The leading research journal for chemistry education
Published by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Someof the places to publish research in science education
I was recently asked which was the best journal in which to seek publication of science education research. This was a fair question, given that I had been been warning of the large number of low quality journals now diluting the academic literature.
I had been invited to give a seminar talk to the Physics Education and Scholarship Section in the Department of Physics at Durham University. I had been asked to talk on the theme of 'Publishing research in science education'.
The talk considered the usual processes involved in submitting a paper to a research journal and the particular responsibilities involved for authors, editors and reviewers. In the short time available I said a little about ethical issues, including difficulties that can arise when scholars are not fully aware of, or decide to ignore, the proper understanding of academic authorship 1 . I also discussed some of the specific issues that can arise when those with research training in the natural sciences undertake educational research without any further preparation (for example, see: Why do natural scientists tend to make poor social scientists?), such as underestimating the challenge of undertaking valid experiments in educational contexts.
I had not intended to offer advice on specific journals for the very good reasons that
there are a lot of journals
my experience of them is very uneven
I have biases!
knowledge of journals can quickly become out of date when publishers change policies, or editorial teams change
However, it was pointed out that there does not seem to be anywhere where such advice is readily available, so I made some comments based on my own experience. I later reflected that some such guidance could be useful, especially to those new to research in the area.
I do, in the 'Research methodology' section of the site, offer some advice to the new researcher on 'Publishing research', that includes some general advice on things to consider when thinking about where to send your work:
Although I name check some journals there, I did not think I should offer strong guidance for the reasons I give above. However, taking on board the comment about the lack of guidance readily available, I thought I would make some suggestions here, with the full acknowledgement that this is a personal perspective, and that the comments facility below will allow other views and potential correctives to my biases! If I have missed an important journal, or seem to have made a misjudgement, then please tell me and (more importantly) other readers who may be looking for guidance.
Publishing in English?
My focus here is on English language journals. There are many important journals that publish in other languages such as Spanish. However, English is often seen as the international language for reporting academic research, and most of the journals with the greatest international reach work in the English language.
These journals publish work from all around the world, which therefore includes research into contexts where the language of instruction is NOT English, and where data is collected, and often analysed, in the local language. In these cases, reporting research in English requires translating material (curriculum materials, questions posed to participants, quotations from learners etc.) into English. That is perfectly acceptable, but translation is a skilled and nuanced activity, and needs to be acknowledged and reported, and some assurance of the quality of translation offered (Taber, 2018).
Science research journal or science education journal?
Sometime science research journals will publish work on science education. However, not all science journals will consider this, and even for those that do, this tends to be an occasional event.
With the advent of open-access, internet accessible publishing, some academic publishers are offering journals with very wide scope (presumably as it is considered that in the digital age it is easier to find research without it needing to be in a specialist journal), however, authors should be wary of journals that have titles implying a specialist scientific focus but which seem to accept material from a wide range of fields, as this is one common indicator of predatory journals – that is, journals which do not use robust peer review (despite what they may claim) and have low quality standards.
There are some scientific journals with an interdisciplinary flavour which are not education journals per se, but are open to suitable submissions on educational topics. I am most familiar (disclosure of interest, being on the Editorial Board) is Foundations of Chemistry (published by Springer).
Then, there is the question of whether to publish work in specialist science education journals or one of the many more general education journals. (There are too many to discuss them here.) General education journals will sometimes publish work from within science education, as long as they feel it is of high enough general interest to their readership. This may in part be a matter of presentation – if the paper is written so it is only understandable to subject specialists, and only makes recommendations for specialists in science education, it is unlikely to seem suitable for a more general journal.
On the other hand, just because research has been undertaken in science teaching and learning context, this may not make it of particular interest to science educators if the research aims, conceptualisation, conclusions and recommendations concern general educational issues, and anything that may be specific to science teaching and learning is ignored in the research – that is, if a science classroom was chosen just as a matter of convenience, but the work could have been just as well undertaken in a different curriculum context (Taber, 2013).
Research Journal or Professional Journal?
Another general question is whether it is best to send one's work to an academic research journal (offering more kudos for the author{s} if published) or a journal widely read by practitioners (but usually considered less prestigious when a scholar's academic record is examined for appointment and promotion). These different types of output usually have different expectations about the tone and balance of articles:
Some work is highly theoretical, or is focussed on moving forward a research field – and is unlikely to be seen as suitable for a teacher's journal. Other useful work may have developed and evaluated new educational resources, but without critically exploring any educational questions in any depth. Information about this project would likely be of great interest to teachers, but is unlikely to meet the criteria to be accepted for publication in a research journal.
But what about a genuine piece of research that would be of interest to other researchers in the field, but also leads to strong recommendations for policy and practice? Here you do not have to choose one or other option. Although you cannot publish the same article in different journals, a research report sent to an academic journal and an article for teachers would be sufficiently different, with different emphases and weightings. For example, a professional journal does not usually want a critical literature review and discussion of details of data analysis, or long lists of references. But it may value vignettes that teachers can directly relate to, as well as exemplification of how recommendation might be followed through – information that would not fit in the research report.
Ideally, the research report would be completed and published first, and the article for the professional audience would refer to (and cite) this, so that anyone who does want to know more about the theoretical background and technical details can follow up.
Some examples of periodicals aimed at teachers (and welcoming work written by classroom teachers) include the School Science Review, (published by the Association for Science Education), Physics Education (published by the Institute of Physics) and the Royal Society of Chemistry's magazine Education in Chemistry. Globally, there are many publications of this kind, often with a national focus serving teachers working in a particular curriculum context by offering articles directly relevant to the specifics of the local education contexts.
The top science education research journals
Having established our work does fit in science education as a field, and would be considered academic research, we might consider sending it to one of these journals
International Journal of Science Education (IJSE)
Science Education (SE)
Journal of Research in Science Teaching (JRST)
Research in Science Education (RiSE)
To my mind these are the top general research journals in the field.
IJSE is the journal I have most worked with, having published quite a few papers in the journal, and have reviewed a great many. I have been on the Editorial Board for about 20 years, so I may be biased here.2 IJSE started as the European Journal of Science Education and has long had an association with the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA – not to be confused with ASERA).
Strictly this journal is now known as IJSE Part A, as there is also a Part B which has a particular focus on 'Communication and Public Engagement' (see below). IJSE is published by Taylor and Francis / Routledge.
SE is published by Wiley.
JRSTis also published by Wiley, and is associated with NARST.
N.A.R.S.T. originally stood for the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, where the Nation referred to was the USA. However, having re-branded itself as "a global organization for improving science teaching and learning through research" it is now simply known as NARST. In a similar way ESERA describes itself as "an European organisation focusing on research in science education with worldwide membership" and ASERA clams it "draws together researchers in science education from Australia, New Zealand and more broadly".
The top science education reviews journal
Another 'global' journal I hold in high esteem in Studies in Science Education (published by Taylor & Francis / Routledge) 3 .
This journal, originally established at the University of Leeds and associated with the world famous Centre for Studies in Science Education 4, is the main reviews journal in science education. It publishes substantive, critical reviews of areas of science education, and some of the most influential articles in the field have been published here.
Studies in Science Education also has a tradition of publishing detailed scholarly book reviews.
In my view, getting your work published in any of these five journals is something to be proud of. I think people in many parts of the world tend to know IJSE best, but I believe that in the USA it is often considered to be less prestigious than JRST and SE. At one time RISE seemed to have a somewhat parochial focus, and (my impression is) attracted less work from outside Australasia and its region – but that has changed now. 'Studies' seems to be better known in some contexts than other, but it is the only high status general science education journal that publishes full-length reviews (both systematic, and thematic perspectives), with many of its contributions exceeding the normal word-length limits of other top science education journals. This is the place to send an article based on that literature review chapter that thesis examiners praised for its originality and insight!
There are other well-established general journals of merit, for example Research in Science and Technological Education (published by Taylor & Francis / Routledge, and originally based at the University of Hull) and the International Journal of Science and Maths Education(published by Springer, and founded by the National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan). The International Council of Associations for Science Education publishes Science Education International.
There are also journals with particular foci with the field of science education.
More specialist titles
There are also a number of well-regarded international research journals in science education which particular specialisms or flavours.
Science & Education (published by Springer) is associated with the International History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching Group5, which as the name might suggest has a focus on science eduction with a focus on the nature of science, and "publishes research using historical, philosophical, and sociological approaches in order to improve teaching, learning, and curricula in science and mathematics".
The Journal of Science Teacher Education (published by Taylor & Francis / Routledge), as the name suggests is concerned with the preparation and development of science teachers. The journal is associated with the USA based Association for Science Teacher Education.
As suggested above, IJSE has a companion journal (also published by Taylor & Francis / Routledge), International Journal of Science Education, Part B – Communication and Public Engagement
Cultural Studies of Science Education (published by Springer) has a particular focus on science education "as a cultural, cross-age, cross-class, and cross-disciplinary phenomenon".
The Journal of Science Education and Technology (published by Springer) has a focus on the intersection between science education and technology.
Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research has a particular focus on science taught within and across disciplines. 6 Whereas most of the journals described here are now hybrid (which means articles will usually be behind a subscription/pay-wall, unless the author pays a publication fee), DISER is an open-access journal, with publication costs paid on behalf of authors by the sponsoring organisation: the Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University.
This relatively new journal reflects the increasing awareness of the importance of cross-disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research in science itself. This is also reflected in notions of whether (or to what extent) science education should be considered part of a broader STEM education, and there are now journals styled as STEM education journals.
Whilst both the Institute of Physics and the American Institute of Physics publish physics education journals (Physics Education and The Physics Teacher, respectively) neither publishes full length research reports of the kind included in research journals. The American Physical Society does publish Physical Review Physics Education Research as part of its set of Physical Review Journals. This is an on-line journal that is Open Access, so authors have to pay a publication fee.
The Journal of Biological Education (published by Taylor and Francis/Routledge) is the education journal of the Royal Society of Biology.
The Journal of Chemical Education is a long-established journal published by the American Chemical Society. It is not purely a research journal, but it does have a section for educational research and has published many important articles in the field. 7
Chemistry Education Research and Practice (published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, RSC) is purely a research journal, and can be considered the top international journal for research specifically in chemistry education. (Perhaps this is why there is a predatory journal knowingly called the Journal of Chemistry Education Research and Practice)
As CERP is sponsored by the RSC (which as a charity looks to use income to support educational and other valuable work), all articles in CERP are accessible for free on-line, but there are no publication charges for authors.
Not an exhaustive list!
These are the journals I am most familiar with, which focus on science education (or a science discipline education), publish serous peer-reviewed research papers, and can be considered international journals.
I know there are other discipline-based journals (e.g, biochemistry education, geology education) and indeed I expect there are many worthwhile places to publish that have slipped my mind or about which I am ignorant. Many regional or national journals have high standards and publish much good work. However, when it comes to research papers (rather than articles aimed primarily at teachers) academics usually get more credit when they publish in higher status international journals. It is these outlets that can best attract highly qualified editors and reviewers, and so peer review feedback tends to be most helpful 8, and the general standard of published work tends to be of a decent quality – both in terms of technical aspects, and its significance and originality.
There is no reason why work published in English is more important than work published in other languages, but the wide convention of publishing research for an international audience in English means that work published in English language journals probably gets wider attention globally. I have published a small number of pieces in other languages, but am primarily limited by my own restricted competence to only one language. This reflects my personal failings more than the global state of science education publishing!
A personal take – other viewpoints are welcome
So, this is my personal (belated) response to the question about where one should seek to publish research in science education. I have tried to give a fair account, but it is no doubt biased by my own experiences (and recollections), and so inadvertently subject to distortions and omissions.
I welcome any comments (below) to expand upon, or seek to correct, my suggested list, which might indeed make this a more useful listing for readers who are new to publishing their work. If you have had good (or bad) experiences with science education journals included in, or omitted from, my list, please share…
Sources cited:
Taber, K. S. (2013). Three levels of chemistry educational research. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 14(2), 151-155. doi:10.1039/C3RP90003G. [Free access]
1 Academic authorship is understood differently to how the term 'author' is usually used: in most contexts, the author is the person who prepared (wrote, types, dictated) a text. In academic research, the authors of the research paper are those who made a substantial direct intellectual contribution to the work being reported. That is, an author need not contribute to the writing-up phase (though all authors should approve the text) as long as they have made a proper contribution to the substance of the work. Most journals have clear expectations that all deserving authors, and only those people, should be named as authors.
2 For many years the journal was edited by the late Prof. John Gilbert, who I first met sometime in the 1984-5 academic year when I applied to join the University of Surrey/Roehampton Institute part-time teachers' programme in the Practice of Science Education, and he – as one of course directors – interviewed me. I was later privileged to work with John on some projects – so this might be considered as a 'declaration of interest'.
