publication model of open access journals (income from authors, not readers) can be an incentive to set a low bar for article quality (Taber, 2013). (A good journal seeks high quality in publications, so that capable academics will want to publish in a reputable, high status outlet. A predatory journal has a different business model!)

Read about selecting a research journal for your research articles

² Whether science and religion should be seen as somehow at war is of course a contested idea.

Read about science and religion

³ As I did some 'due diligence' prior to posting, I realised that Hajare did not seem to have written the bulk of the article at all. I discuss this in the companion article.

⁴ As the article is open access and can be reproduced with acknowledgement I was intending to include the images. However, when I did some 'due diligence' prior to posting I released the images may well have been copyright of a third party. I discuss this in 'Part 2' of this article.

⁵ As I read more of Hajare's papers, I found a number of suggestions, indeed sometimes explicit claims, of serious malpractice by senior staff at the University cited in the articles. It is possible that Hajare has some kind of grievance with, or perhaps even vendetta against, the University – and of course such matters should not be judged without offering a right of reply to those accused of, or implied to be involved in, wrongdoing. (And if Dr Hajare himself wishes to respond to my observations about his work, I would be happy to publish his comments below.)

A cure for this cancer of stupidity

The scholarly community needs to shame academics who knowingly offer respectability to obviously dishonest practices and the dissemination of fabricated research reports

Keith S. Taber

The article seems to report some kind of experimental study, but I do not know what hypothesis was being tested, and I do not understand the description of the conditions being tested. …as far I can tell, the study (if it really was carried out) is more about workload management than medicinal chemistry… I do not know what the findings were because the results quoted are (deliberately?) inconsistent. I do know that Hajare makes claims about cancer which are totally inappropriate in a scientific context and have no place in the medical literature

According to the title of an article in Organic and Medicinal Chemistry International Journal, "There is no Cure for the Cancer of Stupidity".

Article published in ***Organic and Medicinal Chemistry International Journal*** in 2018

The journal claims to be "an open access journal that is committed to publish the papers on various topics of chemistry, especially synthetic organic chemistry, and pharmacology and various other biological specialties, where they are involved with drug design, chemical synthesis and development for market of pharmaceutical agents, or bio-active molecules (drugs)". You may wish to make up your own mind about the extent to which the article I discuss below fits this scope.

The journal is presented as peer reviewed, and offers guidelines for reviewers, suggesting

"Juniper Publishers strives hard towards the spread of scientific knowledge, and the credibility of the published article completely depends upon effective peer reviewing process. Reviewing of manuscript is an important part in the process of publication. Reviewers are asked to make an evaluation and provide recommendations to ensure the scientific quality of the manuscript is on par with our standards."
https://juniperpublishers.com/reviewer-guidelines.php

That is as one would expect from a research journal.

What is the cancer of stupidity?

The author of this article presumably has a particular notion of the 'cancer of stupidity'. This particular article is written by Dr Rahul Hajare who gives his affiliation here as Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India. (Perhaps he is the same Rahul Hajare who is listed as an honorary editor of Organic and Medicinal Chemistry International Journal affiliated to Vinayaka Mission University, India? ¹)

However, having read the paper, I am not sure what readers are meant to understand the 'cancer of stupidity' actually is. One might well guess that the loaded term 'cancer' is intended metaphorically here, but perhaps not as Hajare talks about both liver 'disorder' and lung cancer in the article.

The article seems to report some kind of experimental study, but I do not know what hypothesis was being tested, and I do not understand the description of the conditions being tested. Of course, unlike someone qualified to referee articles for a journal of organic and medicinal chemistry, I am not an expert in the field. But then, as far as I can tell, the study (if it really was carried out) is more about workload management that medicinal chemistry – but I am not sure of that. I do not know what the findings were because the results quoted are (deliberately?) inconsistent. I do know that Hajare makes claims about cancer which are totally inappropriate in a scientific context and have no place in the medical literature.

A copyright article

'There is no Cure for the Cancer of Stupidity' is copyright of its author, Rahul Hajare, and the article is marked "All rights are reserved". However it is published open-access under creative commons license 4.0 which allows any re-use of the article subject to attribution. So, I am free to reproduce as much of the text as I wish.

I wish to reproduce enough to persuade readers that no intelligent person who reads the article could mistake it for a serious contribution to the scientific literature. If you are convinced I have made my case, then this raises the issue of whether it was published without any editorial scrutiny, or published despite editor(s) and peer reviewers seeing it was worthless as an academic article. This might seem a harsh judgement on Dr Hajare, but actually I suspect he would agree with me. I may be wrong, but I strongly suspect he submitted the article in full knowledge that it was not worth publishing.

The abstract

The abstract of an article should offer a succinct summary of its contents: in the case of an empirical study (which this article seems to report), it should outline the key features of the sample, research design and findings. So what does Dr Hajare write in his abstract?

"The best definition for cancer is the statistic one in six – a reminder that beyond a point, one cannot control or ever completely prepare for the future. Believes cancer afflicts those who have a sinful past, people cannot compensate for the sin against the unseen. But when you see the background, it will be found it was divine justice, nothing else. Lung cancer means no accreditation. Unscientific opinion that illness is only too human to fall back on fantasy, or religion, when there are no rational explanation for random misfortunes."
p.001

So, we have an abstract which is incoherent, and does not seem to be previewing an account of a research study.

Dodgy definition

It starts with a definition of cancer: "The best definition for cancer is the statistic one in six". I would imagine experts differ on the best definition of cancer in the context of medicinal chemistry, but I am pretty sure that 'the statistic one in six' would not be a good contender.

Provocative claims

Next, there is some syntactically challenged material seemingly suggesting that cancer is the outcome of sinning and is divine retribution. An individual is entitled to hold such an opinion – and indeed this view is probably widely shared in some communities – but it has no place in science. Even if a medical scientist believed that at one level this was true- it should have no bearing on their scientific work which should adopt 'methodological naturalism': the assumption that in scientific contexts we look for explanations in terms of natural mechanisms not supernatural ones. ²

'Lung cancer means no accreditation'

Then we have a reference to lung cancer – so an actual medical condition. But it is linked to 'accreditation', without any indication what kind of accreditation is being referred to (accreditation of what, whom?). This does however turn out to be linked to a theme in the main paper (accreditation). Despite that, I doubt any reader coming to this paper fresh would have any idea what it was about from the abstract.

The main text is free of cancer

The main text of the article makes no further reference to cancer, either as a medical condition nor as a metaphor for something else.

The main text is broken up into sections:

Short commentary
Results
Discussion
Recommendation
Limitation

The first of these section titles seems slightly odd, as this article type (in its entirety) is classed by the journal as a 'short communication' and one might rather expect 'Introduction' and 'Research Design' or 'Methodology' here.

The outcome?

The short commentary starts with what seems an overview of the outcomes of the study:

"On the basis of criteria of assessment allotted for NBA work, the total effect has been carried out, which has shown that 9% staffs were moderately improved (17.65%) and 40% staff (78.43%) were mildly improved, while none of the staffs were completely improved."
p.001

NBA has not been defined (no, it is nothing to do with basketball) and we might wonder "what staff?" as this has not been explained. Some web searching suggests that (this) NBA is the organisation that oversees the quality of academic awards in India – the National Board of Accreditation. It is not clear yet what this has to do with lung cancer as mentioned in the abstract.

The alert (or even half-alert?) reader may also spot discrepancies here, which I suspect have been deliberately included by the author.

The aim of the study

We are next told that

"The trial was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of work flow as compared to replacement therapy in the management, along with the assessment of different initiative" .
p.001

So, there seems to have been a trial, but presumably not a cancer drugs trial as it has something to do with 'work flow' (published in a journal of organic and medicinal chemistry?)

After some brief comments about research design this paragraph concluded with

"NBA work cannot be evaluated in terms of file and paper work because investments of biosafety make a profit of privately managed low level transportation facility pharmacy institution make them different."
p.001

Perhaps this makes sense to some readers, but not me. The next paragraph starts:

"Individuals have the power to prevent the occurrence of these diseases by managing their health care and developing healthier food and lifestyle behaviours. How can they be motivated to do so, without providing them with a basic understanding about the important role the liver, the organ under attack, plays in maintaining their health and life itself?"
p.001

Up to this point no diseases have been discussed apart from lung cancer in the abstract. If the focus is lung cancer – why is the liver 'the organ under attack'? And it is not clear what (if anything) this has to do with the NBA or work flow.

Soon we are told

"A positive result does not necessarily mean that the person has body support, as there are certain conditions that may lead to a false positive result for example lyme disease, bacterial leaching, the paternal negativity but who themselves are not infected with liver disorder."
p.001

So, someone struggling to make sense of this study might understand there is some test for liver dysfunction, that can give false positives in some circumstances – so it the study about liver disease (rather than, or as well as, work flow)?

The science of the liver

Hajare refers to the functions of the liver,

"[the liver] is non-complaining complex organ and its miraculous hard working liver cells convert everything they eat breath and absorb through their skin into hundreds of life sustaining body functions 24/7"
p.001

The liver is a pretty remarkable multi-purpose chemical processing organ. But in the context of the scientific/medical literature, should its cells be described as 'miraculous' ²; and in terms of such everyday analogies as eating and breathing and having skin?

Linking liver disease to NBA accreditation

But then Hajare does suggest a link between liver disease and accreditation,

"Similarly staffs receiving liver therapy may have positive test. While showing a positive we general regarded as conclusive for a body life under attack, a negative test does not necessarily rule out. They need to understand how their food and life style choices can lead to reparable NBA accreditation privately managed in remote areas pharmaceutical Instituions [sic]."
p.001

Now, many researchers report their work in English when it is a second (or subsequent) language and this may explain some minor issues with English in any journals that do not have thorough production procedures. But here Hajare seems to be claiming that there is a causal link between the lifestyle choices of patients with liver disease and "reparable [sic] NBA accreditation".

In case the reader is struggling with this, perhaps wondering if they are misreading, Hajare suggests,

"During the early session, positive testing can be undertaken to exclude NBA. In staffs that are near to positive, the level of negative load is used as markers of the like senior staff and principal of progression to ignored."
p.001

Surely, this is just gibberish?

Hajare continues,

"The NBA accreditation is a 90 90 90 formula organization dedicated to promoting healthy food and lifestyle behaviours and prevention of liver related disease through multifaceted liver health education programs. The mission of NBA accreditation initiative is to make education a priority on national agenda. Promoting an education about the NBA to employer individuals to make informed can improve compliance and treatment outcomes for NBA and reduce the incidences of preventable NBA related thought including obesity, fatty liver, early onset diabetes, high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease. Primary prevention of NBA is the key to saving paper and application of green chemistry additional be benefited with zero Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) emission in college area."
pp.001-002

As far as I can ascertain, the mission of the NBA is rigorous accreditation standards for technical education programmes in India to ensure teaching is of as high quality as expected in other major countries. It has no particular focus on liver disease! The reference to '90-90-90' seems to be borrowed from UNAIDS, the United Nations initiative to tackle AIDS worldwide.

The paragraph seems to start by suggesting NBA is a positive thing, supporting health educational programmes, but within a few lines there are references to "preventable NBA related thought" (very 1984) and "Primary prevention of NBA" as an ecological goal.