3 Again, I must declare an interest. For some years I acted as the Book Reviews editor for the journal.
4 The centre was the base for the highly influential Children's Learning in Science Project which undertook much research and publication in the field under the Direction of the late Prof. Ros Driver.
5 Another declaration of interest: at the time of writing I am on the IHPST Advisory Board for the journal.
6 Declaration of interest: I am a member of the DISER's Editorial Board
7 I have recently shown some surprise at one research article published in JChemEd where major problems seem to have been missed in peer review. This is perhaps simply an aberration, or may reflect the challenge of including peer-reviewed academic research in a hybrid publication that also publishes a range of other kinds of articles.
8 Peer-review evaluates the quality of submissions, in part to inform publication decisions, but also to provide feedback to authors on areas where they can improve a manuscript prior to publication.
Is it possible that a publisher might be using fictitious academics to attract submissions to its journals?
Keith S. Taber
An obvious discrepancy is that the University of Ottawa is not Ottawa University, USA. One is in Ontario, in Canada – the other is in Kansas, in the United States. Someone who has attended one of these universities would be unlikely to be confused about which one they studied at, and graduated from.
I received an email from a journal managing editor claiming to be a highly qualified scholar (two doctorates)- for whom I can find absolutely no evidence on the web of her having ever published anything, or having any association with any university, research group, or learned society. Suspicious?
Wanted!
Information on the academic research of this woman
(Additional image elements by No-longer-here and OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay)
I received one of those dodgy emails from a publisher that are now part of the normal noise one has to navigate through in the Academy. The email was signed by a Dr Nicoleta Auffahrt, as Managing Editor of the 'Department of Humanities and Social Science' 'at Global Journals'. So far, nothing too suspicious.
She had read it and felt it was worthy of admiration
She had shared 'the finding' with her [unspecified] colleagues
She reported that other [unspecified] scholars of our [sic] research community had also commended 'them' [?]
She suggested that this paper demonstrated my potential to influence and inspire fellow researchers and scholars.
Two classes of academics
Now, perhaps there was a time when I might have taken some of this at face value, being naïve enough to believe that most people are basically honest, and that at least in the world of scholarship people value truth and honesty and would not casually lie.
One might expect such compliments to often hit home with academics: after all, isn't academia made up of two classes of scholars
those who suffer imposter symptom and are waiting to be found out as not belonging;
those who know their work is important and ground-breaking, deserving of being more widely known, and a sufficient cause to bring them attention, prestige, admiration, acolytes, and prizes?
The latter group, at least, would not find anything odd in receiving such unsolicited praise.
However, I've had too many emails of this kind that praise my work but which are clearly not truthful: often they either
The reference to 'our research community' was intriguing, as the letter (appended below) was structured so as to
(i) first praise me as though Dr Auffahrt was so impressed with my work that she needed to tell me; and then,
(ii) by the way, incidentally, as she was writing – she thought she would mention, "also" her role working for a publisher that led her to invite me to submit some work.
So, was it feasible that Dr Auffahrt did consider us part of the same research community? When I checked her email signature I saw she signed herself as Dr. Nicoleta Auffahrt "D.Litt in Teaching Education".
Now I was intrigued. Clearly 'teaching' and 'education' suggest that at least 'Dr' Nicoleta has a background in my general field of teaching and learning which makes a nice change from being invited to contribute on topics such as nanotechnology and various medical specialisms. Yet, this also raised some questions: what exactly is meant by 'teaching education' (cf. e.g., science education) as an academic area – was her work in teaching the subject of education or…?
Moreover, I was surprised that someone with a higher doctorate was acting as a 'managing editor' for a publisher. A D.Litt. was only likely to be awarded to a highly productive and influential scholar, and such a person might well take on editorial roles (as an editor, an associate editor, an editor-in-chief), but probably not as a managing editor.
A managing editor is employed by a publisher to oversee the administration and business side of a journal, unlike an editor who would normally being doing the intellectual work of evaluating the quality of submissions and directing the peer-review process (work which would often be seen as taking a leadership role in a research field) – and then usually only as a subsidiary post undertaken alongside an academic appointment. The prestige of the journal is often in part seen to be reflected in the university affiliations of its editors and associate editors.
There is, of course, no reason why someone who has achieved eminence in their academic field, recognised ultimately by being awarded a higher doctorate such as a D.Litt., might not decide to then make a career change and move into publishing; and, similarly, there is no reason why a publisher should not employ such a person if they were available – but it seemed an unlikely scenario. Unlikely enough for me to dig a little.
So, I did a web-search for Dr Nicoleta Auffahrt. I found her listed on one of the publisher's web-pages as part of an editorial board for social science. Her listing was:
"Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, Master of Arts in Ottawa University, USA"
So, a Ph.D., but no mention of the much rarer and more prestigious D.Litt. degree. Of course, the web-page may be out of date, whereas perhaps Nicoleta had updated her email signature, so that proves nothing.
What was very odd though, was the limited number of web-pages that a search turned up.
Qualifications
M.A., Ph.D., D.Litt
Search term "Dr Nicoleta Auffahrt"/ "Dr. Nicoleta Auffahrt"
1 hit on Google (https://globaljournals.org)
Search terms Dr + "Nicoleta Auffahrt"
4 hits on Google (https://www.facebook.com; https://globaljournals.org; https://globaljournals.us; https://beta.globaljournal)
How can a successful scholar who has two doctorates and is (or, perhaps, was until recently) working in a top US university be virtually invisible on the web?
Apart from three pages for the publisher, Google only provided one other 'hit' – a 'Facebook' page. Dropping the reference to 'Dr' still only found "Nicoleta Auffahrt" on Facebook and Global Journals webpages. That seemed very strange.
I also tried using Google Scholar. Google Scholar is a specialist search engine used by academics to find research reported in journal articles, academic books, conference proceedings, on websites, and so forth. Google Scholar did not suggest a single publication (and Google Scholar is pretty liberal in what it counts as a 'publication'!) that had been authored, co-authored or edited by "Nicoleta Auffahrt".
Typically searching for an academic brings up myriad references to their publications, conference talks, involvement in research groups, links with university departments, and so forth. A search for an experienced and successful academic would be expected to turn up, at least, hundreds, indeed – likely – thousands, of hits.
This is unavoidable if you work in academia – even if for some reason a scholar chooses not to have a specific Google Scholar listing (this does not stop your work being included in the database and returned in a search – it just means you do not get a personal profile page); not to have an Academia listing; not to post on ResearchGate; not to be on Linked-In (which is a common place for those working in publishing to seek to make contacts); and does not upload their dissertations/theses to University repositories…they still cannot prevent their books and papers and conference talks being referred to here and there.
Academic prestige is, after all, largely based on publications, and publications are by definitionpublic documents. Assessment for a higher doctorate such as a D.Litt. is usually largely in terms of a scholar's published work being judged to be highly influential in their discipline or field (something that is usually only possible to judge some years after publications first appear). Moreover, one of the principle ways in which any academic is evaluated is in terms of the influence of their publications, as judged by citations – but Nicoleta Auffahrt's work does not seem to be cited anywhere. At least, Google Scholar had not found any. (No publications, and no citations.1)
So, here the only evidence I had of a person called Nicoleta Auffahrt really existing that was independent of the publisher who had contacted me was…Facebook, and that offered limited pickings.
I responded to the email (text appended below), asking Dr. Nicoleta Auffahrt about her area of work and where she had been awarded the prestigious D.Litt.
The next morning, I found I had a reply – but from someone else at the publishers. I say 'someone' else, as the email account was linked to the name Dr. Stacey J. Newman but the email was signed Dr. Nellie K. Neblett. Stacey, or was it Nellie, had ignored my questions to Nicoleta (but sent me an interesting brochure which revealed how the publisher calculated its own impact factor, but using data from the very catholic listings in Google Scholar – so vastly inflating the value compared with properly audited impact factors).
The response to my email reply to Nicoleta Auffahrt
Then a couple of days later, I had another email (appended below) from 'Dr' Auffahrt "following-up" on her earlier email, but written as if I had not replied to her – and repeating the information that she was going to be in Sydney 'next week' (it should have been 'this week' by then, if her earlier email had been correct) and again wishing my (non-existent) Christmas candles would be glorious. Given that she had asked me to confirm my affiliation with the University of Cambridge in Cambridge Uk, United Kingdom [sic, we in the U.K. tend to capitalise both letters, something one might expect an editor to appreciate – but perhaps she thought 'Cambridge Uk' was a place in the United Kingdom?], and I had done so, I was not entirely sure why she thought it useful for me to know she would be in Sydney, unless this was just 'small talk'.
I replied pointing out that,
"If you have checked your emails and seen my reply, you will have found I was asking about your research, as I wondered how it might link with mine. You have me at a disadvantage(!) as you tell me you have read some of my work, but I've not had a chance to read yours – perhaps you could direct me to some of it?"
My reply to 'Dr' Auffahrt 's second email.
So far, no response to that.
Nicoleta Auffahrt's Facebook presence
The Facebook page had not been updated since Christmas day 2021 (when a video from the University of Pennsylvania about the student-run Medical Emergency Response Team was re-posted.) According to this page: 'Dr' Auffahrt
Works at University of Pennsylvania
Worked at University of Ottawa
Studied at University of Ottawa
Studied at University of Pennsylvania
Went to Emma Hart Willard School
Lives in, and is from, Ottawa, Ontario
(I was unable to verify that there is a Emma Hart Willard School in Canada, and it is unlikely any current school would not have a website that could be picked up in a Google search, but, of course, it may have closed down or changed its name since Nicoleta studied there.)
Her Facebook page 'cover' picture (see below) is an image of 'Canada's University'.
An obvious discrepancy is that the University of Ottawa is notOttawa University, USA (where the publisher's site claimed 'Dr' Auffahrt was awarded her M.A. degree). One is in Ontario, in Canada – the other is in Kansas, in the United States. Someone who has attended one of these universities would be unlikely to be confused about which one they studied at, and graduated from.
Some people use a Facebook page extensively to connect with friends and family. Not everyone does. Some people start a Facebook page and either abandon it, or seldom update it. So, limited information on someone's Facebook page is not of itself evidence of any wrongdoing.
Nicoleta's account was linked to two 'friends' – the University of Pennsylvania, and a Canadian ice hockey player Brendan Jacome. (His Facebook page was even less informative than Nicoleta's – but unlike her, he has quite a web presence – Google made over 2000 returns for "Brendan Jacome").
Nocolata's Facebook activity was limited to
posting a picture of 'her baby' (see below) as her profile picture, updating her cover photo, and posting a message that "Real education is only obtained through self- education" – on the same day just before before Christmas 2016;
posting that she had "Started New Job at Global Journals Incorporated" in 2o19;
and updating her profile picture and reposting the University of Pennsylvania video on Christmas day 2021.
Nicoleta's baby?
It looked like the only real clues on the Facebook page were the photographs of Nicoleta and the woman she described as her 'baby' – so, perhaps her daughter?
I tried to find any other photos that matched the image supposed to be of Nicoleta Auffahrt. I failed, so that lead did not help.
However, I soon found an image matching the picture of the other woman.
The two images above are taken from Nicoleta Auffahrt's facebook page and a public profile for one Alessandra Manganelli when she was a Ph.D. student in Brussels (this page has no new content beyond a conference attended in the UK in November 2017). A smaller version of the same photograph appears on another page at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel site.
Unlike 'Dr' Auffahrt, a quick Google for "Alessandra Manganelli" gives over 2500 hits. That is much more in line with what one might expect for an academic.
According to the web, Dr Manganelli, having completed her doctorate at the the Universities of KULeuven and Vrije Universiteit Brussel, moved to a post-doctoral position in Hamburg. It seems she undertook her doctoral studies in Engineering Science with input in Architecture from one institution (KULeuven) and in Sciences from the other (VUB). She works on areas such as Urban Governance, Social Innovation, Urban Agriculture, Local Food Policies, Urban Environmental and Climate Governance. Google Scholar lists a range of publications she has written or co-authored. That is, unlike in the case of 'Dr' Auffahrt, there is a lot of publicly available information about Dr Manganelli's research activities to support her claim to be a genuine scholar.
A Canadian connection?
Although Dr Manganelli seems to have done most of her work in Europe, one might imagine that, if she was indeed Nicoleta Auffahrt's baby, then she was perhaps born and brought up in Canada, before moving to Europe to study? However, not so: it appears Dr Manganelli is from Sienna in Italy.
Intriguingly, however, one of her publications is a book for a major academic publisher: "The Hybrid Governance of Urban Food Movements. Learning from Toronto and Brussels". She also co-authored a paper in the journal 'Critical perspectives on food guidance' on "… FoodShare Toronto´s approach to critical food guidance…". So, there is a Canadian connection.
Dr Manganelli's has her own Facebook page. (Dr Manganelli has 840 friends listed on Facebook, but Nicoleta Auffahrt is not one of them.) Her page suggests she did work at Toronto Metropolitan University from January/February to June 2017 (so, at the time when Nicoleta Auffahrt was supposedly in Ottawa before moving to Pennsylvania) – and Toronto is 'only' about 350 km from Ottawa. (Dr Manganelli's Facebook site tells visitors that she visited Toronto again in November 2022.) But Nicoleta Auffahrt seems to have posted Alessandra Manganelli's picture on her Facebook page just beforeAlessandra Manganelli arrived in Canada.
One would presumably have to have a strong connection with another person to use their photograph as your social media profile picture for five years (Nicoleta Auffahrt used Alessandra Manganelli's image as her profile picture from 22nd December 2016 till 25th December 2021). But, perhaps I was being too literal in my reading of the term 'my baby'.
Perhaps
Nicoleta and Alessandra had met somewhere (a conference, a holiday, on line?) and formed a close friendship which may even have influenced Dr Manganelli's decision to spend some time in Canada (fairly) near Nicoleta Auffahrt; then
excited with anticipation at Alessandra's imminent arrival in the country, Nicoleta had posted a picture of her friend (her 'baby') as her new profile picture.
This seems a little forced to me, but it is not completely impossible. (I had no substantive interest in 'Dr' Auffahrt's personal life {nor Dr Manganelli's} – I just wanted to find out if there was evidence she was a real person who had genuinely earned those academic qualifications.)
Given the amount of information on the web, I am fairly confident Dr Manganelli is a real person.
(I emailed her to tell her I had found her picture on Nicoleta Auffahrt's Facebook page and asked if she had an email contact for Nicoleta Auffahrt. No reply (as yet) but Dr Manganelli is under no obligation to reply to emails from strangers asking her about her friends.)
I am less sure about 'Dr' Nicoleta Auffahrt.
I also emailed the registry at the University of Pennsylvania to say I had been contacted by someone claiming to hold a Ph.D. from the University, where I had suspicions about this, and asked if there was a public listing of Ph.D. holders that could be checked. So, far no response (beyond an automatic reply with a case number pointing out that a response "may take up to 3-5 business days", sent over two weeks ago). Perhaps the University of Pennsylvania does not concern itself with people who are possibly falsely claiming to hold its doctorates.*
Conclusion?
Perhaps, Nicoleta Auffahrt is a real person who does hold the degrees she claims, including a higher doctorate, despite having no scholarly trace on the web (though this seems incredible to the point of being virtually impossible), and does work for 'Global Journals'; and perhaps she did write the email telling me she was visiting Sydney (why tell me that?) and wishing me glorious Christmas candles (why say that weeks after Christmas?)… and then also writing the second email email ignoring my reply and repeating the information about Sydney and candles? I guess this is not impossible, just extremely unlikely. And if this is the case, and if she is so keen to 'develop an academic relationship' with me, then why does she ignore my replies and my request to learn more about her work?
Alternatively, perhaps Nicoleta Auffahrt is a real person with a genuine, if seldom updated, Facebook page, and a close relationship of some kind (which is genuinely none of my business) with Dr Alessandra Manganelli, but her identify has been 'borrowed' by Global Journals. So, perhaps, there is wrongdoing, but Nicoleta Auffahrt is totally innocent of this.
It seems more likely to me that the Facebook page is a sham set up to give some kind of minimal web presence to 'Dr' Auffahrt (a fictitious Managing Editor at Global Journals), and that there is no Nicoleta Auffahrt (and that Dr Manganelli's image was simply arbitrarily sourced from the web somewhere without her knowledge).
Of course, I may be wrong, but there is certainly something dodgy about communications from this publisher, as the supposed managing editor seems to share her email account with Dr. Stacey J. Newman / Dr. Nellie K. Neblett – and checking back through old email I found another invitation (appended below) from the same email addresssupposedly from a Dr. Gisela Steins (there is a real academic with this name who is a psychology professor in Germany and is listed on the editorial board of the Global Journal of Human-Social Science).
Congratulations on your role as Managing Editor, Department of Humanities and Social Science at Global Journals. This sounds a prestigious and challenging position. I hope you enjoy Sydney – I've not been there myself. I was a little confused by your remark about candles, as I had always assumed most Australians celebrated Christmas at the same time as in Western Europe – I am afraid Christmas already seems a memory here.
I wonder what you found of particular interest in the paper – perhaps you would be prepared to share what it is you found especially of value in this work?
In answer to your question, I am now retired from my teaching role. I maintain an affiliation with my Faculty as an Emeritus Officer of the University, and intend to follow my own scholarly interests for as long as I am able.
Perhaps this links to your own research? I hope you would be kind enough, in return, to answer a question for me. I was intrigued to see that you had a higher doctorate, a D. Litt. in Teaching Education, so clearly your background is relevant to my work. I was wondering where you were awarded that? I see from the journal publisher' web-pages that you were awarded your Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and your Master of Arts from Ottawa University, USA, but it does not mention your D.Litt. Is 'Teaching Education' meant to be an abbreviation for teaching and education or was your degree specifically related to teacher education? In my national context a D. Litt. would usually only be awarded after a highly positive evaluation of a portfolio of post-doctoral publications, but I believe in the U.S. some universities offer this as an outcome of a thesis-based programme. I would be interested to know more about your area of work – in particular the body of work for which the D.Litt. was awarded, and how it links to my own scholarship and research.
Best wishes
Keith
What is this obsession with Christmas candles?Praise (supposedly) from a psychology professor who found time to read my 'remarkable' work.
Update: Dr. Nicoleta Auffahrt succeeded by her doppelgänger?
My thanks to Dr. Murat Siviloglu for forwarding to me this extract (above) from an invitation he received from the current Managing Editor of the Global Journal of Human-Social Science. It seems perhaps "Dr Nicoleta Auffahrt" has moved on form her role, and now invitations are being sent out by "Dr Carolyn C. Mitchell". According to the invitation, Mitchell, like Aufffahrt holds the higher doctorate of a D.Litt., again in the odd subject of 'Teaching Education'.
The only references to a "Dr [or Dr.] Carolyn C. Mitchell"that showed on a web-search were on the Journal publisher's sites. I could not find anyone called Carolyn Mitchell who seemed to have a D.Litt., so, like her predecessor, Mitchell seems to have achieved high academic status without any visible trace of research and scholarship. 1
Mitchell is also a 'dead ringer' for Auffahrt, as their profile pictures seem, well, identical.
And the similarities do not stop there. According to the Journal website, "Dr Carolyn C. Mitchell" also holds the degrees of
"Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, Master of Arts in Ottawa University, USA".
It seems that when appointing senior editors, Global Journals certainly 'go for a type' as they say.
1 It may seen obvious that if someone has not published any work, then no one can be citing them. That is fair enough. However, Google Scholar will find citations in work that is accessible on the web to work that is not itself found on the web – for example, references made to books that were published many years ago and have never been digitised, or to conference papers that were distributed at talks in hard copy, but have never been included in web repositories.
* Update. On 17th March I received a reply, from a Student Service Center Counselor, to my enquiry from eight weeks earlier:
Sorry for the delay as the registrar's office is months behind on email requests. We have been tasked with assisting to clear their portal. Below is what we typically send 3rd party requests for information:
Thank you for contacting Student Registration and Financial Services (SRFS). We have received your education verification request for (INSERT STUDENT NAME) from the University of Pennsylvania. Third-Party education verifications are required to go through the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC). Please use this link: https://secure.studentclearinghouse.org/vs/Index to place your request. Penn's school code is…
email from University of Pennsylvania
When I investigated the National Student Clearinghouse website, I found I needed to first register as either a representative of a 'company' or as a student seeking to verify my own record.
Screenshot of part of a webpage of the National Student Clearinghouse
"The mission of the National Student Clearinghouse is to serve the education and workforce communities and all learners with access to trusted data, related services, and insights."
https://www.studentclearinghouse.org/about/
It seems there is no facility for someone approached by a publisher to check the veracity of an editor's claimed qualifications.
A 'peer-reviewed' study claims to improve academic performance by purifying the souls of students suffering from hallucinations
Keith S. Taber
The research design is completely inadequate…the whole paper is confused…the methodology seems incongruous…there is an inconsistency…nowhere is the population of interest actually identified…No explanation of the discrepancy is provided…results of this analysis are not reported…the 'interview' technique used in the study is highly inadequate…There is a conceptual problem here…neither the validity nor reliability can be judged…the statistic could not apply…the result is not reported…approach is completely inappropriate…these tables are not consistent…the evidence is inconclusive…no evidence to demonstrate the assumed mechanism…totally unsupported claims…confusion of recommendations with findings…unwarranted generalisation…the analysis that is provided is useless…the research design is simply inadequate…no control condition…such a conclusion is irresponsible
Some issues missed in peer review for a paper in the European Journal of Education and Pedagogy
An invitation to publish without regard to quality?
I received an email from an open-access journal called the European Journal of Education and Pedagogy, with the subject heading 'Publish Fast and Pay Less' which immediately triggered the thought "another predatory journal?" Predatory journals publish submissions for a fee, but do not offer the editorial and production standards expected of serious research journals. In particular, they publish material which clearly falls short of rigorous research despite usually claiming to engage in peer review.
A peer reviewed journal?
Checking out the website I found the usual assurances that the journal used rigorous peer review as:
"The process of reviewing is considered critical to establishing a reliable body of research and knowledge. The review process aims to make authors meet the standards of their discipline, and of science in general.
We use a double-blind system for peer-reviewing; both reviewers and authors' identities remain anonymous to each other. The paper will be peer-reviewed by two or three experts; one is an editorial staff and the other two are external reviewers."
https://www.ej-edu.org/index.php/ejedu/about
Peer review is critical to the scientific process. Work is only published in (serious) research journals when it has been scrutinised by experts in the relevant field, and any issues raised responded to in terms of revisions sufficient to satisfy the editor.
I could not find who the editor(-in-chief) was, but the 'editorial team' of European Journal of Education and Pedagogy were listed as
Bea Tomsic Amon, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Chunfang Zhou, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
Gabriel Julien, University of Sheffield, UK
Intakhab Khan, King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia
Mustafa Kayıhan Erbaş, Aksaray University, Turkey
Panagiotis J. Stamatis, University of the Aegean, Greece
I decided to look up the editor based in England where I am also based but could not find a web presence for him at the University of Sheffield. Using the ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) provided on the journal website I found his ORCID biography places him at the University of the West Indies and makes no mention of Sheffield.
If the European Journal of Education and Pedagogy is organised like a serious research journal, then each submission is handled by one of this editorial team. However the reference to "editorial staff" might well imply that, like some other predatory journals I have been approached by (e.g., Are you still with us, Doctor Wu?), the editorial work is actually carried out by office staff, not qualified experts in the field.
That would certainly help explain the publication, in this 'peer-reviewed research journal', of the first paper that piqued my interest enough to motivate me to access and read the text.
The Effects of Using the Tazkiyatun Nafs Module on the Academic Achievement of Students with Hallucinations
The abstract of the paper published in what claims to be a peer-reviewed research journal
The paper initially attracted my attention because it seemed to about treatment of a medical condition, so I wondered was doing in an education journal. Yet, the paper seemed to also be about an intervention to improve academic performance. As I read the paper, I found a number of flaws and issues (some very obvious, some quite serious) that should have been spotted by any qualified reviewer or editor, and which should have indicated that possible publication should have been be deferred until these matters were satisfactorily addressed.
This is especially worrying as this paper makes claims relating to the effective treatment of a symptom of potentially serious, even critical, medical conditions through religious education ("a spiritual approach", p.50): claims that might encourage sufferers to defer seeking medical diagnosis and treatment. Moreover, these are claims that are not supported by any evidence presented in this paper that the editor of the European Journal of Education and Pedagogy decided was suitable for publication.
An overview of what is demonstrated, and what is claimed, in the study.
Limitations of peer review
Peer review is not a perfect process: it relies on busy human beings spending time on additional (unpaid) work, and it is only effective if suitable experts can be found that fit with, and are prepared to review, a submission. It is also generally more challenging in the social sciences than in the natural sciences. 1
That said, one sometimes finds papers published in predatory journals where one would expect any intelligent person with a basic education to notice problems without needing any specialist knowledge at all. The study I discuss here is a case in point.
Purpose of the study
Under the heading 'research objectives', the reader is told,
"In general, this journal [article?] attempts to review the construction and testing of Tazkiyatun Nafs [a Soul Purification intervention] to overcome the problem of hallucinatory disorders in student learning in secondary schools. The general objective of this study is to identify the symptoms of hallucinations caused by subtle beings such as jinn and devils among students who are the cause of disruption in learning as well as find solutions to these problems.
Meanwhile, the specific objective of this study is to determine the effect of the use of Tazkiyatun Nafs module on the academic achievement of students with hallucinations.