Population and sample

Hajare does not detail the population sampled. From the unspecified population "A total 18 staffs [staff members?] were selected for the study, out of which 13 staffs completed the study" (p.002). The sample is characterised,

"The staffs tended to be lady staffs in middle adulthood regular health. About 80% mentioned irregular habits, and about 60% were unidentified"
p.002

It is not clear what kind of habits are referred to (irregular bowel movements might be relevant to illness, but could it mean drug abuse, or frequently clicking the heels of shoes together three times and thinking of Kansas?), and it is not clear in what sense 60% were 'unidentified'. It is also not clear if these percentages refer to the 18 selected or the 13 completing, as the numbers do not make good sense in either case:

proportion	of n=13	of n=18
80%	10.4 people 10 would be 77% 11 would be 84%	14.4 people 14 would be 78% 15 would be 83%
60%	7.8 people 7 would be 54% 8 would be 62%	10.8 people 10 would be 56% 11 would be 61%

Unless citing to 1 s.f., Hajare's data refer to fractional study participants!

Hajare also tells readers

"A little over half of the staffs (54.17%) were of none of long relation of objective of NBA implementation and 22.92% were of fear with mind."
p.002

It is not clear to me if this nonsensical statement is supposed to be part of a characterisation of the sample, or meant to be a finding. The precision is inappropriate for such a small sample. But none of that matters unless one understands what (if anything) is meant by these statements. I guess that if editors or peer reviewers did read this paper before publication, they felt this made good sense.

The three experimental conditions

We are told that the sample was randomly assigned to three conditions. We are not told how many people completed the study in each condition (it could have been 6 in each of two conditions and only one person in the third condition). The treatments were (p.002):

a) Group A: was treated with conjugated staff seen work flow once daily for 45 days.
b) Group B: was treated with small conjugated staffs seen work flow but ignored once daily for duration of 45 days.
c) Group C: was treated with separately work staffs seen and engaged in their assigned work for 45 days (After 7 days of continuous behavioral objective, a gap of 3 days in between before the next 7 days sitting with 3-3 day's gap after every 7 days).

Surely, at this point, any reader has to suspect that, Hajare is, as they say 'having a laugh'. Although I have no real idea what is meant by any of this, I notice that the main difference between the first two conditions is 'being ignored once daily' – as opposed to what: being observed continuously for 24 hours a day?

The data collection instruments

There is very little detail of the data collection instruments. Of course, this is a 'short communication' which might be a provisional report to be followed up by a fully detailed research report. (I have been looking through a lot of the work Hajare has published in recent years, and typically his papers are no more than about two pages in length.)

Early in the paper we are told that

"Specialized biosafety rating scales like orientation as well as information technology rating scale, were adopted to assess the effect of therapy."
p.001

So that is pretty vague.

Findings

As quoted above, the main text of the paper begins with a preview of findings: "On the basis of criteria of assessment allotted for NBA work, the total effect has been carried out, which has shown that 9% staffs were moderately improved (17.65%) and 40% staff (78.43%) were mildly improved, while none of the staffs were completely improved" (p.001). Perhaps 'mildly' and 'moderately' are understood in specific ways in this study, but that is not explained, and to an uninformed reader it is not clear which, if either, of mild improvement or moderate improvement is a more positive result.

Again, giving results to 4 significant figures is inappropriate (when n<20). But the main issue here is how 9%=17.65% and 40%=78.53%

Later in the article, the results are reported:

"Results of the study based off [not on!] the conjugated staffs rating scale showed that
Group C showed greater relief than the other two groups in flashes (66.66%), sleep problems (80.39%), in depressive mood (72.5%), in irritability (69.81%), and in anxiety (70.90%).
However, Group B showed significant improvement with flashes (62.22%), sleep problems (57.14%), depressive mood (66.66%), irritability (55.31%) and anxiety (50.94%).
Both groups B and C showed a lower benefit in symptoms compared with Group A, which was treated with conjugated staffs but quite unidentified crisis among them."
p.002 (extra line breaks added between sentences)

Again the precision is unjustified: the maximum number of participants in any condition is 6! It is noticeable that large proportions of these adults in "regular health" showed improvements in their (non) conditions. How the "biosafety rating scales like orientation" and "information technology rating scale" measured sleep problems, depressive mood, irritability, and anxiety is left to the imagination of the reader.

Just in case any reader is struggling to interpret all of this, thinking "it must be me, the editor and reviewers clearly understood this paper", Hajare drops in another hint that we should not take this article too seriously: "Group C showed greater relief than the other two groups…[but] Both groups B and C showed a lower benefit in symptoms compared with A Group"

That is: Group C did better than groups A and B, but not as well as group A

Limitations to the study

Hajare points out that 'self-reporting' is a limitation to the study, which is a fair point, but also suggest that "This study was a cross-sectional study; hence, it precludes inferences of causality among such variables." Of course, as it is described, this is not a cross-sectional study but an experimental intervention.

Recommendations

Hajare offers eight recommendations from this study, none of which seem to directly follow from the study (although some are sensible general well-being suggestions such as the value of yoga and education about healthy eating).

In his discussion section Hajare offers a kind of conclusion:

"Due to these limitations in research it is not clear to what degree biosafety treatment may benefit NBA accreditation in sub kind transportation facility remote pharmacy institution, although the smaller studies used in this literary analysis show a definite success rate that supersedes the benefits of biosafety treatment thereby delaying the aging process of staffs in private pharmacy Instituions [sic].
p.002

What literary analysis? Which studies? Hajare only cites 5 other publications: all his own work. He seems to be saying here that

is not clear to what degree biosafety treatment may benefit…
although the smaller studies show a definite success rate that supersedes the benefits of biosafety treatment

So, for any reader still trying to make some sense of the paper, perhaps this means there is inconclusive, but tentative, evidence that biosafety treatment may have sufficient benefits to suggest it should replace…biosafety treatment?

The cancer of the post-truth journals

If this commentary shows evidence of any metaphorical cancer it is the tumour eating away at the academic body. This consists of the explosion of predatory low quality so-called research journals that are prepared to publish any nonsense as long as the author pays a fee. These journals are nourished by submissions (many of which, I am sure, come from well-meaning researchers simply looking for somewhere to publish and who are misled by websites claiming peer review, impact factors, international editorial boards, and the like), and supported by those academics prepared to give such journals a veer of respectability by agreeing to be named as editors and board members.

Of course, it is an honour to be asked to take up such positions (at least by a genuine research journal) but academics need to do due diligence and make sure they are not associating their name with a journal that will knowing publish gibberish and misleading science.

Open access journals are open to the public as well as specialists, and therefore predatory journals are as likely to be a source of information for lay people as trustworthy ones. Someone looking for information on cancer and cancer treatment or liver disease might find this article in Organic and Medicinal Chemistry International Journal and see the host of editors from many different universities ¹ (I have appended the current listing below) and assume such a journal must be checking what it is publishing carefully if it is overseen by such an international college of scholars.

Yet Hajare's paper is nonsense.

A very generous interpretation would be that he is meaning well, trying to communicate his work as best he can, but is confused, and needs help in structuring and writing up his work. If this were so, the journal should have told him to come back when he had accessed and benefited from the help he needed.

I would normally tend to a generous interpretation, but not here.

Hajare's haox

Unlike a casual reader coming across this 'study' I was actually looking across a range of Hajare's work and have found that he has published many papers with similar features, such as

being much shorter than traditional research reports
provocative titles and statements – especially early in the paper (e.g., cancer is divine justice)
titles not reflecting the paper (there is no mention of cancer beyond the abstract)
abstracts that do not actually discuss the study
conflation of unrelated topics (here, liver disease and course accreditation)
irrelevancies (e.g., use of an information technology rating scale to assess liver-related health)
nonsensical 'sentences' that any editor or reviewer should ask to be revised/corrected
glaring inconsistencies (9%=17.65%; improvement under treatment in people who were in good health; groups C did better than, but also not as well as, group A; biosafety treatment may be superior to biosafety treatment)
citing only his own publications

One could explain a few such issues as carelessness, but here there is a multitude of errors that an author should not miss when checking work before submission, and more to the point, that should be easily spotted during editorial and peer review. There are many poor studies in the literature with weaknesses that seem to have been missed – but no one reading "There is no Cure for the Cancer of Stupidity" should think it is ready for publication.

Where is the stupidity? In the people who associate themselves with 'research' of this standard. They seek short term gain by adding a superficially useful affiliation to their curriculum vitae/résumé – but in the longer term these journals and their editorial boards are parasitic on the academic community, and spread low quality, fraudulent and (here) deliberately nonsensical misinformation on scientific and medical matters.

I am pretty convinced that Hajare is a serial hoaxer, who has found it so easy to get below-par material published that he seems to be deliberately testing out just how provocative, incoherent, inconsistent, vague, confusing and apparently pointless an account of a study has to be before a predatory journal will reject it. Clearly, in the case of Organic and Medicinal Chemistry International Journal these particular characteristics are no barrier to publication of a submission.

Hajare throws multiple clues and hints into his work so that a careful reader should not be misled into treating his work as trustworthy. Anybody who reads it should surely see the joke. Does anybody at Organic and Medicinal Chemistry International Journal bother to read material before they publish it? Did anyone read "There is no Cure for the Cancer of Stupidity" before recommending publication?

After all, if it so easy to get published when an author makes it so obvious the work is a hoax, how much easier must it be for authors to publish flawed and fabricated work when they put in a little effort to make it seem coherent and credible.

Organic and Medicinal Chemistry International Journal, at least, seems to have no problem with publishing the incoherent and incredible.

Notes

¹ At the time of writing this posting (27th November, 2021) the website of Organic and Medicinal Chemistry International Journal lists a large number of 'honarable editors' from many parts of the world on its website as part of the journal's editorial board. These are academics that have given their name to the journal to give it credence in terms of their reputations as scholars. I have appended the list of honorary editors below.

² Scientists may be atheists, agnostics or hold any form of religion. A person who holds a view (perhaps based on religious beliefs) that disease is the outcome of personal sin (or indeed the result of human sin more generally or the outcome of Adam and Eve's disobedience, or whatever) can take one of two views about this:

a) sinning is the cause of illness, and no further explanation is necessary

b) sinning is a cause of disease at one (theological) level but divine will works through natural causes (viruses, toxins, etc.)

It would be pointless and inappropriate for someone who took stance (a) to work in a scientific field concerning etiology (causes of diseases).

Someone who took stance (b) could work in such a field as long as they were able to bracket off their personal beliefs and focus on natural causes and scientific explanations in their work (i.e., methodological naturalism).

(Metaphysical naturalism rejects the existence of any supernatural entities, powers or influences and so would not accept sin or divine justice as causes of disease at any level.)

Read about science and religion

Appendix: Dishonarable editors?

Perhaps the colleagues below joined the editorial team of Organic and Medicinal Chemistry International Journal in good faith – but are they doing due diligence in checking the standards of the journal they (nominally) help edit? Are they happy to remain associated with this journal given its publishing (non)standards?