To achieve the aims and objectives of the study, the researcher will get answers to the following research questions [sic]:
Is it possible to determine the effect of the use of the Tazkiyatun Nafs module on the academic achievement of students with hallucinations?"
Awang, 2022, p.42
I think I can save readers a lot of time regarding the research question by suggesting that, in this study, at least, the answer is no – if only because the research design is completely inadequate to answer the research question. (I should point that the author comes to the opposite conclusion: e.g., "the approach taken in this study using the Tazkiyatun Nafs module is very suitable for overcoming the problem of this hallucinatory disorder", p.49.)
Indeed, the whole paper is confused in terms of what it is setting out to do, what it actually reports, and what might be concluded. As one example, the general objective of identifying "the symptoms of hallucinations caused by subtle beings such as jinn and devils" (but surely, the hallucinations are the symptoms here?) seems to have been forgotten, or, at least, does not seem to be addressed in the paper. 2
The study assumes that hallucinations are caused by subtle beings such as jinn and devils possessing the students. (Image by Tünde from Pixabay)
Methodology
So, this seems to be an intervention study.
Some students suffer from hallucinations.
This is detrimental to their education.
It is hypothesised that the hallucinations are caused by supernatural spirits ("subtle beings that lead to hallucinations"), so, a soul purification module might counter this detriment;
if so, sufferers engaging with the soul purification module should improve their academic performance;
and so the effect of the module is being tested in the study.
Thus we have a kind of experimental study?
No, not according to the author. Indeed, the study only reports data from a small number of unrepresentative individuals with no controls,
"The study design is a case study design that is a qualitative study in nature. This study uses a case study design that is a study that will apply treatment to the study subject to determine the effectiveness of the use of the planned modules and study variables measured many times to obtain accurate and original study results. This study was conducted on hallucination disorders [students suffering from hallucination disorders?] to determine the effectiveness of the Tazkiyatun Nafs module in terms of aspects of student academic achievement."
Awang, 2022, p.42
Case study?
So, the author sees this as a case study. Research methodologies are better understood as clusters of similar approaches rather than unitary categories – but case study is generally seen as naturalistic, rather than involving an intervention by an external researcher. So, case study seems incongruous here. Case study involves the detailed exploration of an instance (of something of interest – a lesson, a school, a course of tudy, a textbook, …) reported with 'thick description'.
The case is usually a complex phenomena which is embedded within a context from which is cannot readily be untangled (for example, a lesson always takes place within a wider context of a teacher working over time with a class on a course of study, within a curricular, and institutional, and wider cultural, context, all of which influence the nature of the specific lesson). So, due to the complex and embedded nature of cases, they are all unique.
"a case study is a study that is full of thoroughness and complex to know and understand an issue or case studied…this case study is used to gain a deep understanding of an issue or situation in depth and to understand the situation of the people who experience it"
Awang, 2022, p.42
A case is usually selected either because that case is of special importance to the researcher (an intrinsic case study – e.g., I studied this school because it is the one I was working in) or because we hope this (unique) case can tell us something about similar (but certainly not identical) other (also unique) cases. In the latter case [sic], an instrumental case study, we are always limited by the extent we might expect to be able to generalise beyond the case.
This limited generalisation might suggest we should not work with a single case, but rather look for a suitably representative sample of all cases: but we sometimes choose case study because the complexity of the phenomena suggests we need to use extensive, detailed data collection and analyses to understand the complexity and subtlety of any case. That is (i.e., the compromise we choose is), we decide we will look at one case in depth because that will at least give us insight into the case, whereas a survey of many cases will inevitably be too superficial to offer any useful insights.
So how does Awang select the case for this case study?
"This study is a case study of hallucinatory disorders. Therefore, the technique of purposive sampling (purposive sampling [sic]) is chosen so that the selection of the sample can really give a true picture of the information to be explored ….
Among the important steps in a research study is the identification of populations and samples. The large group in which the sample is selected is termed the population. A sample is a small number of the population identified and made the respondents of the study. A case or sample of n = 1 was once used to define a patient with a disease, an object or concept, a jury decision, a community, or a country, a case study involves the collection of data from only one research participant…
Awang, 2022, p.42
Of course, a case study of "a community, or a country" – or of a school, or a lesson, or a professional development programme, or a school leadership team, or a homework policy, or an enrichnment activity, or … – would almost certainly be inadequate if it was limited to "the collection of data from only one research participant"!
I do not think this study actually is "a case study of hallucinatory disorders [sic]". Leading aside the shift from singular ("a case study") to plural ("disorders"), the research does not investigate a/some hallucinatory disorders, but the effect of a soul purification module on academic performance. (Actually, spoiler alert 😉, it does not actually investigate the effect of a soul purification module on academic performance either, but the author seems to think it does.)
If this is a case study, there should be the selection ofa case, not a sample. Sometimes we do sample within a case in case study, but only from those identified as part of the case. (For example, if the case was a year group in a school, we may not have resources to interact in depth with several hundred different students). Perhaps this is pedantry as the reader likely knows what Awang meant by 'sample' in the paper – but semantics is important in research writing: a sample is chosen to represent a population, whereas the choice of case study is an acknowledgement that generalisation back to a population is not being claimed).
However, if "among the important steps in a research study is the identification of populations" then it is odd that nowhere in the paper is the population of interest actually specified!
Things slip our minds. Perhaps Awang intended to define the population, forgot, and then missed this when checking the text – buy, hey, that is just the kind of thing the reviewers and editor are meant to notice! Otherwise this looks very like including material from standard research texts to play lip-service to the idea that research-design needs to be principled, but without really appreciating what the phrases used actually mean. This impression is also given by the descriptions of how data (for example, from interviews) were analysed – but which are not reflected at all in the results section of the paper. (I am not accusing Awang of this, but because of the poor standard of peer review not raising the question, the author is left vulnerable to such an evaluation.)
The only one research participant?
So, what do we know about the "case or sample of n = 1 ", the "only one research participant" in this study?
The actual respondents in this case study related to hallucinatory disorders were five high school students. The supportive respondents in the case study related to hallucination disorders were five counseling teachers and five parents or guardians of students who were the actual respondents."
Awang, 2022, p.42
It is certainly not impossible that a case could comprise a group of five people – as long as those five make up a naturally bounded group – that is a group that a reasonable person would recognise as existing as a coherent entiy as they clearly had something in common (they were in the same school class, for example; they were attending the same group therapy session, perhaps; they were a friendship group; they were members of the same extended family diagnosed with hallucinatory disorders…something!) There is no indication here of how these five make up a case.
The identification of the participants as a case might have made sense had the participants collectively undertaken the module as a group, but the reader is told: "This study is in the form of a case study. Each practice and activity in the module are done individually" (p.50). Another justification could have been if the module had been offered in one school, and these five participants were the students enrolled in the programme at that time but as "analysis of the respondents' academic performance was conducted after the academic data of all respondents were obtained from the respective respondent's school" (p.45) it seems they did not attend a single school.
The results tables and reports in the text refer to "respondent 1" to "respondent 4". In case study, an approach which recognises the individuality and inherent value of the particular case, we would usually assign assumed names to research participants, not numbers. But if we are going to use numbers, should there not be a respondent 5?
The other one research participant?
It seems that these is something odd here.
Both the passage above, and the abstract refer to five respondents. The results report on four. So what is going on? No explanation of the discrepancy is provided. Perhaps:
There only ever were four participants, and the author made a mistake in counting.
There only ever were four participants, and the author made a typographical mistake (well, strictly, six typographical mistakes) in drafting the paper, and then missed this in checking the manuscript.
There were five respondents and the author forgot to include data on respondent 5 purely by accident.
There were five respondents, but the author decided not to report on the fifth deliberately for a reason that is not revealed (perhaps the results did not fit with the desired outcome?)
The significant point is not that there is an inconsistency but that this error was missed by peer reviewers and the editor – if there ever was any genuine peer review. This is the kind of mistake that a school child could spot – so, how is it possible that 'expert reviewers' and 'editorial staff' either did not notice it, or did not think it important enough to query?
Research instruments
Another section of the paper reports the instrumentation used in the paper.
"The research instruments for this study were Takziyatun Nafs modules, interview questions, and academic document analysis. All these instruments were prepared by the researcher and tested for validity and reliability before being administered to the selected study sample [sic, case?]."
Awang, 2022, p.42
Of course, it is important to test instruments for validity and reliability (or perhaps authenticity and trustworthiness when collecting qualitative data). But it is also important
to tell the reader how you did this
to report the outcomes
which seems to be missing (apart from in regard to part of the implemented module – see below). That is, the reader of a research study wants evidence not simply promises. Simply telling readers you did this is a bit like meeting a stranger who tells you that you can trust them because they (i.e., say that they) are honest.
Later the reader is told that
"Semi- structured interview questions will be [sic, not 'were'?] developed and validated for the purpose of identifying the causes and effects of hallucinations among these secondary school students…
…this interview process will be [sic, not 'was'] conducted continuously [sic!] with respondents to get a clear and specific picture of the problem of hallucinations and to find the best solution to overcome this disorder using Islamic medical approaches that have been planned in this study
Awang, 2022, pp.43-44
At the very least, this seems to confuse the plan for the research with a report of what was done. (But again, apparently, the reviewers and editorial staff did not think this needed addressing.) This is also confusing as it is not clear how this aspect of the study relates to the intervention. Were the interviews carried out before the intervention to help inform the design of the modules (presumably not as they had already been "tested for validity and reliability before being administered to the selected study sample"). Perhaps there are clear and simple answers to such questions – but the reader will not know because the reviewers and editor did not seem to feel they needed to be posed.
If "Interviews are the main research instrument in this study" (p.43), then one would expect to see examples of the interview schedules – but these are not presented. The paper reports a complex process for analysing interview data, but this is not reflected in the findings reported. The readers is told that the six stage process leads to the identifications and refinement of main and sub-categories. Yet, these categories are not reported in the paper. (But, again, peer reviewers and the editor did not apparently raise this as something to be corrected.) More generally "data analysis used thematic analysis methods" (p.44), so why is there no analysis presented in terms of themes? The results of this analysis are simply not reported.
The reader is told that
"This interview method…aims to determine the respondents' perspectives, as well as look at the respondents' thoughts on their views on the issues studied in this study."
Awang, 2022, p.44
But there is no discussion of participants perspectives and views in the findings of the study. 2Did the peer reviewers and editor not think this needed addressing before publication?
Even more significantly, in a qualitative study where interviews are supposedly the main research instrument, one would expect to see extracts from the interviews presented as part of the findings to support and exemplify claims being made: yet, there are none. (Did this not strike the peer reviewers and editor as odd: presumably they are familiar with the norms of qualitative research?)
The only quotation from the qualitative data (in this 'qualitative' study) I can find appears in the implications section of the paper:
"Are you aware of the importance of education to you? Realize. Is that lesson really important? Important. The success of the student depends on the lessons in school right or not? That's right"
Respondent 3: Awang, 2022, p.49
This seems a little bizarre, if we accept this is, as reported, an utterance from one of the students, Respondent 3. It becomes more sensible if this is actually condensed dialogue:
"Are you aware of the importance of education to you?"
"Realize."
"Is that lesson really important?"
"Important."
"The success of the student depends on the lessons in school right or not?"
"That's right"
It seems the peer review process did not lead to suggesting that the material should be formatted according to the norms for presenting dialogue in scholarly texts by indicating turns. In any case, if that is typical of the 'interview' technique used in the study then it is highly inadequate, as clearly the interviewer is leading the respondent, and this is more an example of indoctrination than open-ended enquiry.
Random sampling of data
Completely incongruous with the description of the purposeful selection of the participants for a case study is the account of how the assessment data was selected for analysis:
"The process of analysis of student achievement documents is carried out randomly by taking the results of current examinations that have passed such as the initial examination of the current year or the year before which is closest to the time of the study."
Awang, 2022, p.44
Did the peer reviewers or editor not question the use of the term random here? It is unclear what is meant to by 'random' here, but clearly if the analysis was based on randomly selected data that would undermine the results.
Validating the soul purification module
There is also a conceptual problem here. The Takziyatun Nafs modules are the intervention materials (part of what is being studied) – so they cannot also be research instruments (used to study them). Surely, if the Takziyatun Nafs modules had been shown to be valid and reliable before carrying out the reported study, as suggested here, then the study would not be needed to evaluate their effectiveness. But, presumably, expert peer reviewers (if there really were any) did not see an issue here.
The reliability of the intervention module
The Takziyatun Nafs modules had three components, and the author reports the second of the three was subjected to tests of validity and reliability. It seems that Awang thinks that this demonstrates the validity and reliability of the complete intervention,
"The second part of this module will go through [sic] the process of obtaining the validity and reliability of the module. Proses [sic] to obtain this validity, a questionnaire was constructed to test the validity of this module. The appointed specialists are psychologists, modern physicians (psychiatrists), religious specialists, and alternative medicine specialists. The validity of the module is identified from the aspects of content, sessions, and activities of the Tazkiyatun Nafs module. While to obtain the value of the reliability coefficient, Cronbach's alpha coefficient method was used. To obtain this Cronbach's alpha coefficient, a pilot test was conducted on 50 students who were randomly selected to test the reliability of this module to be conducted."
Awang, 2022, pp.43-44
Now to unpack this, it may be helpful to briefly outline what the intervention involved (as as the paper is open access anyone can access and read the full details in the report).
From the MGM film 'A Night at the Opera' (1935): "The introduction of the module will elaborate on the introduction, rationale, and objectives of this module introduced"
The description does not start off very helpfully ("The introduction of the module will elaborate on the introduction, rationale, and objectives of this module introduced" (p.43) put me in mind of the Marx brothers: "The party of the first part shall be known in this contract as the party of the first part"), but some key points are,
"the Tazkiyatun Nafs module was constructed to purify the heart of each respondent leading to the healing of hallucinatory disorders. This liver purification process is done in stages…
"the process of cleansing the patient's soul will be done …all the subtle beings in the patient will be expelled and cleaned and the remnants of the subtle beings in the patient will be removed and washed…
The second process is the process of strengthening and the process of purification of the soul or heart of the patient …All the mazmumah (evil qualities) that are in the heart must be discarded…
The third process is the process of enrichment and the process of distillation of the heart and the practices performed. In this process, there will be an evaluation of the practices performed by the patient as well as the process to ensure that the patient is always clean from all the disturbances and disturbances [sic] of subtle beings to ensure that students will always be healthy and clean from such disturbances…
Awang, 2022, p.45, p.43
Quite how this process of exorcising and distilling and cleansing will occur is not entirely clear (and if the soul is equated with the heart, how is the liver involved?), but it seems to involve reflection and prayer and contemplation of scripture – certainly a very personal and therapeutic process.
And yet its validity and reliability was tested by giving a questionnaire to 50 students randomly selected (from the unspecified population, presumably)? No information is given on how a random section was made (Taber, 2013) – which allows a reader to be very sceptical that this actually was a random sample from the (un?)identified population, and not just an arbitrary sample of 50 students. (So, that is twice the word 'random' is used in the paper when it seems inappropriate.)
It hardly matters here, as clearly neither the validity nor the reliability of a spiritual therapy can be judged from a questionnaire (especially when administered to people who have never undertaken the therapy). In any case, the "reliability coefficient" obtained from an administration of a questionnaire ONLY applies to that sample on that occasion. So, the statistic could not apply to the four participants in the study. And, in any case, the result is not reported, so the reader has no idea what the value of Cronbach's alpha was (but then, this was described as a qualitative study!)
Moreover, Cronbach's alpha only indicates the internal coherence of the items on a scale (Taber, 2019): so, it only indicates whether the set of questions included in the questionnaire seem to be accessing the same underlying construct in motivating the responses of those surveyed across the set of items. It gives no information about the reliability of the instrument (i.e., whether it would give the same results on another occasion).
This approach to testing validity and reliability is then completely inappropriate and unhelpful. So, even if the outcomes of the testing had been reported (and they are not) they would not offer any relevant evidence. Yet it seems that peer reviewers and editor did not think to question why this section was included in the paper.
Ethical issues
A study of this kind raises ethical issues. It may well be that the research was carried out in an entirely proper and ethical manner, but it is usual in studies with human participants ('human subjects') to make this clear in the published report (Taber, 2014b). A standard issue is whether the participants gave voluntary, informed, consent. This would mean that they were given sufficient information about the study at the outset to be able to decide if they wished to participate, and were under no undue pressure to do so. The 'respondents' were school students: if they were considered minors in the research context (and oddly for a 'case study' such basic details as age and gender are not reported) then parental permission would also be needed, again subject to sufficient briefing and no duress.
However, in this specific research there are also further issues due to the nature of the study. The participants were subject to medical disorders, so how did the researcher obtain information about, and access to, the students without medical confidentiality being broken? Who were the 'gatekeepers' who provided access to the children and their personal data? The researcher also obtained assessment data "from the class teacher or from the Student Affairs section of the student's school" (p.44), so it is important to know that students (and parents/guardians) consented to this. Again, peer review does not seem to have identified this as an issue to address before publication.
There is also the major underlying question about the ethics of a study when recognising that these students were (or could be, as details are not provided) suffering from serious medical conditions, but employing religious education as a treatment ("This method of treatment is to help respondents who suffer from hallucinations caused by demons or subtle beings", p.44). Part of the theoretical framework underpinning the study is the assumption that what is being addressed is"the problem of hallucinations caused by the presence of ethereal beings…" (p.43) yet it is also acknowledged that,
"Hallucinatory disorders in learning that will be emphasized in this study are due to several problems that have been identified in several schools in Malaysia. Such disorders are psychological, environmental, cultural, and sociological disorders. Psychological disorders such as hallucinatory disorders can lead to a more critical effect of bringing a person prone to Schizophrenia. Psychological disorders such as emotional disorders and psychiatric disorders. …Among the causes of emotional disorders among students are the school environment, events in the family, family influence, peer influence, teacher actions, and others."
Awang, 2022, p.41
There seem to be three ways of understanding this apparent discrepancy, which I might gloss:
there are many causes of conditions that involve hallucinations, including, but not only, possession by evil or mischievousness spirits;
the conditions that lead to young people having hallucinations may be understood at two complementary levels, at a spiritual level in terms of a need for inner cleansing and exorcising of subtle beings, and in terms of organic disease or conditions triggered by, for example, social and psychological factors;
in the introduction the author has relied on various academic sources to discuss the nature of the phenomenon of students having hallucinations, but he actually has a working assumption that is completely different: hallucinations are due to the presence of jinn or other spirits.
I do not think it is clear which of these positions is being taken by the study's author.
In the first case it would be necessary to identify which causes are present in potential respondents and only recruit those suffering possession for this study (which does not seem to have been done);
In the second case, spiritual treatment would need to complement medical intervention (which would completely undermine the validity of the study as medical treatments for the underlying causes of hallucinations are likely to be the cause of hallucinations ceasing, not the tested intervention);
The third position is clearly problematic in terms of academic scholarship as it is either completely incompetent or deliberately disregards academic norms that require the design of a study to reflect the conceptual framework set out to motivate it.
So, was this tested intervention implemented instead of or alongside formal medical intervention?
If it was alongside medical treatment, then that raises a major confound for the study.
Yet it would clearly be unacceptable to deny sufferers indicated medical treatment in order to test an educational intervention that is in effect a form of exorcism.
Again, it may be there are simple and adequate responses to these questions (although here I really cannot see what they might be), but unfortunately it seems the journal referees and editor did not think to ask for them.
Findings
Results tables presented in Awang, 2022 (p.45) [Published with a creative commons licence allowing reproduction]: "Based on the findings stated in Table I show that serial respondents experienced a decline in academic achievement while they face the problem of hallucinations. In contrast to Table II which shows an improvement in students' academic achievement after hallucinatory disorders can be resolved." If we assume that columns in the second table have been mislabelled, then it seems the school performance of these four students suffered while they were suffering hallucinations, but improved once they recovered. From this, we can infer…?
The key findings presented concern academic performance at school. Core results are presented in tables I and II. Unfortunately these tables are not consistent as they report contradictory results for the academic performance of students before and during periods when they had hallucinations.
They can be made consistent if the reader assumes that two of the columns in table II are mislabelled. If the reader assumes that the column labelled 'before disruption' actually reports the performance 'during disruption' and that the column actually labelled 'during disruption' is something else, then they become consistent. For the results to tell a coherent story and agree with the author's interpretation this 'something else' presumably should be 'after disruption'.
This is a very unfortunate error – and moreover one that is obvious to any careful reader. (So, why was it not obvious to the referees and editor?)
As well as looking at these overall scores, other assessment data is presented separately for each of respondent 1 – respondent 4. Theses sections comprise presentations of information about grades and class positions, mixed with claims about the effects of the intervention. These claims are not based on any evidence and in many cases are conclusions about 'respondents' in general although they are placed in sections considering the academic assessment data of individual respondents. So,there are a number of problems with these claims:
they are of the nature of conclusions, but appear in the section presenting the findings;
they are about the specific effects of the intervention that the author assumes has influenced academic performance, not the data analysed in these sections;
they are completely unsubstantiated as no data or analysis is offered to support them;
often they make claims about 'respondents' in general, although as part of the consideration of data from individual learners.
Despite this, the paper passed peer-review and editorial scrutiny.
Rhetorical research?
This paper seems to be an example of a kind of 'rhetorical research' where a researcher is so convinced about their pre-existant theoretical commitments that they simply assume they have demonstrated them. Here the assumption seem to be:
Recovering from suffering hallucinations will increase student performance
Hallucinations are caused by jinn and devils
A spiritual intervention will expel jinn and devils
So, a spiritual intervention will cure hallucinations
So, a spiritual intervention will increase student performance
The researcher provided a spiritual intervention, and the student performance increased, so it is assumed that the scheme is demonstrated. The data presented is certainly consistent with the assumption, but does not in itself support this scheme without evidence. Awang provides evidence that student performance improved in four individuals after they had received the intervention – but there is no evidence offered to demonstrate the assumed mechanism.
A gardener might think that complimenting seedlings will cause them to grow. Perhaps she praises her seedlings every day, and they do indeed grow. Are we persuaded about the efficacy of her method, or might we suspect another cause at work? Would the peer-reveiewers and editor of the European Journal of Education and Pedagogy be persuaded this demonstrated that compliments cause plant growth? On the evidence of this paper, perhaps they would.
This is what Awang tells readers about the analysis undertaken:
Each student respondent involved in this study [sic, presumably not, rather the researcher] will use the analysis of the respondent's performance to determine the effect of hallucination disorders on student achievement in secondary school is accurate.
The elements compared in this analysis are as follows: a) difference in mean percentage of achievement by subject, b) difference in grade achievement by subject and c) difference in the grade of overall student achievement. All academic results of the respondents will be analyzed as well as get the mean of the difference between the performance before, during, and after the respondents experience hallucinations.
These results will be used as research material to determine the accuracy of the use of the Tazkiyatun Nafs Module in solving the problem of hallucinations in school and can improve student achievement in academic school."
Awang, 2022, p.45
There is clearly a large jump between the analysis outlined in the second paragraph here, and testing the study hypotheses as set out in the final paragraph. But the author does not seem to notice this (and more worryingly, nor do the journal's reviewers and editor).
So interleaved into the account of findings discussing "mean percentage of achievement by subject…difference in grade achievement by subject…difference in the grade of overall student achievement" are totally unsupported claims. Here is an example for Respondent 1:
"Based on the findings of the respondent's achievement in the grade for Respondent 1 while facing the problem of hallucinations shows that there is not much decrease or deterioration of the respondent's grade. There were only 4 subjects who experienced a decline in grade between before and during hallucination disorder. The subjects that experienced decline were English, Geography, CBC, and Civics. Yet there is one subject that shows a very critical grade change the Civics subject. The decline occurred from grade A to grade E. This shows that Civics education needs to be given serious attention in overcoming this problem of decline. Subjects experiencing this grade drop were subjects involving emotion, language, as well as psychomotor fitness. In the context of psychology, unstable emotional development leads to a decline in the psychomotor and emotional development of respondents.
After the use of the Tazkiyatun Nafs module in overcoming this problem, hallucinatory disorders can be overcome. This situation indicates the development of the respondents during and after experiencing hallucinations after practicing the Tazkiyatun Nafs module. The process that takes place in the Tzkiyatun Nafs module can help the respondent to stabilize his emotions and psyche for the better. From the above findings there were 5 subjects who experienced excellent improvement in grades. The increase occurred in English, Malay, Geography, and Civics subjects. The best improvement is in the subject of Civic education from grade E to grade B. The improvement in this language subject shows that the respondents' emotions have stabilized. This situation is very positive and needs to be continued for other subjects so that respondents continue to excel in academic achievement in school.""
Awang, 2022, p.45 (emphasis added)
The material which I show here as underlined is interjected completely gratuitously. It does not logically fit in the sequence. It is not part of the analysis of school performance. It is not based on any evidence presented in this section. Indeed, nor is it based on any evidence presented anywhere else in the paper!
This pattern is repeated in discussing other aspects of respondents' school performance. Although there is mention of other factors which seem especially pertinent to the dip in school grades ("this was due to the absence of the respondents to school during the day the test was conducted", p.46; "it was an increase from before with no marks due to non-attendance at school", p.46) the discussion of grades is interspersed with (repetitive) claims about the effects of the intervention for which no evidence is offered.