Honorary Editors	Editor affiliation
Fernando Albericio	University of Barcelona, Spain
Diego A Alonso	University of Alicante, Spain
Carl E. Heltzel	Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA
Daniel D Holsworth	Stemnext LLC, USA
Kent Acheson	Kaplan University Online, USA
Rama Suresh Ravi	National Institutes of Health, USA
Syed A A Rizvi	Nova Southeastern University, USA
Alireza Heidari	California South University, USA
Khue Nguyen	University of California, USA
Sonali Kurup	Roosevelt University, USA
Vivek Kumar	Johns Hopkins University, USA
Subrata Deb	Roosevelt Universit, USA
Sridhar Prasad	CalAsia Pharmaceuticals Inc, USA
Loutfy H Madkour	Al Baha University, Saudi Arabia
Gianfranco Balboni	University of Cagliari, Italy
Raja Rizwan Hussain	King Saud University, Saudi Arabia
Ibrahim Abdel-Karim Ahmed Abdel-Rahman	University of Sharjah, UAE
Khalid Hussain Thebo	Institute of Metal research, China
Wenjun Tang	Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, China
Ao Zhang	Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, China
Hengguang Li	Sichuan University, China
Pavel Kocovsky	Charles University, Europe
Hai Feng Ji	Drexel University, Pennsylvania
Wojciech J Kinart	University of Lodz, Poland
David Morales Morales	Instituto de Químic, Mexico
Walter Filgueira de Azevedo Jr	Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Chung Yi Chen	Kaohsiung Medical Universit, Taiwan
Ilkay Yildiz	Ankara University, Turkey
Mohamed El Sayed El Khouly	Kafrelsheikh University, Egypt
Mohamed Nageeb Rashed	Aswan University, Egypt
Hanaa Mahrousabd El Ghany Mohamed Rady	Cairo University, Egypt
Kamal Mohamed Dawood	Cairo University, Egypt
Waleed Adbelhakeem Bayoumi	Mansoura University, Egypt
Mohammad Emad Azab Ali El-Fakharany	Ain Shams University, Egypt
Khaled Rashad Ahmed Abdellatif	Beni-Suef University, Egypt
Winston F. Tinto	University of the West Indies, Caribbean
Adnan S Abu-Surrah	Qatar University, Qatar
Djamila Halliche	University of Science and Technology Houari Boumedien, Africa
Maher Aljamal	Al Quds University / Beit Jala Pharmaceutical Company, Palestine
Anna Pratima Nikalje	Y. B. Chavan College of Pharmacy, India
Prabhuodeyara M Gurubasavaraj	Rani Channamma University, India
A Jaya Shree	Osmania University, India
Hari N Pati	Advinus Therapeutics Ltd. (A TATA Enterprise), India
P Mosae Selvakumar	Karunya University, India
Madhuresh Kumar Sethi	Panjab University Chandigarh, India
Sunil Kumar	Pujab Technical University, India
Lallan Mishra	BHU, India
Pinkibala Punjabi	Mohanlal Sukhadia University, India
Maya Shankar Singh	Banaras Hindu University, India
Ajmal Bhat	Sant Baba Bhag Singh University, India
A Venkat Narsaiah	Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, India
Rahul Hajare	Vinayaka Mission University, India
Anshuman Srivastava	Banaras Hindu University, India
Sadaf Jamal Gilani	The Glocal University, India
Ramakrishna Vellalacheruvu	Sri Krishna Devaraya University, India
Ali Gharib	Islamic Azad University, Iran
Mohammad S Mubarak	University of Jordan, Jordan
Vladimir V Kouznetsov	Universidad Industrial de Santander, Colombia
Loai Aljerf	University of Damascus, Syria
Davidson Egirani	Niger Delta University, Nigeria
Branislav Rankovic	University of Kragujevac, Serbia
Fawzi Habeeb Jabrail	University of Mosul, Iraq
Ali A Ensafi	Isfahan University of Technology, Iran
Kian Navaee	American Chemical Society, Iran
Rachid Touzani	Université Mohammed Premier, Morocco

(Dis?)Honarary Editors of Organic and Medicinal Chemistry International Journal

Writing for the Journal of Petroleum, Chemical Industry, Chemistry Education, Medicine, Drug Abuse, and Archaeology

Just let me learn a new research field, and fire up the time machine, and I'll see what I can do

Keith S. Taber

An invitation from a **petroleum journal** where the editorial board are said to like my work, asking me to send them a unpublished **medical** article – preferably a couple of weeks *before* they wrote to me.

Dear Michael

Thank you for your kind message from the journal 'Petroleum and Chemical Industry International' (email, 23rd November, 2021).

It is always good to know people are noticing my work, and I was of course pleased to learn you had found my article 'Comment on "Increasing chemistry students' knowledge, confidence, and conceptual understanding of pH using a collaborative computer pH simulation"…'.

Given the title of the journal, I could be forgiven for being somewhat surprised that an article critiquing claims in an educational research study would attract your attention. So, to be told that the editorial board members of Petroleum and Chemical Industry International are "really impressed with [my] articles" is just incredible!

You ask me if I can send you some 'type of medical and clinical article'. I do not really think my work could strictly be described in those terms. Indeed, I initially wondered if my research might even fall outside the scope of Petroleum and Chemical Industry International: yet I see the journal has published some quite diverse material, including the wonderfully titled 'An attempt to Characterize Street Pharmaceutical Teachers Abusing Drugs and Aspect of Allergy Among Adult Men Attending Long Distance Institutions in Pune, India'.¹ Moreover, I see an editorial for the journal published a few month ago focused on the conjecture that around the year 1100 CE the Yoruba of west Africa may have used glass beads as a form of currency.²

Is it fair then to assume that the journal has a fairly flexible approach to defining its scope, and that a submission that was outside of the 'medical and clinical' categories might still be considered for publication?

If that is so, I wonder what is currently a typical timescale for publication, should a submission be deemed suitable. Would a submission by your suggested deadline of 8th November, for example, have a reasonable chance of being published by, say, mid October?

Yours…

The journal homepage of *Petroleum and Chemical Industry International* offers a helpful tutorial for any potential contributors explaining what petroleum is and what it is used for

Notes:

A research article in **Petroleum and Chemical Industry International**

An editorial in **Petroleum and Chemical Industry International**

Not a leading international journal…

…of chemistry education…or even a journal of chemistry education

Keith S. Taber

One of these images shows a **leading international research journal** of chemistry education with academic quality standards and high production values. And the other…is not (any of these things).

I had received one of those unsolicited invitations to publish in the journal: "Write for Us". An editorial assistant wrote to tell me that

"I would appreciate receiving your submission on or before 10th November 2021"
email 'Write for Us – Journal of Chemistry: Education, Research and Practice' recieved on 22nd October

Publish in haste – retract at leisure?

Such requests to submit something, and quickly, but which are not associated with any special or themed issue, tempt me to write back and ask "why [would you so appreciate receiving my submission on or before 10th November 2021]?" Anyone who is a serious scholar or researcher will know both that producing an academic study takes a good deal of time and that decent journals have a rolling programme of submissions, peer review, and publication. So, it should not make any difference to the outcomes of a submission, or the approximate time from submission to publication, if one submitted on 10th November, or the 11th, or any other date when one had a manuscript ready. ¹

So, these deadlines are really about marketing. Sometimes, some of these new journals which are struggling to establish themselves (and it is very easy for a publisher to start a journal these days, but very difficult to attract quality work – or well-qualified reviewers – given the extensive number of existing outlets), will offer reduced, or even set aside, publication fees for submissions received by a certain date to attract work, in order to help them start to build up a body of published studies which can convince other authors they have a viable and sustainable journal.

Here, however, if there was any particular motivation for me to respond by the implied deadline of 10th November, this was not shared.

Another journal of chemistry education research and practice?

I recall contacting the so-called Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice before it even started publishing, when I was editor of a well-established and well-regarded journal with a very similar name: 'Chemistry Education Research and Practice' (CERP, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry).

A genuinely leading international journal – and a journal pretending to be one

I suggested that the proposed name risked the two journals being confused. I discussed this in an editorial:

"In October a colleague and former Board member of this journal was invited by the founding editor of the Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice to join that new journal's editorial board. The journal name seemed very close to Chemistry Education Research and Practice, and I wrote to suggest they should avoid confusion by changing the name before they actually started publishing.
The editor replied to acknowledge that "we can understand your doubts" – and asked me to let them know if I wanted to be on the Board.
I wrote back to suggest again that they should modify the name to "allow the academic community to see your new journal as a genuine attempt to add to the range of scholarly publications in the field, rather than simply employing a cheap trick to mislead authors".
Taber, 2018, p.11

In view of the lack of concern about the similarity of name at the soon to be launched journal, I now suspect this similarity was likely deliberate – to conflate a top journal that did not charge publication fees with an unproven outlet that asks for a hefty fee.

A false claim (i.e., lie)

In any case, the journal website made it clear the journal was not actually specifically about chemistry education research and practice but was a general chemistry journal. The journal describes itself as:

"Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice is a leading International Journal for the publication of high quality articles…It welcomes publication of scientific research papers in the fields of Theoretical and Physical Chemistry, Analytical and Inorganic Chemistry, Organic and Biological Chemistry, Applied and Materials Chemistry, Spectroscopy, Chemical physics, Biological, Medicinal, Environmental chemistry, Biochemistry, Petroleum and Petrochemicals, Materials science, Nuclear chemistry, Polymer chemistry, Pharmacognosy & Phytochemistry, Stereochemistry and Clinical chemistry"
Website of OPAST Group LLC, publisher of the dodgy journal

It is certainly not a 'leading International Journal' even if it genuinely aspires to be one. So, that is simply a false claim. Perhaps a reader might wonder if this is just my opinion – but the journal was making such a claim before it had begun publishing when there could be absolutely no basis for the lie.

"I wrote back pointing out that the statement on their website that the 'Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice is a leading International Journal for the publication of high quality articles' had to be seen as a deliberately misleading claim given that the journal had not yet published a single article."
Taber, 2018, p.11

Who would want their scientific work published in an outlet which has such limited respect for truth? Is this meant to persuade researchers in the field – "it must be a leading journal, even though my colleagues in the field have never heard of it, because it says so there on the website". Or, are potential authors being invited to join in the conceit, perhaps, once having published in the journal, noting in their applications for scholarships, posts, promotions and so forth, that their work was published in one of the leading international journals?

A broad scope

The scope of the journal is clearly not just 'Chemistry: Education Research and Practice' if that is read to mean that it covers educational research and practice in chemistry. Perhaps they meant something more like – chemistry: education; research; and practice?

Indeed, chemistry education does not appear in the list above, although it does feature as one of a good many 'subject categories':

Analytical chemistry – Applied Chemistry – Biochemistry – Biological Chemistry – Chemical Biology – Chemical Sciences – Chemistry Education – Cryochemistry – Electrochemistry – Environmental Chemistry – Geochemistry – Green Chemistry – Histochemistry – Immunohistochemistry – Industrial Chemistry – Inorganic Chemistry – Material Chemistry – Medicinal Chemistry – Multi-disciplinary Chemistry – Nanochemistry – Nuclear Chemistry – Organic Chemistry – Petro Chemicals – Pharmaceutical chemistry – Photochemistry – Physical Chemistry – Phytochemicals – Polymer Chemistry – Supramolecular Chemistry – Theoretical Chemistry
https://opastonline.com/journal/journal-of-chemistry-education-research-and-practice

So that's pretty much 'chemistry' – with education research as very much one theme among many.

Parasitic, predatory, journals

To my eye, then, the so-called 'Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice' looks like one of those many new journals that has been set up by people who do not really know about the relevant field, and who seek to charge authors for publishing their work without any substantive concern for scientific quality or scholarly values.

That is, the business model is about attracting enough submissions to make a profit. (Which is not in itself wicked, of course, as long as profit is made by offering an honest and competent service.) That requires publishing a lot of papers. That could be seen as motivation to have a very light touch editorial and peer review policy – after all, if submitted work is rejected or authors are asked to make major revisions this will reduce, and slow, the flow of funds into the publisher.

Respected academic journals, even when published by commercial publishing houses, have high quality criteria (rejecting much work, requiring substantial revisions before publication for most that are accepted), and know their reputations depend upon the field evaluating the work that is published as being (at least generally) of high quality.

Leading journals publish significant, original articles: other respectable journals may have to settle for well-motivated, well-designed, carefully executed and thoroughly reported work that adds incrementally to a field (even if not in a seminal way).

Some of the new journals being launched to publish for a fee are not only not yet 'leading' in their fields, but are not even worthy of respect. They provide a means of publication regardless of academic quality. They accept work which authors should (and perhaps later will) be embarrassed about and they do not offer the rigorous review process that helps authors appreciate weaknesses in their work and improve it.² They are not contributing to a field, but parasitic on it.

That is a pattern I see quite a lot these days.

A prejudiced view?

However, it is unfair to prejudge the journal without looking to see if what it is publishing is actually quality work.

I looked at the most recent issue of Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice, and saw it contained five papers – only one of which seemed to have anything to do with education – Chemistry Laboratory Safety Signs Awareness Among Undergraduate Students in Rivers State.

I decided to take look at the paper to see if I thought this article might indeed be of 'publishable quality' by one of the journals taken seriously in the field. Of course, all editors have bad days, and it would be wrong to scrutinse one education paper among many, and use that to characterise the general standard of work in a journal. So, I also looked back at previous issues, but found only a handful of other articles that seemed to be located in the field of education:

I also noticed a couple of articles on general chemical themes which looked like they might be of wider interest (and accessible to a non-specialist like myself).

Nature of Chemical Elements
The Chemistry of Indigenous Peoples

So, I decided to take a quick look at these seven articles. I was aware I approached these studies with an existing bias based on the rather 'un-scholarly' and dishonest way in which this journal went about the business of attracting submissions. But I was also aware that even if a journal does not have careful procedures and proper editorial processes, this does not mean that it might not sometimes attract excellent work. I am only going to make brief comments here on most of these articles, but I have included links to more detailed discussions of them.

An invalid research instrument

The most noteworthy thing about the study 'Chemistry Laboratory Safety Signs Awareness Among Undergraduate Students in Rivers State' was that it used a data collection instrument which was invalid. The authors seemed to want to know if students would reognise the hazards signified by different laboratory signs, but provided a test instrument which told respondents the answer to this question as each sign was labelled with its meaning. The authors tested instead – inadvertently it seemed – whether students knew the hazards associated with a range of laboratory reagents.

(Read about 'Laboratory safety – not on the face of it')

A surprising research hypothesis

The article 'Students' Perception of Chemistry Teachers' Characteristics of Interest, Attitude and Subject Mastery in the Teaching of Chemistry in Senior Secondary Schools' reports a study using a questionnaire to study student perceptions of their chemistry teachers. The population of students sampled was reported to be "four hundred and ten (431)" but also "six hundred and thirty" students.

The study tested a hypothesis that there would not be a gender difference in student perceptions, and, indeed, found no statistically significant difference. (I suspected that I would not be visited by a fire inspector as I read his paper, and this also proved to be correct.) But then, no rationale have been given for thinking there was any reason to consider gender might be a factor – leaving a reader wondering what had motivated the test.

(Read about 'Not motivating a research hypothesis')

Out of scope and incomplete

The study 'An overview of the first year Undergraduate Medical Students Feedback on the Point of Care Ultrasound Curriculum' was very short, and did not fit in the scope of journal as it was not about chemistry/chemistry education but medical education. The paper was incomplete in several senses – it did not have a full methodology section, and indeed did not seem to actually have any meaningful data analysis. It was also incomplete as it referred readers to figures which were not there: something that the author, the editor, and any peer reviewers who might have been invited to evaluate the work, seem to have all missed.

Indeed the article, which the journal bizarrely considered a review article (it was not), seemed to be the text of a conference poster which had been presented under a somewhat different authorship at different conferences. To see something so thin and insubstantial published in a supposed research journal is quite surprising.

(Read about 'The mystery of the disappearing authors')

A speculative proposal

The study 'Raman Spectroscopy: A Proposal for Didactic Innovation (IKD Model) In the Experimental Science Subject of the 3rd Year of the Primary Education Degree' does not report any empirical work, but just a proposal for a teaching sequence for including in undergraduate primary teacher education. It is suggested that these future primary teachers should prepare crystals from supersaturated solutions, and examine the different crystal shapes from different salts, and then run Raman spectra of them.

This activity is claimed to have a wide range of benefits at the levels of the undergraduates, their future teaching, and society more widely, but no evidence is presented for any of the claims. It seems to be suggested that these students will later want to use Raman spectroscopy in their primary school teaching. This is rather ambitious, and serious research journals would be unlikely to publish such a speculative proposal without any evaluation of the idea being put into practice.

(Read about 'Spectroscopy for primary school teachers?')

Comparing two (allegedly) below average schools

The article 'Assessment of Chemistry Laboratory Equipment Availability and Practice: A Comparative Study Between Damot and Jiga Secondary Schools' uses a rather dubious questionnaire to survey chemistry teachers and students in two schools (supposedly chosen as they have different approaches to chemistry lab. work, although nothing more is offered about what these approaches are) about their perceptions of aspects of chemistry practical work. The authors conclude that both schools have very low levels of both lab equipment and laboratory practice – although this seems to be based on an entirely arbitrary guess about what should be considered an average level.

The authors seem to want their study to be considered as comparative education, seemingly on the basis that they compare chemistry practical work in two neighbouring schools. There are problems with both the data collection and analysis aspects of the study.

(Read about 'Assessing Chemistry Laboratory Equipment Availability and Practice')

A fundamental challenge to chemistry

The article 'Nature of Chemical Elements' makes claims that are potentially of great interest to chemists and chemistry teachers everywhere: that there are errors in the periodic table as chemists have got the atomic numbers wrong for many of the chemical elements; a new model of nuclear structure explains the proton:neutron ratio in different atoms; and there are new elements to be discovered to fit the gaps that had not been noticed in the periodic table.

These are pretty major claims (were they to be substantiated, probably several Nobel prizes' worth!), and any respectable research journal would engage in very careful peer review before publishing such claims. However, the journal managed to complete editorial and peer review processes in four days, apparently not spotting or being concerned about a range of conceptual issues that I felt needed correction or clarification. Like most of the articles examined, the published study contains various sloppy errors which should have been questioned or corrected by the journal's production department.

(Read 'Move over Mendeleev, here comes the new Mendel')

An author embarrasses himself

I found 'The Chemistry of Indigenous Peoples' most disappointing as it was very brief and yet incoherent in places. It made the illogical claim that the survival of the way of life of indigenous people that live in the rainforest depends upon deforestation! There seemed to be odd errors and discontinuities (that seemingly had not been spotted by the editor or any peer reviewers asked to evaluate the work). After a while, I found the cause of this: a combination of poor translations and plagiarism.

Plagiarism is presenting someone else's work as your own. This paper in 'Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice' that is supposed to be by one author, is actually a patchwork of paragraphs copied from three other published works by others.

This was the most disappointing read of the sample. I felt most of the studies at least represented honest attempts to contribute to the research literature even if all seemed to suffer from limited significance (although the article which wanted to overturn a good deal of canonical physics and chemistry was at least potentially significant), most raised unexplored issues of generalisation, and most included conceptual, logical and/or methodological weaknesses as well as language/typographical errors. However, stealing other people's scholarship, and presenting it as your own work is not just poor scholarship but academic malpractice.

(Read 'Can deforestation stop indigenous groups starving?')

This incoherent montage of other people's scholarship was also submitted to another journal two days before it was submitted to the 'Journal of Chemistry: Education, Research and Practice': it is also published in an outlet called 'Acta Scientific Pharmaceutical Sciences'.

(Read about 'A failure of peer review')

Poor quality work

In summary, from the papers I looked at, that is those in the journal that I felt most qualified to evaluate, the work in Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice is not of 'publishable quality'. Some of the articles might be useful starting points for a publication, and may have been suitable for improvement and development through the peer review process. However, if there was any meaningful peer review of some of these papers, it was clearly not by anyone who was both qualified to, and prepared to, carefully evaluate the manuscripts.

This lets down the community as poor quality work appears in the literature. This journal also lets down the authors as they should expect their work to be challenged and so improved, through rigorous peer review – which clearly has not operated here. The exception is the author who simply translated and pasted segments of other people's work into an incoherent composite. That is not a matter of needing editorial support, but simply of learning that it is wrong to steal. That author let themselves down.

Work cited:

Taber, K. S. (2018). The end of academic standards? A lament on the erosion of scholarly values in the post-truth world. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 19(1), 9-14. doi:10.1039/C7RP90012K

Notes

¹ Of course, there is the matter of claiming priority by publishing first. In the mythology of science this is very important – though in practice this is seldom as critical as the myth suggests. In science education someone would have to be incredibly unlucky to miss winning a major award or getting that dream job because they published a week or two after a colleague made substantially the same claim – I doubt this has ever occurred.

² Peer review (psychologically, at least) can seem to be a bit like an irregular verb, in that my work does not really need peer review, but yours will benefit from it; the requests I get to change my submitted manuscripts are misguided, unhelpful or petty, but the recommendations I make about improving other people's work are appropriate, necessary and insightful.

Knocking off a quick pharmaceutical intervention

(Or, if not, knocking a pharmaceutical intervention journal)

Keith S. Taber

an International Peer-Reviewed, Multi-disciplinary Scientific Journal (https://www.scriptionpublications.org/journal-details/10/Journal-of-Pharmaceutical-Interventions#)

Yesterday,

Yesterday I was setting up a discrete webpage for characterising predatory journals as my page on 'Journals and poor academic practice' was looking a bit text heavy. I was listing a number of the features that I saw in invitations to publish in journals that seemed to fit the descriptor 'predatory' (after my money, and not really interested in the quality of scholarship they publish).

…today…

As if by magic…

When I turned on the computer this morning I found an email from the Journal of Pharmaceutical Interventions asking me to contribute to the journal. It was almost like they were looking to offer an illustration of several of the features I was highlighting:

being in a rush to get submissions (perhaps because they do not seem to have published a single article yet)
accepting a wide range of different 'article' types
praising my eminence in a field I have never worked in
name-checking and claiming to have read something (of little relevance to the inviting journal!) I've published
a relatively broad range of topics ¹

This does not prove that the journal will not have high editorial standards, but it is not looking promising. ²

…and tomorrow?

I guess I will be pretty busy if I am going to learn enough about the field of Pharmaceutical Interventions to produce something of publishable quality within a week.

Notes

¹ The list in the email does not look overly inclusive, but the website (https://www.scriptionpublications.org/journal-details/10/Journal-of-Pharmaceutical-Interventions – accessed 2021-11-18) offers the following list of topics a being within the journal's scope – including some that certainly do not look like pharmaceutical science to me!