Respondent 1
Respondent 2
Respondent 3
Respondent 4
§: Differences in Respondents' Grade Achievement by Subject
"After the use of the Tazkiyatun Nafs module in overcoming this problem, hallucinatory disorders can be overcome. This situation indicates the development of the respondents during and after experiencing hallucinations after practicing the Tazkiyatun Nafs module. The process that takes place in the Tzkiyatun Nafs module can help the respondent to stabilize his emotions and psyche for the better." (p.45)
"After the use of the Tazkiyatun Nafs module as a soul purification module, showing the development of the respondents during and after experiencing hallucination disorders is very good. The process that takes place in the Tzkiyatun Nafs module can help the respondent to stabilize his emotions and psyche for the better." (p.46)
"The process that takes place in the Tazkiyatun Nafs module can help the respondent to stabilize his emotions and psyche for the better" (p.46)
"The process that takes place in the Tazkiyatun Nafs module can help the respondent to stabilize his emotions and psyche for the better." (p.46)
§:Differences in Respondent Grades according to Overall Academic Achievement
"Based on the findings of the study after the hallucination disorder was overcome showed that the development of the respondents was very positive after going through the treatment process using the Tazkiyatun Nafs module…In general, the use of Tazkiyatun Nafs module successfully changed the learning lifestyle and achievement of the respondents from poor condition to good and excellent achievement." (pp.46-7)
"Based on the findings of the study after the hallucination disorder was overcome showed that the development of the respondents was very positive after going through the treatment process using the Tazkiyatun Nafs module. … This excellence also shows that the respondents have recovered from hallucinations after practicing the methods found in the Tazkiayatun Nafs module that has been introduced. In general, the use of the Tazkiyatun Nafs module successfully changed the learning lifestyle and achievement of the respondents from poor condition to good and excellent achievement." (p.47)
"Based on the findings of the study after the hallucination disorder was overcome showed that the development of the respondents was very positive after going through the treatment process using the Tazkiyatun Nafs module…In general, the use of the Tazkiyatun Nafs module successfully changed the learning lifestyle and achievement of the respondents from poor condition to good and excellent achievement." (p.47)
"Based on the findings of the study after the hallucination disorder was overcome showed that the development of the respondents was very positive after going through the treatment process using the Tazkiyatun Nafs module…In general, the use of the Tazkiyatun Nafs module has successfully changed the learning lifestyle and achievement of the respondents from poor condition to good and excellent achievement." (p.47)
Unsupported claims made within findings sections reporting analyses of individual student academic grades: note (a) how these statements included in the analysis of individual school performance data from four separate participants (in a case study – a methodology that recognises and values diversity and individuality) are very similar across the participants; (b) claims about 'respondents' (plural) are included in the reports of findings from individual students.
Awang summarises what he claims the analysis of 'differences in respondents' grade achievement by subject' shows:
"The use of the Tazkiyatun Nafs module in this study helped the students improve their respective achievement grades. Therefore, this soul purification module should be practiced by every student to help them in stabilizing their soul and emotions and stay away from all the disturbances of the subtle beings that lead to hallucinations"
Awang, 2022, p.46
And, on the next page, Awang summarises what he claims the analysis of 'differences in respondent grades according to overall academic achievement' shows:
"The use of the Tazkiyatun Nafs module in this study helped the students improve their respective overall academic achievement. Therefore, this soul purification module should be practiced by every student to help them in stabilizing the soul and emotions as well as to stay away from all the disturbances of the subtle beings that lead to hallucination disorder."
Awang, 2022, p.47
So, the analysis of grades is said to demonstrate the value of the intervention, and indeed Awang considers this is reason to extend the intervention beyond the four participants, not just to others suffering hallucinations, but to "every student". The peer review process seems not to have raised queries about
the unsupported claims,
the confusion of recommendations with findings (it is normal to keep to results in a findings section), nor
the unwarranted generalisation from four hallucination suffers to all students whether healthy or not.
Interpreting the results
There seem to be two stories that can be told about the results:
When the four students suffered hallucinations, this led to a deterioration in their school performance. Later, once they had recovered from the episodes of hallucinations, their school performance improved.
Narrative 1
Now narrative 1 relies on a very substantial implied assumption – which is that the numbers presented as school performance are comparable over time. So, a control would be useful: such as what happened to the performance scores of other students in the same classes over the same time period. It seems likely they would not have shown the same dip – unless the dip was related to something other than hallucinations – such as the well-recognised dip after long school holidays, or some cultural distraction (a major sports tournament; fasting during Ramadan; political unrest; a pandemic…). Without such a control the evidence is suggestive (after all, being ill, and missing school as a result, is likely to lead to a dip in school performance, so the findings are not surprising), but inconclusive.
Intriguingly, the author tells readers that "student achievement statistics from the beginning of the year to the middle of the current [sic, published in 2022] year in secondary schools in Northern Peninsular Malaysia that have been surveyed by researchers show a decline (Sabri, 2015 [sic])" (p.42), but this is not considered in relation to the findings of the study.
When the four students suffered hallucinations, this led to a deterioration in their school performance. Later, as a result of undergoing the soul purification module, their school performance improved.
Narrative 2
Clearly narrative 2 suffers from the same limitation as narrative 1. However, it also demands an extra step in making an inference. I could re-write this narrative:
When the four students suffered hallucinations, this led to a deterioration in their school performance. Later, once they had recovered from the episodes of hallucinations, their school performance improved. AND the recovery was due to engagement with the soul purification module.
Narrative 2'.
That is, even if we accept narrative 1 as likely, to accept narrative 2 we would also need to be convinced that:
a) sufferers from medical conditions leading to hallucinations do not suffer periodic attacks with periods of remission in between; or
b) episodes of hallucinations cannot be due to one-off events (emotional trauma, T.I.A. {transient ischaemic attack or mini-strokes},…) that resolve naturally in time; or
c) sufferers from medical conditions leading to hallucinations do not find they resolve due to maturation; or
d) the four participants in this study did not undertaken any change in life-style (getting more sleep, ceasing eating strange fungi found in the woods) unrelated to the intervention that might have influenced the onset of hallucinations; or
e) the four participants in this study did not receive any medical treatment independent of the intervention (e.g., prescribed medication to treat migraine episodes) that might have influenced the onset of hallucinations
Despite this study being supposedly a case study (where the expectation is there should be 'thick description' of the case and its context), there is no information to help us exclude such options. We do not know the medical diagnoses of the conditions causing the participants' hallucinations, or anything about their lives or any medical treatment that may have been administered. Without such information, the analysis that is provided is useless for answering the research question.
In effect, regardless of all the other issues raised, the key problem is that the research design is simply inadequate to test the research question. But it seems the referees and editor did not notice this shortcoming.
Alleged implications of the research
After presenting his results Awang draws various implications, and makes a number of claims about what had been found in the study:
"After the students went through the treatment session by using the Tazkiayatun Nafsmodule to treat hallucinations, it showed a positive effect on the student respondents. All this was certified by the expert, the student's parents as well as the counselor's teacher." (p.48)
"Based on these findings, shows that hallucinations are very disturbing to humans and the appropriate method for now to solve this problem is to use the Tazkiyatun Nafs Module." (p.48)
"…the use of the Tazkiyatun Nafs module while the respondent is suffering from hallucination disorder is very appropriate…is very helpful to the respondents in restoring their minds and psyche to be calmer and healthier. These changes allow students to focus on their studies as well as allow them to improve their academic performance better." (p.48)
"The use of the Tazkiyatun Nafs Module in this study has led to very positive changes there are attitudes and traits of students who face hallucinations before. All the negative traits like irritability, loneliness, depression,etc. can be overcome completely." (p.49)
"The personality development of students is getting better and perfect with the implementation of the Tazkiaytun Nafs module in their lives." (p.49)
"Results indicate that students who suffer from this hallucination disorder are in a state of high depression, inactivity, fatigue, weakness and pain,and insufficient sleep." (p.49)
"According to the findings of this study, the history of this hallucination disorder started in primary school and when a person is in adolescence, then this disorder becomes stronger and can cause various diseases and have various effects on a person who is disturbed." (p.50)
Given the range of interview data that Awang claims to have collected and analysed, at least some of the claims here are possibly supported by the data. However, none of this data and analysis is available to the reader. 2 These claims are not supported by any evidence presented in the paper. Yet peer reviewers and the editor who read the manuscript seem to feel it is entirely acceptable to publish such claims in a research paper, and not present any evidence whatsoever.
Summing up
In summary: as far as these four students were concerned (but not perhaps the fifth participant?), there did seem to be a relationship between periods of experiencing hallucinations and lower school performance (perhaps explained by such factors as "absenteeism to school during the day the test was conducted" p.46) ,
"the performance shown by students who face chronic hallucinations is also declining and declining. This is all due to the actions of students leaving the teacher's learning and teaching sessions as well as not attending school when this hallucinatory disorder strikes. This illness or disorder comes to the student suddenly and periodically. Each time this hallucination disease strikes the student causes the student to have to take school holidays for a few days due to pain or depression"
Awang, 2022, p.42
However,
these four students do not represent any wider population;
there is no information about the specific nature, frequency, intensity, etcetera, of the hallucinations or diagnoses in these individuals;
there was no statistical test of significance of changes; and
there was no control condition to see if performance dips were experienced by others not experiencing hallucinations at the same time.
Once they had recovered from the hallucinations (and it is not clear on what basis that judgement was made) their scores improved.
The author would like us to believe that the relief from the hallucinations was due to the intervention, but this seems to be (quite literally) an act of faith 3 as no actual research evidence is offered to show that the soul purification module actually had any effect. It is of course possible the module did have an effect (whether for the conjectured or other reasons – such as simply offering troubled children some extra study time in a calm and safe environment and special attention – or because of an expectancy effect if the students were told by trusted authority figures that the intervention would lead to the purification of their hearts and the healing of their hallucinatory disorder) but the study, as reported, offers no strong grounds to assume it did have such an effect.
An irresponsible journal
As hallucinations are often symptoms of organic disease affecting blood supply to the brain, there is a major question of whether treating the condition by religious instruction is ethically sound. For example, hallucinations may indicate a tumour growing in the brain. Yet, if the module was only a complement to proper medical attention, a reader may prefer to suspect that any improvement in the condition (and consequent increased engagement in academic work) may have been entirely unrelated to the module being evaluated.
Indeed, a published research study that claims that soul purification is a suitable treatment for medical conditions presenting with hallucinations is potentially dangerous as it could lead to serious organic disease going untreated. If Awang's recommendations were widely taken up in Malaysia such that students with serious organic conditions were only treated for their hallucinations by soul purification rather than with medication or by surgery it would likely lead to preventable deaths. For a research journal to publish a paper with such a conclusion, where any qualified reviewer or editor could easily see the conclusion is not warranted, is irresponsible.
As the journal website points out,
"The process of reviewing is considered critical to establishing a reliable body of research and knowledge. The review process aims to make authors meet the standards of their discipline, and of science in general."
https://www.ej-edu.org/index.php/ejedu/about
So, why did the European Journal of Education and Pedagogy not subject this submission to meaningful review to help the author of this study meet the standards of the discipline, and of science in general?
Work cited:
Awang, S. B. (2022). Hallucination Disorders: The Effects of Using the Tazkiyatun Nafs Module on the Academic Achievement of Students with Hallucinations. European Journal of Education and Pedagogy, 3(4), 41-51.
Taber, K. S. (2014b). Ethical considerations of chemistry education research involving "human subjects".Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 15(2), 109-113. [Free access]
1 In mature fields in the natural sciences there are recognised traditions ('paradigms', 'disciplinary matrices') in any active field at any time. In general (and of course, there will be exceptions):
at any historical time, there is a common theoretical perspective underpinning work in a research programme, aligned with specific ontological and epistemological commitments;
at any historical time, there is a strong alignment between the active theories in a research programme and the acceptable instrumentation, methodology and analytical conventions.
Put more succinctly, in a mature research field, there is generally broad agreement on how a phenomenon is to be understood; and how to go about investigating it, and how to interpret data as research evidence.
This is generally not the case in educational research – which is in part at least due to the complexity and, so, multi-layered nature, of the phenomena studied (Taber, 2014a): phenomena such as classroom teaching. So, in reviewing educational papers, it is sometimes necessary to find different experts to look at the theoretical and the methodological aspects of the same submission.
2 The paper is very strange in that the introductory sections and the conclusions and implications sections have a very broad scope, but the actual research results are restricted to a very limited focus: analysis of school test scores and grades.
It is as if as (and could well be that) a dissertation with a number of evidential strands has been reduced to a paper drawing upon only one aspect of the research evidence, but with material from other sections of the dissertation being unchanged from the original broader study.
3 Readers are told that
"All these acts depend on the sincerity of the medical researcher or fortune-teller seeking the help of Allah S.W.T to ensure that these methods and means are successful. All success is obtained by the permission of Allah alone"
"By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes"
Keith S. Taber
Diabetes is a life-threatening condition – so one might hope that a research journal called 'Journal of Diabetes Research Reviews & Reports' would have serious academic standards (Image by Tesa Robbins from Pixabay)An open access journal that charges USD $ 1519 for publication (and "will not issue refunds of any kind"), that is available for subscription"Euro € 3600.00 for Single Volume, € 600.00 for Single Issue (+postage charge €100)", but which wants me to send it "$2519" because I have been awarded membership.
the Journal of Diabetes Research Reviews & Reports has a rather bizarre notion of its scope given the journal title, or
it has extremely low standards in terms of what it feels it might be happy to publish.
Or, perhaps both?
I am a little confused by your final paragraph which seems to suggest that although I have been 'awarded' various benefits (well they might have been benefits had I been a diabetes researcher) you would like me to send you $2519 (in some unspecified currency). I only ever recall being honoured with one academic award before, and that came with a sum of money. That is, when you make an academic award, you give money to the recipient, not the other way around.
So, let's be honest.
You do not know, or indeed care, if I know anything about diabetes research. (Either you have not examined my research profile to find out; or whoever was tasked with this has such limited scholarly background that they have no notion of how to identify publications about diabetes research – such, perhaps, as looking to see if the words 'diabetes' or 'diabetic' appear in any paper titles or keywords: not exactly a challenging higher level task.)
You are not making me an award.
You are trying to sell me some kind of a package of 'benefits' in relation to publishing my work in your dodgy journal. That is, the Journal of Diabetes Research Reviews & Reports is one of the many predatory journals seeking to take money from scholars without being in a position to offer a service consistent with normal standards of academic quality in return. (This has already been demonstrated by the journal identifying someone with no publications in the field as 'a potential author' for the journal based on scrutinising my 'research profile in [sic] online'. If that is the level of competence to be expected of the editorial and production side of the journal, why would any serious scholar let their work be published in it?)
That apparent lack of competence in itself does not justify spending my time responding to your invitation.
I write because I find these tactics dishonest. You deliberately set out to deceive by pretending you are offering an award based on the excellence of a scholar's research. I really do not like lying, which is antithetical to the whole academic enterprise. So, I reply to call out the lie.
If you feel that I have misrepresented the situation, and that my research profile justifies an award in the field of diabetes research, then I would be very happy to receive your explanation. Otherwise, perhaps you might wish to consider if you really are comfortable working in an unethical organisation and being complicit in lying to strangers in this way?
Best wishes
Keith
Notification of an 'award'. Benefits (once I have paid a fee) include being appointed a guest editor.
Update (5th August 2022)
I have just received a response from the journal…
"Anticipating for [my] positive response" -despite my reply to the Journal!
A new service offers to match authors and journals without all that messy business of scholars having to spend time identifying and evaluating the journals in their field (Image by Kevin Phillips from Pixabay )
I was today invited to join a new platform that would allow an author "the opportunity to get the best Publishing Offers from different Journals"; and would also allow journal editors to "learn about new scientific results and make Publishing Offers to Authors". Having been an author and an editor my immediate response was, "well how could that work?"
Publishing offers?
I was a little intrigued by the notion of publishing 'offers'. In my experience what matters are 'publication decisions'.
You see, in the world of academic journals I am familiar with,
authors choose a journal to submit their manuscript to (they have to choose as journals will only consider work not already published, under consideration or submitted, elsewhere)
the editor decides if the manuscript seems relevant to the journal and to be, prima facie, a serious piece of scholarship. If not, it is rejected. If so, it is sent to expert reviewers for careful scrutiny and recommendations.
then it is accepted as is (rare in my field); accepted subject to specified changes; returned for revisions that must then be further evaluated; rejected but with a suggestion that a revised manuscript addressing specified issues might be reconsidered; or rejected.1
if the editor is eventually satisfied with the manuscript (perhaps after a number of rounds of revision and peer review) it is accepted for publication – this might be considered a publishing offer, but usually by this point the author is not going to decline!
if the process does not lead to an accepted manuscript, the author can decide her work is not worth publishing; use the feedback to strengthen the manuscript before submitting elsewhere, or simply move on to another journal and start again with the same manuscript.
Similarly, in the world of academic journals I am familiar with,
an editor becomes aware of a paper available for publication because the author submits it for consideration;
editors may sometimes offer informal feedback to authors who are not sure if their work fits the scope of the journal – but the editor certainly does not actively seek to check out manuscripts that are not being considered for that journal.
Though editors may engage in general promotion of their journal, this does not usually amount to trawling the web looking for material to make offers on.
So how does the platform work?
So, I looked at the inexsy site to see how the service managed to help authors get published without having to submit their work to journals, and how journals could fill their pages (and, these days, attract those juicy publication fees) even if authors did not fancy submitting their work to their journal.
This is what I learned.
Step 1. Put yourself out there.
(Image by Dean Moriarty from Pixabay)
Make a show of your wares
The process starts with the author uploading their abstract as a kind of intellectual tease. They do not upload the whole paper – indeed at this stage they do not even have to have written it.
"Researchers submit Abstracts of their manuscripts to the INEXSY platform and set their Publishing Statuses:
#1 – "Manuscript in progress" or
#2 – "Manuscript ready, looking for publisher".
https://inexsy.com
(Indeed, it seems an author could think up a number of article ideas; write the abstracts; post them; and wait t0 see which one attracts the most interest. No more of all that laborious writing of papers that no one wants to publish!)
Step 2. Wait to be approached by a potential admirer.
(Image by iqbal nuril anwar from Pixabay)
Wait to be approached
Now the author just has to wait. Journal editors with nothing better to do (i.e., editors of journals that no one seems to be sending any work to) will be going through the abstracts posted to see if they are interested in any of the work.
"All journals from the corresponding science area view the Abstract of the manuscript and determine the relevance of the future article (quick editorial decision)."
https://inexsy.com
The term 'quick editorial decision' is intriguing. This term most commonly refers to a quick decision on whether or not to publish a manuscript, but presumably all it means here is a quick editorial decision on "the relevance of the future article" to the journal.
Editors of traditional journals are used to making quick decisions on whether a manuscript falls within the scope of the journal. I have less confidence in the editors of many of the glut of open-access pay-to-publish journals that have sprung up in recent years. Many of these are predatory journals, mainly concerned with generating income and having little regard for academic standards.
In some cases supposed editors leave the editorial work to administrators who do not have a strong background in the field. Sometimes journals are happy to publish material which clearly has no relevance to the supposed topic of their journal. 2
inexst acknowledge that even the journals they attract to their platform might not immediately offer to publish an article on the basis of an author's abstract for a paper they may not have written yet.
So, the platform allows the two potential suitors to enter into a dialogue about developing a possible relationship.
"If the text of the Abstract and supplementary materials (video, figures) are not enough for journals to make Publishing Offers to authors, then the INEXSY platform provides the [sic] Private Chat to discuss the full text of a future article."
https://inexsy.com
Step 4. Get propositioned by the suitor
(Image by bronzedigitals from Pixabay)
4. Consider moving the relationship to the next level
If after some back and forth in the virtual world, the editor likes the author's images and videos they may want to take the relationship to a new level,
"If the potential article is interesting to journals, these journals make Publishing Offers to authors in 1 click."
https://inexsy.com
Step 5. Choose a keeper
(Image by StockSnap from Pixabay)
5. Decide between suitors
Now the idea of a 'publishing offer' is clarified. Having had an idea for a paper, and written an abstract and perhaps posted some pics and a video talking about what you want to write, and having been approached by a range of editors not too busy to engage in some social intercourse, the author now find herself subject to a range of propositions.
But which suitor does she really have a connection with?
Which one is the best prospect for a happy future?
But this is not about good looks, tinderness, pension prospects, or reliably remembering birthdays, but which journal is more prestigious (good luck with expecting prestigious journals to register on such sites), and how quickly the competing journals promise to publish the paper, and, of course, how much will they charge you for this publication escort service.
"Authors choose the optimal offer (best publication time, IF [impact factor], OA [open access] price) and submit their manuscripts to the website of the selected journal."
https://inexsy.com
Do dating services check the details provided by member? Impact factors are useful (if not perfect) indicators of a journal's prestige. But some predatory journals shamelessly advertise inaccurate impact factors. (See, for example, 'The best way to generate an impressive impact factor is – to invent it'). Does inexsy do due diligence on behalf of authors here, or is a matter of caveat emptor?
Step 6. And ride off into the sunset together
(Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay)
Live happily ever after with a well-matched journal
So, there it is, the journal dating nightmare solved. Do not worry about reading and evaluating a range of journals to decide where to submit, just put up your work's profile and wait for those journal editors who like what they see to court you.
You do not have to be exclusive. Put the goods on public show. Play the field. See which suitors you like, and what they will offer you for exclusive rights to what you want to put out there. Only when you feel you are ready to settle down do you need to make a choice.
Publish your work where you know it will really be appreciated, based on having entered into a meaningful relationship with the editor and found your article and the journal have much in common. Demonstrate your mutual commitment by publicly exchanging vows (i.e., signing a publishing agreement or license) that means your article will find an exclusive home in that place for ever after.
(Well, actually, if you publish open access, it might seem more like an open marriage as legally you are free to republish as often as your like. However, you will likely find other potential partners will consider an already published work as 'damaged goods' and shun any approaches.)
So, now it is just the little matter of getting down to grindring out the paper.
No editor of a responsible journal is going to offer publication until the full manuscript has been (written! and) submitted, and has been positively evaluated by peer review. Even dodgy predatory journals usually claim to do rigorous peer review (so authors can in turn claim {and perhaps sometimes believe} that their publications are in peer reviewed journals).
This leads me to moot a typology of three types of journal editor in relation to a platform such as inexsy:
1. Absent partners
Editors of well-established and well-regarded journals.
These are busy with the surfeit of submissions they already receive, and are not interested in these kinds of platforms.
2. Desperate romantics
Principled editors of journals struggling to attract sufficient decent papers to publish, but who are committed to maintain academic standards.
They may well be interested in using this platform in order to attract submissions – but the offers they will make will be limited to 'yes, this topic interests us, and, if you submit this manuscript, we will send the submission to peer review'.
They will happily wait till after a proper legal ceremony before consummating the relationship.
3. Promiscuous predators
Editors of predatory journals that are only interested in maximising the number of published papers and so the income generated.
They will make offers to publish before seeing the paper, because, to be honest there is not much (if anything) they would reject anyway as long as the author could pay the publication fees. Once they have your money they are off on the prowl again.
So, this may well bring some authors together with some editors who can offer advice on whether a proposed paper would be seriously considered by their journals (category 2) – but this achieves little more than would emailing the editor and asking if the proposed paper is within the scope of that journal.
If any authors find they are inundated by genuine offers to publish in any journals that are worth publishing in, I will be amazed.
Watch this space (well, the space below)
Still, as a scientist, I have to be open to changing my mind. So,
if you are a representative of inexsy
if you are an author or editor who has had positive experiences using the service
please feel free to share your experiences (and perhaps tell me I am wrong) in the comments below.
I wait with interest for the flood of responses putting me right.
Notes
1 The precise number of categories of decision, and how they are worded, vary a little between journals.
2 Consider some examples of what gets published where in the world of the dubious research journal:
"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…. 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!"
When is a cross-sectional study not a cross-sectional study?
Keith S. Taber
A biomedical paper?
I only came to this paper because I was criticising the Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research's claimed Impact Factor which seems to be a fabrication. I saw this particular paper being featured in a recent tweet from the journal and wondered how it fitted in a biomedical journal. The paper is on an important topic – what young people know about how to respond to an earthquake, but I was not sure why it fitted in this particular journal.
Respectable journals normally have a clear scope (i.e., the range of topics within which they consider submissions for publication) – whereas predatory journals are often primarily interested in publishing as many papers as possible (and so attracting publication fees from as many authors as possible) and so may have no qualms about publishing material that would seem to be out of scope.
This paper reports a questionnaire about secondary age students' knowledge of earthquakes. It would seem to be an education study, possibly even a science education study, rather than a 'biomedical' study. (The journal invites papers from a wide range of fields 1, some of which – geology, chemical engineering – are not obviously 'biomedical' in nature; but not education.)
The paper reports research (so I assume is classed as 'research' in terms of the scale of charges) and comes from Bangladesh (which I assume the journal publishers consider a low income country) and so it would seem that the author's would have been charged $799 to be published in this journal. Part of what authors are supposed to get for that fee is for editors to arrange peer review to provide evaluation of, feedback on, and recommendations for improving, their work.
Peer review
Respectable journals employ rigorous peer review to ensure that only work of quality is published.