Analytical Chemistry
Bioanalytical Chemistry
Bio-Chemical Science
Biomedical Engineering
Bio-medical Sciences
Biopharmaceutics
Biopharmaceutics and Pharmacokinetics
Clinical and Hospital Pharmacy
Computational Chemistry
Cosmetics and Neutraceuticals
Dental and Medical Sciences
Drug Design
Drug Development
Drug Discovery
Drug Regulatory Affairs
Drug Targeting
Drug-Receptor Interactions
Environmental Chemistry
Environmental Sciences
Fermentation Technology
Fisheries and Dairy Science
Food and Nutrition Science
Genetics and Proteomics
Genomics
Green Chemistry
Health Sciences
Herbal Technology
Industrial Pharmacy
Intellectual property rights in Chemical Sciences
Life Sciences
Marine Biology
Medical Pharma
Medication Management
Medicinal Chemistry
Medicine and Neurobiology
Microbiology and Nuclear Pharmacy
Molecular Drug Design
Nanomedicine
Nanotechnology/ nanomedicine
Natural Chemistry
Natural Product Research
Novel Drug Delivery Systems
Oncology
Patent Laws
Pharma Administration
Pharma Engineering
Pharmaceutical Analysis
Pharmaceutical Analysis
Pharmaceutical Biotechnology and Microbiology
Pharmaceutical Care
Pharmaceutical Chemistry
Pharmaceutical Formulation
Pharmaceutical Public Health
Pharmaceutical Sciences
Pharmaceutics
Pharmacodynamics
Pharmacoeconomics
Pharmacoepidemiology
Pharmacogenetics and Pharmacogenomics
Pharmacogenomics
Pharmacogenomics and Physiology
Pharmacognosy and Ethanobotany
Pharmacology and Toxicology
Pharmacotherapy
Pharmacovigilance
Pharmacovigilance
Pharmacy Practice and Hospital Pharmacy
Physiological and Biochemical Effects of Drugs on the Body
Phytochemistry
Phytochemistry and QC / QA
Phytomedicine
Plant pathology and Entomology
Polymer Sciences
Quality Assurance
Regulatory Affairs
Soil and Seed Science
Synthetic Chemistry

² The journal claims:

"Every article submitted to our platform is peer-reviewed by a distinguished editorial board and expert reviewers at the same moment, peer reviewers follow rigorous publication ethics thus confirming the article standards of significance and scientific excellence and deliver a quality systematic service to the Authors, Reviewers and Readers throughout the publication process….Every article submitted to the journal is rigorously examined and published only after the acceptance of Editorial Board members."

I would be happy to learn this is so, and that rigorous editorial processes are simply not well reflected by the sloppy direct marketing approach to encouraging submissions. I guess only time will tell.

Move over Mendeleev, here comes the new Mendel

Seeking the islets of Filipenka Henadzi

Keith S. Taber

"new chemical elements with atomic numbers 72-75 and 108-111 are supposedly revealed, and also it is shown that for heavy elements starting with hafnium, the nuclei of atoms contain a larger number of protons than is generally accepted"
Henadzi, 2019, p.2

Somehow I managed to miss a 2019 paper bringing into doubt the periodic table that is widely used in chemistry. It was suggested that many of the heavier elements actually have higher atomic numbers (proton numbers) than had long been assumed, with the consequence that when these elements are correctly re-positioned it reveals two runs of elements that should be in the periodic table, but which till now have not been identified by chemists.

According to Henadzi we need to update the periodic table and look for eight missing elements (original image by Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)

Henadzi (2019) suggests that "I would like to name groups of elements with the numbers 72-75 and 108-111 [that is, those not yet identified that should have these numbers], the islets of Filipenka Henadzi."

The orginal Mendeleev

This is a bit like being taken back to when Dmitri Mendeleev first proposed his periodic table and had the courage to organise elements according to patterns in their properties, even though this left gaps that Mendeleev predicted would be occupied by elements yet to be discovered. The success of (at least some) of his predictions is surely the main reason why he is considered the 'father' of the periodic table, even though others were experimenting with similar schemes.

Now it has been suggested that we still have a lot of work to do to get the periodic table right, and that the version that chemists have used (with some minor variations) for many decades is simply wrong. This major claim (which would surely be considered worthy of the Nobel prize if found correct) was not published in Nature or Science or one of the prestigious chemistry journals published by learned societies such as the Royal Society of Chemistry, but in an obscure journal that I suspect many chemists have never heard of.

The original Mendel

This is reminiscent of the story of Mendel's famous experiments with inheritance in pea plants. Mendel's experiments are now seen as seminal in establishing core ideas of genetics. But Mendel's research was ignored for many years.

He presented his results at meetings of the Natural History Society of Brno in 1865 and then published them in a local German language journal – and his ideas were ignored. Only after other scientists rediscovered 'his' principles in 1900, long after his death, was his work also rediscovered.

Moreover, the discussion of this major challenge to accepted chemistry (and physics if I have understood the paper) is buried in an appendix of a paper which is mostly about the crystal structures of metals. It seems the appendix includes a translation of work previously published in Russian, explaining why, oddly, a section part way through the appendix begins "This article sets out the views on the classification of all known chemical elements, those fundamental components of which the Earth and the entire Universe consists".

Calling out 'predatory' journals

I have been reading some papers in a journal that I believed, on the basis of its misleading title and website details, was an example of a poor-quality 'predatory journal'. That is, a journal which encourages submissions simply to be able to charge a publication fee (currently $1519, according to the website), without doing the proper job of editorial scrutiny. I wanted to test this initial evaluation by looking at the quality of some of the work published.

One of the papers I decided to read, partly because the topic looked of particular interest, was 'Nature of Chemical Elements' (Henadzi, 2019). Most of the paper is concerned with the crystal structures of metals, and presenting a new model to explain why metals have the structure they do. This is related to the number of electrons per atom that can be considered to be in the conduction band – something that was illustrated with a simple diagram that unfortunately, to my reading at least, was not sufficiently elaborated.¹

The two options referred to seem to refer to n-type (movement of electrons) and p-type (movement of electrons that can be conceptualised as movement of a {relatively} positive hole, as in semi-conductor materials) – Figure 1 from Henadzi, 2019: p2

However, what really got my attention was the proposal for revising the periodic table and seeking eight new elements that chemists have so far missed.

Beyond Chadwick

Henadzi tells readers that

"The innovation of this work is that in the table of elements constructed according to the Mendeleyev's law and Van-den- Broek's rule [in effect that atomic number in the periodic table = proton number], new chemical elements with atomic numbers 72-75 and 108-111 are supposedly revealed, and also it is shown that for heavy elements starting with hafnium, the nuclei of atoms contain a larger number of protons than is generally accepted. Perhaps the mathematical apparatus of quantum mechanics missed some solutions because the atomic nucleus in calculations is taken as a point."
Henadzi, 2019, p.4

Henadzi explains

"When considering the results of measuring the charges of nuclei or atomic numbers by James Chadwick, I noticed that the charge of the core of platinum is rather equal not to 78, but to 82, which corresponds to the developed table. For almost 30 years I have raised the question of the repetition of measurements of the charges of atomic nuclei, since uranium is probably more charged than accepted, and it is used at nuclear power plants."
Henadzi, 2019, p.4

Now Chadwick is most famous for discovering the neutron – back in 1932. So he was working a long time ago, when atomic theory was still quite underdeveloped and with apparatus that would seem pretty primitive compared with the kinds of set up used today to investigate the fundamental structure of matter. That is, it is hardly surprising if his work which was seminal nearly a century ago had limitations. Henadzi however seems to feel that Chadwick's experiments accurately reveal atomic numbers more effectively than had been realised.

Sadly, Henadzi does not cite any specific papers by Chadwick in his reference list, so it is not easy to look up the original research he is discussing. But if Henadzi is suggesting that data produced almost a century ago can be interpreted as giving some elements different atomic numbers to those accepted today, the obvious question is what other work, since, establishes the accepted values, and why should it not be trusted. Henadzi does not discuss this.

Explaining a long-standing mystery

Henadzi points out that whereas for the lighter elements the mass number is about twice the atomic number (that is, the number of neutrons in a nucleus approximately matches the number of protons) as one proceeds through the period table this changes such the ratio of protons:neutrons shifts to give an increasing excess of neutrons. Henadzi also implies that this is a long standing mystery, now perhaps solved.

"Each subsequent chemical element is different from the previous in that in its core the number of protons increases by one, and the number of neutrons increases, in general, several. In the literature this strange ratio of the number of neutrons to the number of protons for any the kernel is not explained. The article proposes a model nucleus, explaining this phenomenon."
Henadzi, 2019, p.5

Now what surprised me here was not the pattern itself (something taught in school science) but the claim that the reason was not known. My, perhaps simplistic, understanding is that protons repel each other because of their similar positive electrical charges, although the strong nuclear force binds nucleons (i.e., protons and neutrons collectively) into nuclei and can overcome this.

Certainly what is taught in schools is that as the number of protons increases more neutrons are needed to be mixed in to ensure overall stability. Now I am aware that this is very much an over-simplification, what we might term a curriculum model or teaching model perhaps, but what Henadzi is basically suggesting seems to be this very point, supplemented by the idea that as the protons repel each other they are usually found at the outside of the nucleus alongside an equal number of neutrons – with any additional neutrons within.

The reason for not only putting protons on the outer shell of a large nucleus in Henadzi's model seems to relate to the stability of alpha particles (that is, clumps of two protons and two neutrons, as in the relatively stable helium nucleus). Or, at least, that was my reading of what is being suggested,

"For the construction of the [novel] atomic nucleus model, we note that with alpha-radioactivity of the helium nucleus is approximately equal to the energy.

Therefore, on the outer layer of the core shell, we place all the protons with such the same number of neutrons. At the same time, on one energy Only bosons can be in the outer shell of the alpha- particle nucleus and are. Inside the Kernel We will arrange the remaining neutrons, whose task will be weakening of electrostatic fields of repulsion of protons."
Henadzi, 2019, p.5

The lack of proper sentence structure does not help clarify the model being mooted.

Masking true atomic number

Henadzi's hypothesis seems to be that when protons are on the surface of the nucleus, the true charge, and so atomic number, of an element can be measured. But sometimes with heavier elements some of the protons leave the surface for some reason and move inside the nucleus where their charge is somehow shielded and missed when nuclear charge is measured. This is linked to the approximation of assuming that the charge on an object measured from the outside can be treated as a point charge.

This is what Henadzi suggests:

"Our nuclear charge is located on the surface, since the number of protons and the number of neutrons in the nucleus are such that protons and neutrons should be in the outer layer of the nucleus, and only neutrons inside, that is, a shell forms on the surface of the nucleus. In addition, protons must be repelled, and also attracted by an electronic fur coat. The question is whether the kernel can be considered a point in the calculations and up to what times? And the question is whether and when the proton will be inside the nucleus….if a proton gets into the nucleus for some reason, then the corresponding electron will be on the very 'low' orbit. Quantum mechanics still does not notice such electrons. Or in other words, in elements 72-75 and 108-111, some protons begin to be placed inside the nucleus and the charge of the nucleus is screened, in calculations it cannot be taken as a point."
Henadzi, 2019, p.5

So, I think Henadzi is suggesting that if a proton gets inside the nucleus, its associated electron is pulled into a very close orbit such that what is measured as nuclear charge is the real charge on the nucleus (the number of protons) partially cancelled by low lying electrons orbiting so close to the nucleus that they are within what we might call 'the observed nucleus'.

This has some similarity to the usual idea of shielding that leads to the notion of core charge. For example, a potassium atom can be modelled simplistically for some purposes as a single electron around a core charge of plus one (+19-2-8-8) as, at least as a first approximation, we can treat all the charges within the outermost N (4th) electron shell (the 19 protons and 18 electrons) as if a single composite charge at the centre of the atom. ²

Dubious physics

Whilst I suspect that the poor quality of the English and the limited detail included in this appendix may well mean I am missing part of the argument here, I am not convinced. Besides the credibility issue (how can so many scientists have missed this for so long?) which should never be seen as totally excluding unorthodox ideas (the same thing could have been asked about most revolutionary scientific breakthroughs) my understanding is that there are already some quite sophisticated models of nuclear structure which have evolved alongside programmes of emprical research and which are therefore better supported than Henadzi's somewhat speculative model.

I must confess to not understanding the relevance of the point charge issue as this assumption/simplification would seem to work with Henadzi's model – from well outside the sphere defined by the nucleus plus low lying electrons the observed charge would be the net charge as if located at a central point, so the apparent nuclear charge would indeed be less than the true nuclear charge.

But my main objection would be the way electrostatic forces are discussed and, in particular, two features of the language:

Naked protons

protons must be repelled, and also attracted by an electronic fur coat…

I was not sure what was meant by "protons must be repelled, and also attracted by an electronic fur coat". The repulsion between protons in the nucleus is balanced by the strong nuclear force – so what is this electronic 'fur coat'?

This did remind me of common alternative conceptions that school students (who have not yet learned about nuclear forces) may have, along the lines that a nucleus is held together because the repulsion between protons is balanced by their attraction to the ('orbiting') electrons. Two obvious problems with this notion are that

the electrons would be attracting protons out of the nucleus just as they are repelling each other (that is, these effects reinforce, not cancel), and
the protons are much closer to each other than to the electrons, and the magnitude of force between charges diminishes with distance.

Newton's third law and Coulomb's law would need to be dis-applied for an electronic effect to balance the protons' mutual repulsions. (On Henadzi's model the conjectured low lying electrons are presumably orbiting much closer to the nucleus than the 1s electrons in the K shell – but, even so, the proton-electron distance will be be much greater than the separation of protons in the nucleus.)³

But I may have misunderstood what Henadzi's meant here by the attraction of the fur coat and its role in the model.

A new correspondence principle?

if a proton gets into the nucleus for some reason, then the corresponding electron will be on the very 'low' orbit

Much more difficult to explain away is the suggestion that "if a proton gets into the nucleus for some reason, then the corresponding electron will be on the very 'low' orbit". Why? This is not explained, so it seems assumed readers will simply understand and agree.

In particular, I do not know what is meant by 'the corresponding electron'. This seems to imply that each proton in the nucleus has a corresponding electron. But electrons are just electrons, and as far as a proton is concerned, one electron is just like any other. All of the electrons attract, and are attracted by, all of the protons.

Confusing a teaching scheme for a mechanism?

This may not always be obvious to school level students, especially when atomic structure is taught through some kind of 'Aufbau' scheme where we add one more proton and one more electron for each consecutive element's atomic structure. That is, the hydrogen atom comprises of a proton and its 'corresponding' electron, and in moving on to helium we add another proton, with its 'corresponding' electron and some neutrons. These correspond only in the sense that to keep the atom neutral we have to add one negative charge for each positive charge. They 'correspond' in a mental accounting scheme – but not in any physical sense.

That is a conceptual scheme meant to do pedagogic work in 'building up' knowledge – but atoms themselves are just systems of fundamental particles following natural laws and are not built up by the sequential addition of components selected from some atomic construction kit. We can be misled into mistaking a pedagogic model designed to help students understand atomic structure for a representation of an actual physical process. (The nuclei of heavy elements are created in the high-energy chaos inside a star – within the plasma where it is too hot for them to capture the electrons needed to form neutral atoms.)

A similar category error (confusing a teaching scheme for a mechanism) often occurs when teachers and textbook authors draw schemes of atoms combining to form molecules (e.g., a methane molecule formed from a carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms) – it is a conceptual system to work with the psychological needs for students to have knowledge built up in manageable learning quanta – but such schemes do not reflect viable chemical processes.⁴

It is this kind of thinking that leads to students assuming that during homolytic bond fission each atom gets its 'own' electron back. It is not so much that this is not necessarily so, as that the notion of one of the electrons in a bond belonging to one of the atoms is a fiction.

The conservation of force conception (an alternative conception)

When asked about ionisation of atoms it is common for students to suggest that when an electron is removed from an atom (or ion) the remaining electrons are attracted more strongly because the force for the removed electron gets redistributed. It is as if within an atom each proton is taking care of attracting one electron. In this way of thinking a nucleus of a certain charge gives rise to a certain amount of force which is shared among the electrons. Removing an electron means a greater share of the force for those remaining. This all seems intuitive enough to many learners despite being at odds with basic physical principles (Taber, 1998).

I am not deducing that Henadzi, apparently a retired research scientist, shares these basic misconceptions found among students. Perhaps that is the case, but I would not be so arrogant as to diagnose this just from the quoted text. But that is my best understanding of the argument in the paper. If that is not what is meant, then I think the text needs to be clearer.

The revolution will not be televised…

In conclusion, this paper, published in what is supposedly a research journal, is unsatisfactory because (a) it makes some very major claims that if correct are extremely significant for chemistry and perhaps also physics, but (b) the claims are tucked away in an appendix, are not fully explained and justified, and do not properly cite work referred to; and the text is sprinkled with typographic errors, and seems to reflect alternative conceptions of basic science.

I very much suspect that Henadzi's revolutionary ideas are just wrong and should rightly be ignored by the scientific community, despite being published in what claims to be a peer-reviewed (self-describing 'leading international') research journal.

However, perhaps Henadzi's ideas may have merit – the peer reviewers and editor of the journal presumably thought so – in which case they are likely to be ignored anyway because the claims are tucked away in an appendix, are not fully explained and justified, and do not properly cite work referred to; and the text is sprinkled with typographic errors, and seems to reflect alternative conceptions of basic science. In this case scientific progress will be delayed (as it was when Mendel's work was missed) because of the poor presentation of revolutionary ideas.

How does the editor of a peer-reviewed journal move to a decision to publish in 4 days?

Let down by poor journal standards

So, either way, I do not criticise Henadzi for having and sharing these ideas – healthy science encompasses all sorts of wild ideas (some of which turn out not to have been so wild as first assumed) which are critiqued, tested, and judged by the community. However, Henadzi has not been well supported by the peer review process at the journal. Even if peer reviewers did not spot some of the conceptual issues that occurred to me, they should surely have noticed the incompleteness of the argument or at the very least the failures of syntax. But perhaps in order to turn the reviews around so quickly they did not read the paper carefully. And perhaps that is how the editor, Professor Nour Shafik Emam El-Gendy of the Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute, was able to move to a decision to publish four days after submission.⁵

If there is something interesting behind this paper, it will likely be missed because of the poor presentation and the failure of peer review to support the author in sorting the problems that obscure the case for the proposal. And if the hypothesis is as flawed as it seems, then peer review should have prevented it being published until a more convincing case could be made. Either way, this is another example of a journal rushing to publish something without proper scrutiny and concern for scientific standards.

Works cited

Henadzi, F. (2019). Nature of Chemical Elements. Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice, 3(1), 1-5.
Taber, K. S. (1998) The sharing-out of nuclear attraction: or I can't think about Physics in Chemistry, International Journal of Science Education, 20 (8), pp.1001-1014. [Download the paper]
Taber, K. S. (2013). Upper Secondary Students' Understanding of the Basic Physical Interactions in Analogous Atomic and Solar Systems. Research in Science Education, 43(4), 1377-1406. doi:10.1007/s11165-012-9312-3

Footnotes:

¹ My understanding of the conduction band in a metal is that due to the extensive overlap of atomic orbitals, a great many molecular orbitals are formed, mostly being quite extensive in scope ('delocalised'), and occurring with a spread of energy levels that falls within an energy band. Although strictly the molecular orbitals are at a range of different levels, the gaps between these levels are so small that at normal temperatures the 'thermal energy' available is enough for electrons to readily move between the orbitals (whereas in discrete molecules, with a modest number of molecular orbitals available, transitions usually require absorption of higher energy {visible or more often} ultraviolet radiation). So, this spread of a vast number of closely spaced energy levels is in effect a continuous band.

Given that understanding I could not make sense of these schematic diagrams. They SEEM to show the number of conduction electrons in the 'conduction band' as being located on, and moving around, a single atom. But I may be completely misreading this – as they are meant to be (cross sections through?) a tube.

"we consider a strongly simplified one- dimensional case of the conduction band. Option one: a thin closed tube, completely filled with electrons except one. The diameter of the electron is approximately equal to the diameter of the tube. With such a filling of the zone, with the local movement of the electron, there is an opposite movement of the "place" of the non-filled tube, the electron, that is, the motion of a non-negative charge. Option two: in the tube of one electron – it is possible to move only one charge – a negatively charged electron"
Henadzi, 2019, p.2

² The shell model is a simplistic model, and for many purposes we need to use more sophisticated accounts. For example, the electrons are not strictly in concentric shells, and electronic orbitals 'interpenetrate' – so an electron considered to be in the third shell of an atom will 'sometimes' be further from the nucleus than an electron considered to be in the fourth shell. That is, a potassium 4s electron cannot be assumed to be completely/always outside of a sphere in which all the other atomic electrons (and the nucleus) are contained, so the the core cannot be considered as a point charge of +1 at the nucleus, even if this works as an approximation for some purposes. The effective nuclear charge from the perspective of the 4s electron will strictly be more than +1 as the number of shielding electrons is somewhat less than 18.

³ Whilst the model of electrons moving around the nucleus in planetary orbits may have had some heuristic value in the development of atomic theory, and may still be a useful teaching model at times (Taber, 2013), it seems it is unlikely to have the sophistication to support any further substantive developments to chemical theory.

⁴ It is very common for learners to think of chemistry in terms of atoms – e.g., to think of atoms as starting points for reactions; to assume that ions must derive from atoms. This way of thinking has been called the atomic ontology.

⁵ I find it hard to believe that any suitably qualified and conscientious referees would not raise very serious issues about this manuscript precluding publication in the form it appears in the journal. If the journal really does use peer review, as is claimed, one has to wonder who they think suitable to act as expert reviewers, and how they persuade them to write their reports so quickly.

Based on this, and other papers appearing in the journal, I suspect one of the following:

a) peer review does not actually happen, or

b) peer review is assigned to volunteers who are not experts in the field, and so are not qualified to be 'peers' in the sense intended when we talk of academic peer review, or

c) suitable reviewers are appointed, but instructed to do a very quick but light review ignoring most conceptual, logical, technical and presentation issues as long as the submission is vaguely on topic, or

di) appropriate peer reviewers are sought, but the editor does not expect authors to address reviewer concerns before approving publication, or possibly

dii) decisions to publish sub-standard work are made by administrators without reference to the peer reviews and the editor's input

A failure of peer review

A copy of a copy – or plagiarism taken to the extreme

The journal 'Acta Scientific Pharmaceutical Sciences' is a research journal which describes itself as

"a scientific, multidisciplinary journal with 1.020 Impact factor, that strongly desires to disseminate knowledge in the field of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology"

The journal has been publishing since 2017 – one of a great number of new scientific journals competing for researchers' work. As well as the quite decent impact factor for such a new journal it also claims two other metrics – a 32% acceptance rate and period from acceptance to publication of 20-30 days.

Impact factor

The usual (that is, accepted, canonical) way of measuring impact factors is in terms of the average number of times articles in a journal are cited in other articles. Usually it is calculated over a set period (say within 5 years of publication) and based only on citations in articles in a database of journals that are considered to meet quality criteria. Some journal articles may never get cited, whilst others are cited a great deal, and the impact factor reflects an average for a journal.

However, I am wary of claims of impact factors unless I see how they are derived, as I have seen journals claiming 'impact factors' that are based on a completely different set of criteria – a bit like claiming the room temperature is 300K because the display of a chemical balance indicated '300'. (See 'Publish at speed, recant at leisure'.)

The timescale of review and publication

In the past some journals took months, even years to publish a submitted manuscript. Clearly for an author the quicker the time from submission to publication the better – at least all things being equal. They are not always equal however.

It is usually considered better to publish in a recognised high status journal where work is likely to get more attention from others working in a field, and where the publication brings more prestige to the authors and their institutions. So, an author may well feel that slow publication in a 'good' journal is preferable to quicker publication in a nondescript one.

However, time from acceptance to publication is perhaps not the most useful metric to guide authors. By the time I stepped down from editing the Royal Society of Chemistry's education journal, Chemistry Education Research and Practice, it was often publishing an advanced version of an accepted article on the day I accepted it (and the final version of record within about a week or so). Yet that ignores the time a submission spends in review.

That is the time it takes for an editor to

screen the submission (make sure it is within the scope of the journal and includes sufficient detail for a careful evaluation),
identify and invite expert reviewers,
receive back their reports,
consider these and reach a decision
ask authors to make any revisions seen necessary
receive back a corrected/revised submission
decide whether this seems to meet the changes needed
and whether the revised revisions also needs to go back to reviewers
…

Sometimes this process can be quick – sometimes it may be drawn out with a number of cycles of revision before authors satisfy reviewers/editors and a manuscript is accepted. Expert reviewers who are highly respected in their fields are often very busy and get many request to review.

So, average time from submission to acceptance would seem to be a key metric both because it may help authors avoid journals where editors and reviewers are very slow to turn around work, and because if this period is very short then it may bring into question whether there is rigorous review.

Acceptance rate

In this regard, the journal's claimed acceptance rate, 32% looks healthy. Two thirds of material submitted to the journal is (by deduction) rejected as not suitable for publication. Assuming this figure is accurate, this does suggests that peer review is taken seriously. (One likes to trust in the honesty of others, but sadly there are many predatory journals not above being dishonest, as I have discussed in a range of postings.)

Peer review

The publisher's site certainly suggests that the publisher recognises the importance of careful peer review undertaken by "eminent reviewers", with guidance for reviewers.

"Acta Scientifica believes that, thorough peer review process is a critical factor to yield immense quality literature to be published in the journal."
https://www.actascientific.com/reviewer.php

Among the points made here, potential reviewers are guided that

"The study should possess novelty and should present the results of original research. It is required that the reported results are not published elsewhere."

The benefits of peer review are said to be

"The author receives detailed and constructive feedback from experts in the field.
The process can alert authors to errors or gaps in literature they may have overlooked.
It can assist with making the paper more applicable to the journal readership.
It may enable a discussion (between the author, reviewers, and editor) around a research field or topic.
Readers can be assured that the research they are reading has been verified by subject experts." (https://www.actascientific.com/peerreview.php)

The peer review process is said to assure

"Submitted article is original work which has not been previously published nor is under consideration by another journal, in part or whole;
The article meets all applicable standards of ethics;
The paper is relevant to the journal's aims, scope, and readership;
A submitted article presents original research findings;
A submitted article offers a comprehensive critical review and evaluation of key literature sources for a given topic; and
The article is methodologically and technically sound"(https://www.actascientific.com/peerreview.php)

The publisher offers a flow chart showing the stages of the editorial and review process. The publisher also explains the advantages of the double blind peer review process (the reviewers are not told who wrote the submission, and the author is not told who reviewed their work) they operate in order to ensure "evaluation of work in the manuscripts by peers who have an expertise in the relevant field."

Checking for plagiarism

The flow chart shows that before submission are sent for review there is a screening to ensure that at least 80% of the manuscript is 'unique content' – that is, that material has not just been copied from the author's previous publications – or even someone else's

All of this seems encouraging. The impression is that Acta Scientific are genuine in their aspiration to publish quality work, and to use a rigorous peer review process to ensure this quality. This is despite the reason why I came TO be looking into their processes.

Which came first…

I recently posted in this blog about a short article in the Journal of Chemistry: Education and Research (not to be confused with the journal Chemistry Education Research and Practice) that I found to be incoherent and filled with mistakes.

When I was evaluating that article I came across another article with the same title, by the same author, in Acta Scientific Pharmaceutical Sciences. It soon became clear that these were (this was?) the same short article, published in both journals. Both articles have the same muddled language and the same errors (running words together and the like – for more details see 'Can deforestation stop indigenous groups starving?')

The chronology seems to be:

14th May 2019 – da Silva submits to *Acta Scientific Pharmaceutical Sciences*
	16th May 2019 – da Silva sends the same manuscript to *Journal of Chemistry: Education and Research*
	20th May 2019 – *Journal of Chemistry: Education and Research* accepts the article for publication (4 days after submission!)
	28th May 2019 – *Journal of Chemistry: Education and Research* publishes the article
7th June 2019 – Acta Scientific Pharmaceutical Sciences publishes paper

Was da Silva frustrated with not getting his article accepted within two days of first submission? (An acceptance date for Acta Scientific Pharmaceutical Sciences is not given)

So, the article was submitted first to Acta Scientific Pharmaceutical Sciences, but had already been published in Journal of Chemistry: Education and Research by the time it was published in Acta Scientific Pharmaceutical Sciences. Given that authors are not supposed to publish the same material in several journals, this might raise the interesting question of which journal should require the work to be retracted, and which should allow it to stand.

A copy of a copy

However this would be a rather pointless question, as neither of the articles can claim to be original. As I discuss in 'Can deforestation stop indigenous groups starving?', virtually the entire text is simply lifted from three prior, unacknowledged publications written by other authors – odd paragraphs have been taken from parts of more detailed papers on the topic and simply collated (in a somewhat incoherent manner) into da Silva's manuscript. Any reputable journal that spotted this would require retraction because the work is not original but is plagiarised – it is the intellectual property of other scholars.

Why was this not spotted?

Although the opening of the article is simply copied word for word from the abstract of a published work (which is likely to be spotted by the tool used to screen to check for 'unique content') the rest of the material (that is, more than the critical 80%) is translated from texts which are in Portuguese.

When an expert translator produces a new version of a work in a different language, and this is done with permission, the translator is entitled to credit and the translation is considered to be a work (albeit a derivative work) in its own right. Good translations are more than mechanical substitutions, and skillful translators are much appreciated.

However, here we have works translated, without expertise (the English is full of mistakes), presumably without permission and certainly without attribution to the original authors. The software will not have recognised the translated text as not being 'unique content'.

However, the process of peer review is supposed to evaluate the quality of the work, and identify areas for improvement. It is difficult to believe anyone who read this very short article carefully (for either journal) could have thought it was making a coherent argument, or that it did not at least need restructuring, clarifications and corrections.

"We ensure that all the articles published in Acta Scientific undergo integrated peer review by peers and consequent revision by authors when required."
https://www.actascientific.com/peerreview.php

So, despite Acta Scientific's efforts to claim careful peer review processes, and what seems a genuine aspiration to ensure article originality and quality through peer review by those with expertise in the field, somehow the journal published the copy-and-paste job that is 'The Chemistry of Indigenous Peoples'.

Of course, for peer review to work, those asked to review have to take the role seriously.

"Acta Scientific trusts the genuine peer review process that the reviewers carry out so that it helps us to publish the content with good essence."
https://www.actascientific.com/reviewer.php

I would like to believe that Acta Scientific's fine claims about peer review ARE sincere, and perhaps in this case it was just that their trust was betrayed by sloppy reviewers.

Work cited:

da Silva, M. A. l. G. (2019). The Chemistry of Indigenous Peoples. Acta Scientific Phamaceutical Sciences, 3 (7), 20-21.
da Silva, M. A. G. (2019) The Chemistry of Indigenous Peoples. Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice, 3 (1), 1-2

Laboratory safety – not on the face of it

An invalid research instrument for testing 'safety sign awareness'

Keith S. Taber

I was recently invited to write for the 'Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice' (not to be confused with the well-established R.S.C. Journal 'Chemistry Education Research and Practice') which describes itself as "a leading International Journal for the publication of high quality articles". It is not.

I already had reason to suspect this of being a predatory journal (one that entices authors to part with money to publish work without adhering to the usual academic standards and norms). But as I had already reached that judgement before the journal had started publishing, I decided to check out the quality of the published work.

The current issue, at the time of writing, has five articles, only one of which is educational in nature: 'Chemistry Laboratory Safety Signs Awareness Among Undergraduate Students in Rivers State'.

Below I describe key aspects of this study, including some points that I would have expected to have been picked-up in peer review, and therefore to have been addressed before the paper could have been published.

Spoiler alert

My main observation is that the research instrument used is invalid – I do not think it actually measures what the authors claim it does. (As the article is published with a open-access license¹, I am able to reproduce the instrument below so you can see if you agree with me or not.)

'Chemistry laboratory safety signs awareness among undergraduate students in Rivers State'

A study about chemistry laboratory safety signs awareness?

Laboratory safety is very important in chemistry education, and is certainly a suitable topic for research. A range of signs and symbols are used to warn people of different types of potential chemical hazard, so learning about these signs is important for those working in laboratories; and so investigating this aspect of learning is certainly a suitable focus for research.

Motivating a study

As part of a published research study authors are expected to set out the rationale for the study – to demonstrate, usually based on existing literature, that there is something of interest to investigate. This can be described as the 'conceptual framework' for the study. This is one of the aspects of a study which is usually tested in peer-review where manuscripts submitted to a journal are sent to other researchers with relevant expertise for evaluation.

The authors of this study, Ikiroma, Chinda and Bankole, did begin by discussing aspects of laboratory safety, and reporting some previous work around this topic. They cite an earlier study that had been carried out surveying second-year science education students at Lagos State University, Nigeria, and where:

"The result of the study revealed 100% of the respondents are not aware of the laboratory sign and symbols" ²
Ikiroma, Chinda & Bankole, 2021: 50

This would seem a good reason to do follow-up work elsewhere.

Research questions and hypotheses

A study should have one or more research questions. These will be quite general in more open-ended 'discovery research' (exploratory enquiry), but need to be more specific in 'confirmatory research' such as experiments and surveys. This study had both specific research questions and null hypotheses

"Research Questions
1. What is the percentage awareness level of safety signs among undergraduate Chemistry students?
2. What is the difference in awareness level of safety signs between undergraduate Chemistry Education students and Chemistry Science students?
3. To what extent do the awareness levels of safety signs among undergraduate Chemistry students depended on Institutional types?"
Hypotheses
1. There is no significant difference in awareness level of safety signs between undergraduate Chemistry Education students and Chemistry Science students
2. The awareness levels of safety signs among undergraduate Chemistry students are not significantly dependent on Institutional types."
Ikiroma, Chinda & Bankole, 2021: 50

These specific questions and hypotheses do not seem to be motivated in the conceptual framework. That is, a reader has not been given any rationale to think that there are reasons to test for differences between these different groups. There may have been good reasons to explore these variables, but authors of research papers are usually expected to share their reasoning with reader. (This is something which one would expect to be spotted in peer review, leading to the editor asking the authors to revise their submission to demonstrate the background behind asking about these specific points.)

It is not explained quite what 'institutional types' actually refers to. From the way results are discussed later in the paper (p.53), 'Institutional types' seems to be used here simply to mean different universities

Sampling – how random is random?

The sample is described as:

"A total of 60 year three undergraduate students studying Chemistry Education (B.Sc. Ed) and Pure Chemistry (B.Sc.) were randomly drawn from three universities namely; University of Port Harcourt (Uniport), Rivers State University (RSU) and Ignatius Ajuru University of Education (IAUE) with each university contributing 20 students."
Ikiroma, Chinda & Bankole, 2021: 50

This study was then effectively a survey where data was collected from a sample of a defined population (third undergraduate students studying chemistry education or pure chemistry in any of three named universities in one geographical area) to draw inferences about the whole population.

Randomisation is an important process when it is not possible to collect data from the whole population of interest, as it allows statistics to be used to infer from the sample what is likely in the wider population. Ideally, authors should briefly explain how they have randomised (Taber, 2013) so readers can judge if the technique used does really give each member of the population (here one assumes 3rd year chemistry undergraduates in each of the Universities) an equal chance of being sampled. (If the authors are reading this blog, please feel free to respond to this point in the comments below: how did you go about the randomisation?)

Usually in survey research an indication would be given of the size of the population (as a random sample of 0.1% of a population gives results with larger inherent error than a random sample of 10%). That information does not seem to be provided here.

Even if the authors did use randomisation, presumably they did not randomise across the combined population of "year three undergraduate students studying Chemistry Education (B.Sc. Ed) and Pure Chemistry (B.Sc.)…from three universities" as they would have been very unlikely to have ended up with equal numbers from the three different institutions. So, probably this means they took (random?) samples from within each of the three sub-populations (which would be sensible to compare between them).

It later becomes clear that of the 60 sampled students, 30 were chemistry education students and 30 straight chemistry students (p.53) – so again it seems likely that sampling was done separately for the two types of course. There does not seem to be any information on the break down between university and course, so it is possible there were 10 students in each of 6 cells, if each University offered both courses:

	chemistry education	pure chemistry	total
University of Port Harcourt	?	?	20
Rivers State University	?	?	20
Ignatius Ajuru University of Education	?	?	20
total	30	30	60

Sample

Clearly this distribution potentially matters as there could be interactions between these two different variables. Consider for example that perhaps students taking pure chemistry tended to have a higher 'awareness level of safety signs' than students taking chemistry education: then (see the hypothetical example in the table below), if a sample from one university mostly comprised of pure chemistry students, and that from another university mostly of chemistry education students, then this would likely lead to finding differences between institutions in the samples even if there were no such differences between the combined student populations in the two universities. The uneven sampling from the two courses within the universities would bias the comparison between institutions.

	course 1	course 2	total
University A	20	0	20
University B	10	10	20
Education C	0	20	20
total	30	30	60

A problematic sample for disentangling factors

My best guess is the the authors appreciated that, and that all three universities taught both types of course, and the authors sampled 10 students from each course in each of the universities. Perhaps they even did it randomly – but it would be good to know how as I have found that sometimes authors who claim to have made random selections have not used a technique that would strictly support this claim. (And if a sample is not random we can have much less confidence about how it reflects the population sampled.)

The point is that a reader of a research report should not have to guess. Often researchers (and research students) are so close to their own project that it becomes easy to assume others will know things about the work that have become taken for granted by the research team. This is where a good editor or peer reviewer can point out, and ask for, missing information that is not available to a reader.

Ethical research?

Sampling can also be impacted by ethics. It is one thing to select people randomly, but not all people will volunteer to help with research and it is general principle of educational research that participants should offer voluntary informed consent. Where some people agree to participate, and others do not, this may bias results if people's reasons for accepting/declining an invitation are linked to the focus of the research.

Imagine inviting students to some research to test whether cheating (copying homework, taking reference material into examinations) can be detected by using a lie detector to questions students about their behaviours. Are those who cheat and those who are scrupulously honest likely to volunteer to take part in such research to the same extent, or might we expect most cheats to opt out?

It is normal practice in educational research to make a brief statement that the research was carried out ethically, e.g., that participants all volunteered freely having had the purpose and nature of the research clearly explained to them. I could not find any such statement in the article, nor any requirement for authors to include this in the journal's author guidelines.

Lack of face validity

In research, validity is about measuring what you think you are measuring. In the school laboratory, if we saw a student completing the 'potential difference/V' column of a results table when taking readings with an ammeter we would consider the recorded results were invalid.

I once gave a detention to a first year (Y7) student who had done something naughty that I forget now, and as we were working on a measurement topic I set her to measure the length of the corridor outside the lab. with a metre rule. Although this was an appropriate instrument, I found that she did not appreciate that in order to get a valid result she had to make sure she moved the metre stick on by the right amount (that is, one metre!) for each counted metre – instead she would move the metre stick by about half its length! Some pupils may resent being in detention and deliberately respond with sloppy work, but in this case it seemed the fault was with the teacher who had overestimated prior knowledge and consequently given an insufficiently detailed explanation of the task!

In research we have to be confident that an instrument is measuring what it is meant to. This may mean testing and calibrating – using the instrument somewhere where we already have a good measure and checking it gives the expected answers (like checking a clock against the Greenwich pips on the radio) before using it in research to measure an unknown.

In educational studies we can sometimes spot invalid instruments because they lack face validity – that is, 'on the face of it' an instrument does not seem suitable to do the job. Certainly when 'we' are people with relevant expertise. Consider an instrument to test understanding of trigonometry which consisted of the item: "discuss five factors which contributed to the 'industrial revolution' in eighteenth century Britain". We might suspect this could be used to measure something, but probably not understanding of trigonometry. This would be an invalid test to use for that purpose.

Awareness level of safety signs?

The focus of Ikiroma, Chinda & Bankole's study was 'awareness level of safety signs'. Strictly this only seems to mean being aware of such signs³, but I read this to mean that the authors wanted to know if students recognised the meaning of different signs commonly used: whether they were aware what particular signs signified.

The 'Chemistry Laboratory Test on Safety Signs' instrument:

The authors report they used:

A well validated and researchers['] constructed test instrument, titled, Chemistry Laboratory Test on Safety Signs (CLTSS) which had an internal reliability index of 0.94 via Cronbach Alpha was used for data collection in the study. The questions in the test required the students to match a list of 20 chemicals in column A and of nine safety signs accompanied with a short description in column B. This aimed to reduce the wrong response because the students incorrectly considered only the symbol.
Ikiroma, Chinda & Bankole, 2021: 50

Validation

A key question that an editor would expect peer reviewers to consider is whether the instrumentation used in research can provide valid findings. Where this is not clear in a manuscript submited to a journal, the editor should (if not rejecting the paper) ask for this to be addressed in a revision of the manuscript. Validity is clearly critical, and research should not be published it if makes claims based on invalid instrumentation.

Therefore when reporting research instruments it is usually expected that authors explain how they tested for validity – simply stating something is well-validated does not count! Face validity might be tested by asking carefully identified experts to see if they think the instrument tests what is claimed (so here, perhaps asking university chemistry lecturers – "do you think these questions are suitable for elciiting undergraduate students' awareness levels of safety signs?").

If an instrument passed this initial test, more detailed work would be undertaken. Here perhaps a small sample of students from a closely related poopulation to that being studied (pehaps second year chemistry students in the same universities; or third year chemistry students from another university) would be asked to complete the instrument using a 'think aloud' protocol where they explain their thinking as they answer the questions – or would be interviewed about their awareness of safety signs as well as comepleting the instrument to triangulate reponses to the instrument against interview responses.

Cronbach's alpha measures the internal consistency of an scale (Taber, 2018), but offers no assurance of validity. (If a good set of items meant to test enjoyment of school science were used instead to measure belief in ghosts the set of items would still show the same high level of internal consistency despite being used for a totally invalid purpose.)

Chemistry Laboratory Test on Safety Signs (Ikiroma, Chinda & Bankole, 2021: 51)

So, what the students had to do was match a chemical (name) with the appropriate hazard sign.What was being tested was knowledge of the hazards associated with laboratory chemicals (an important enough topic, but not what was promised).

Had the signs not been labelled, then the items would have required BOTH knowing about the hazards of specific chemicals AND knowing which sign was used for the associated hazards. However, Ikiroma, Chinda & Bankole had actually looked "to reduce the wrong response because the students incorrectly considered only the symbol" (emphasis added). That is, they had built into the test instrument a means to ensure it did not test awareness of 'safety signs' (what they were supposedly interested in) and only measured awareness of the hazards associated with particular substances.

What Ikiroma, Chinda & Bankolehad tested was potentially useful and interesting – but it was not what they claimed. The paper title, the research questions, and the hypotheses (and consequently their statements of findings) were all misleading in that regard. One would have expected the editor and peer reviewers should have noticed that and required corrections before publication was considered.

Quality assurance?

The journal's website claims that "Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice is an international peer reviewed journal…" Peer review involves the editor rejecting poor submissions, and ensuring that the quality of what is published by arranging that experts in the field scrutinise submissions to ensure they meet quality standards. Peer reviewers are chosen for expertise related to the specific topic of the specific submission. In particular, reviewers will ask for changes where these seem to be needed, and the editor of a journal decides to publish only when she is satisfied sufficient changes have been made in response to review reports.

Publishing poor quality work, especially work with glaring issues, reflects badly on the authors, the journal, and the editor.⁴

The journal accepted the paper about 9 days after submision

In this case the editor – Professor Nour Shafik Emam El-Gendy of the Environmental Sciences & Nanobiotechnology Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute in Egypt – appears to have taken just over a week to

arrange peer review,
receive and consider the referee reports, and
report back to the authors asking them for any changes she felt were needed, and (once she received any revisions that may have been requested) then
decide the paper was ready for publication in this supposed 'leading international journal'.

That could be seen as impressive, but actually seems incredible.

Peer review is not just about sorting good work from bad, it is also about supporting authors by showing them where their work needs to be improved before it is put on public display. Peer review is as much about improving work as selecting.

I do not know if Ikiroma, Chinda & Bankole were expected to pay the standard charge for publishing – that is $999 for this journal – but, if so, I do not think they got value for money. Given the level of support they seem to have received from the peer review process, I think they should be entitled to a refund.

Work cited:

Ikiroma, B., Chinda, W., & Bankole, I. S. (2021). Chemistry Laboratory Safety Signs Awareness Among Undergraduate Students in Rivers State. Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice, 5(1), 47-54.
Oludipe, O. S., & Etobro, B. A. (2018). Science Education Undergraduate Students' Level of Laboratory Safety Awareness. Journal of Education, Society and Behavioural Science, 23(4), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.9734/JESBS/2017/37461
Taber, K. S. (2013). Non-random thoughts about research. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 14(4), 359-362. doi: 10.1039/c3rp90009f. [Free access]
Taber, K. S. (2014). Ethical considerations of chemistry education research involving "human subjects". Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 15(2), 109-113. [Free access]
Taber, K. S. (2018). The Use of Cronbach's Alpha When Developing and Reporting Research Instruments in Science Education. Research in Science Education, 48, 1273-1296. doi:10.1007/s11165-016-9602-2

Notes:

¹: "All works published by 'Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice' is [sic, are] under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License. This permits anyone to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the work provided the original work and source is appropriately cited." (https://opastonline.com/journal/journal-of-chemistry-education-research-and-practice/author-guidelines)

²: This is indeed what these authors claim – by which they seem to mean none of the students tested reaches a score of half-marks. (I infer that from the way they report other results in the same study.) They report that, of 50 respondents,

"21 (42%) could not identify correctly all [sic, could not identify correctly any of] the eight symbols presented in the survey. 24 (48%) was only able to identify one out of eight symbols presented, and 5 (10%) could identify just two. Thus, it is alarming to discover that *100% of the respondents are not aware of the laboratory signs and symbols"
Oludipe & Etobro, 2018: 5

(The asterisk seems to indicate which rows from a result table are being summed to give 100%.)

3. If we simply wanted to test for awareness of safety signs we might think of displaying some jars of reagents and asking something like "is there any way you would know about which of these chemicals present particular risks?" or "how might we find out about special precautions we should take when working with these reagents?" and see if the respondents pointed out the safety signs printed on the labels.

⁴. Journals that attract high volumes of submissions may have a team of editors to share the work. Some journals with several editors acknowledge the specific editor who handles each published study.

I suspect that some predatory journals appoint editors who do not actually see the submissions (as it is difficult to see how qualified editors would approve some of the nonsense published in some journals), which are instead handled by administrators who may not be experts in the field (and so may not be in a position to judge the expertise of peer reviewers). If this is so, the editor should be described as an 'honorary editor' as misrepresenting a journal as edited by a subject expert is dishonest.