According to the Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research website:
Peer review process is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published online. Independent professionals/experts/researchers in the relevant research area are subjected to assess the submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether a manuscript should be published in their journal.Â
This Peer review process helps in validating the research works, establish a method by which it can be evaluated and increase networking possibilities within research communities. Despite criticisms, peer review is still the only widely accepted method for research validation
Only the articles that meet good scientific standards, explanations, records and proofs of their work presented with Bibliographic reasoning (e.g., acknowledge and build upon other work in the field, rely on logical reasoning and well-designed studies, back up claims with evidence etc.) are accepted for publication in the Journal.
https://biomedres.us/peer-review-process.php
Which seems reassuring. It seems 'Preventive Practice on Earthquake Preparedness Among Higher Level Students of Dhaka City' should then only have been published after evaluation in rigorous peer review. Presumably any weaknesses in the submission would have been highlighted in the review process helping the authors to improve their work before publication. Presumably, the (unamed) editor did not approve publication until peer reviewers were satisfied the paper made a valid new contribution to knowledge and, accordingly, recommended publication. 2
The paper was, apparently, submitted; screened by editors; sent to selected expert peer reviewers; evaluated by reviewers, so reports could be returned to the editor who collated them, and passed them to the authors with her/his decision; revised as indicated; checked by editors and reviewers, leading to a decision to publish; copy edited, allowing proofs to be sent to authors for checking; and published, all in less than three weeks. Although supposedly published in July 2021, the paper seems to be assigned to an issue published a year before it was submitted
Although one might wonder if a journal which seems to advertise with an inflated Impact Factor can be trusted to follow the procedures it claims. So, I had a quick look at the paper.
The abstract begins:
The present study was descriptive Cross-sectional study conducted in Higher Secondary Level Students of Dhaka, Bangladesh, during 2017. The knowledge of respondent seems to be average regarding earthquake. There is a found to have a gap between knowledge and practice of the respondents.
Gurung & Khanum, 2021, p.29274
Sampling a population (or not)
So, this seems to be a survey, and the population sampled was Higher Secondary Level Students of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Dhaka has a population of about 22.5 million people. I could not readily find out how many of these might be considered 'Higher Secondary Level', but clearly it will be many, many thousands – I would imagine about half a million as a 'ball-park' figure.
Dhaka has a large population of 'higher secondary level students' (Image by Mohammad Rahmatullah from Pixabay)
For a survey of a population to be valid it needs to be based on a sample which is large enough to minimise errors in extrapolating to the full population, and (even more importantly) the sample needs to be representative of the population.
So, the sample size was limited to 115 because of time constraints. This would likely lead to large errors in inferring population statistics from the sample, but could at least give some indication of the population as long as the 115 were known to be reasonable representative of the wider population being surveyed.
The reader is told
"the study sample was from Mirpur Cantonment Public School and College , (11 and 12 class)."
Gurung & Khanum, 2021, p.29275
It seems very unlikely that a sample taken from any one school among hundreds could be considered representative of the age cohort across such a large City.
Is the school 'typical' of Dhaka?
The school website has the following evaluation by the school's 'sponsor':
"…one the finest academic institutions of Bangladesh in terms of aesthetic beauty, uncompromised quality of education and, most importantly, the sheer appeal among its learners to enrich themselves in humanity and realism."
"Our visionary and inspiring teachers are committed to provide learners with all-rounded educational experiences by means of modern teaching techniques and incorporation of diverse state-of-the-art technological aids so that our students can prepare themselves to face the future challenges."
While both of these officers would be expected to be advocates for the school, this does not give a strong impression that the researchers have sought a school that is typical of Dhakar schools.
It also seems unlikely that this sample of 115 reflects all of the students in these grades. According to the school website, there are 7 classes in each of these two grades so the 115 students were drawn from 14 classes. Interestingly, in each year 5 of the 7 classes are following a science programme 3 – alongside with one business studies and one humanities class. The paper does not report which programme(s) were being followed by the students in the sample. Indeed no information is given regarding how the 115 were selected. (Did the researchers just administer the research instrument to the first students they came across in the school? Were all the students in these grades asked to contribute, and only 115 returned responses?)
Yet, if the paper was seen and evaluated by "independent professionals/experts/researchers in the relevant research area" they seem to have not questioned whether such a small and unrepresentative sample invalidated the study as being a survey of the population specified.
Cross-sectional studies
A cross-sectional study examines and compares different slices of a population – so here, different grades. Yet only two grades were sampled, and these were adjacent grades – 11 and 12 – which is not usually ideal to make comparisons across ages.
There could be a good reason to select two grades that are adjacent in this way. However, the authors do not present separate data for year 11 and year 12, but rather pool it. So they make no comparisons between these two year groups. This "Cross-sectional study" was then NOT actually a cross-sectional study.
If the paper did get sent to "independent professionals/experts/researchers in the relevant research area" for review, it seems these experts missed that error.
Theory and practice?
The abstract of the paper claims
"There is a found to have a gap between knowledge and practice of the respondents. The association of the knowledge and the practice of the students were done in which after the cross-tabulation P value was 0.810 i.e., there is not any [statistically significant?] association between knowledge and the practice in this study."
Gurung & Khanum, 2021, p.29274
This seems to suggest that student knowledge (what they knew about earthquakes) was compared in some way with practice (how they acted during an earthquake or earthquake warning). But the authors seem to have only collected data with (what they label) a questionnaire. They do not have any data on practice. The distinction they seem to really be making is between
knowledge about earthquakes, and
knowledge about what to do in the event of an earthquake.
That might be a useful thing to examine, but any "independent professionals/experts/researchers in the relevant research area"asked to look at the submission do not seem to have noted that the authors do not investigate practice and so needed to change the descriptions they use an claims they make.
Average levels of knowledge
Another point that any expert reviewer 'worth their salt' would have queried is the use of descriptors like 'average' in evaluating students responses. The study concluded that
"The knowledge of earthquake and its preparedness among Higher Secondary Student were average."
Gurung & Khanum, 2021, p.29280
But how do the authors know what counts as 'average'?
This might mean that there is some agreed standard here described in extant literature – but, if so, this is not revealed. It might mean that the same instrument had previously been used to survey nationally or internationally to offer a baseline – but this is not reported. Some studies on similar themes carried out elsewhere are referred to, but it is not clear they used the same instrumentation or analytical scheme. Indeed, the reader is explicitly told very little about the instrument used:
"Semi-structured both open ended and close ended questionnaire was used for this study."
Gurung & Khanum, 2021, p.29276
The authors seem to have forgotten to discuss the development, validation and contents of the questionnaire – and any experts asked to evaluate the submission seem to have forgotten to look for this. I would actually suggest that the authors did not really use a questionnaire, but rather an assessment instrument.
A questionnaire is used to survey opinions, views and so forth – and there are no right or wrong answers. (What type of music do you like? Oh jazz, sorry that's not the right answer.) As the authors evaluated and scored the student responses this was really an assessment.
The authors suggest:
"In this study the poor knowledge score was 15 (13%), average 80 (69.6%) and good knowledge score 20 (17.4%) among the 115 respondents. Out of the 115 respondents most of the respondent has average knowledge and very few 20 (17.4%) has good knowledge about earthquake and the preparedness of it."
Gurung & Khanum, 2021, p.29280
Perhaps this means that the authors had used some principled (but not revealed) technique to decide what counted as poor, average and good.
Score
Description
15
poor knowledge
80
average knowledge
20
good knowledge
Descriptors applied to student scores on the 'questionnaire'
Alternatively, perhaps "poor knowledge score was 15 (13%), average 80 (69.6%) and good knowledge score 20 (17.4%)" is reporting what was found in terms of the distribution in this sample – that is, they empirically found these outcomes in this distribution.
Well, not actually these outcomes, of course, as that would suggest that a score of 20 is better than a score of 80, but presumably that is just a typographic error that was somehow missed by the authors when they made their submission, then missed by the editor who screened the paper for suitability (if there is actually an editor involved in the 'editorial' process for this journal), then missed by expert reviewers asked to scrutinise the manuscript (if there really were any), then missed by production staff when preparing proofs (i.e., one would expect this to have been raised as an 'author query' on proofs 4), and then missed again by authors when checking the proofs for publication.
If so, the authors found that most respondents got fairly typical scores, and fewer scored at the tails of the distribution – as one would expect. On any particular assessment, the average performance is (as the authors report here)…average.
Work cited:
Gurung, N. and Khanum, H. (2021) Preventive Practice on Earthquake Preparedness Among Higher Level Students of Dhaka City. Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research, July, 2020, Volume 37, 2, pp 29274-29281
Note:
1 The Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research defines its scope as including:
Agri and AquacultureÂ
Biochemistry
Bioinformatics & Systems BiologyÂ
Biomedical Sciences
Clinical Sciences
Chemical Engineering
Chemistry
Computer ScienceÂ
Economics & AccountingÂ
Engineering
Environmental Sciences
Food & Nutrition
General Science
Genetics & Molecular Biology
Geology & Earth Science
Immunology & Microbiology
Informatics
Materials Science
Orthopaedics
Mathematics
Medical Sciences
Nanotechnology
Neuroscience & Psychology
Nursing & Health Care
Pharmaceutical Sciences
Physics
Plant Sciences
Social & Political SciencesÂ
Veterinary SciencesÂ
Clinical & MedicalÂ
Anesthesiology
Cardiology
Clinical ResearchÂ
Dentistry
Dermatology
Diabetes & Endocrinology
Gastroenterology
Genetics
Haematology
Healthcare
Immunology
Infectious Diseases
Medicine
Microbiology
Molecular Biology
Nephrology
Neurology
Nursing
Nutrition
Oncology
Ophthalmology
Pathology
Pediatrics
Physicaltherapy & RehabilitationÂ
Psychiatry
Pulmonology
Radiology
Reproductive Medicine
Surgery
Toxicology
Such broad scope is a common characteristic of predatory journals.
3 The classes are given names. So, nursery classes include Lotus and Tulip and so forth. In the senior grades, the science classes are called:
Flora
Neon
Meson
Sigma
Platinam [sic]
Argon
Electron
Neutron
Proton
Redon [sic]
4 Production staff are not expected to be experts in the topic of the paper, but they do note any obvious omissions (such as missing references) or likely errors and list these as 'author queries' for authors to respond to when checking 'proofs', i.e., the article set in the journal format as it will be published.
Is the Biomedical Journal of Scientific and Technical Research falsifying its impact factor?
Keith S. Taber
A journal claiming a seemingly falsified Impact Factor
Impact factors give an indication of journal quality. However, some predatory journals will make false claims (i.e., lie) about their impact factors to attract submissions.
I did a quick informal calculation of what would seem a feasible impact factor, and came up with a figure that suggested the journal's claimed impact factor was completely implausible. It seemed the journal was lying. (I even found an impact factor published by a less selective organisation than that used by most prestigious journals which was much closer to my own estimate.)
Of course, I could be mistaken. So, I sent the following response to clinical@scientificpublisher.net (the source of the invitation to submit) the same day I received their invitation (19th May). I did not immediately get a reply, so I sent the message again to clinical@biomedres.us (an email address given in the footer of the invitation) two days later (21st May).
As of yet (30th May), I have had no reply – probably because the Journal staff know their claimed impact factor is fabricated. They suggested in their invitation that 'The best way to predict the future is to invent it'. I assume they took their own advice, but doubt this will help them get a genuine impact factor.
Oddly, a journal that started publishing is already inviting papers for Volume 43 (and on its website is up to Volume 44, Issue 2)1
Dear Angela Thank you for your invitation to contribute to the 'Biomedical Journal of Scientific and Technical Research'.
I understand this journal was only established about 5 years ago, so I was very impressed to see that it already has an Impact factor of 1.229 – that seems a real achievement in such a short time. Your website suggests the journal has already published over 5000 articles, so having an impact factor of over 1.2 implies the journal's articles have already been cited over 6000 times in citation ranking outputs! I was so surprised to read this, that I went to check on Google Scholar, which is a very liberal listing of citations (it includes all kinds of things like student dissertations and webpages which are not included in the formal calculation of impact factors).
Yet, as far as I can see, Google scholar seems to list less than 200 citations of articles in 'Biomedical Journal of Scientific and Technical Research'. If that is not just my incompetence in using the search engine, that would likely suggest that the number of citations appearing in outputs included in the indices for calculating Impact Factors is many fewer than 100 – which would mean an Impact Factor over the life of the journal of certainly no more than about 0.02?
I would be grateful for your clarification. Have there really been 6000+ citations of articles in 'Biomedical Journal of Scientific and Technical Research' in journals which qualify for indexing when calculating citation indices? If not, is the journal's impact factor just one of these 'dodgy' numbers that some predatory journals quote but which have been generated by some dubious algorithm or act of necromancy, and which has no real connection with the authentic Impact Factors quoted by reputable journals?
The academic community has an accepted understanding of what genuine Impact Factors are claiming, and I cannot see any details on your site (perhaps I have missed this?) to suggest that your journal uses a different methodology to the academic norm, so it would be dishonest if the journal looked to deceive those you invite to be authors (such as myself) by pretending to have an Impact Factor that could not be substantiated and which has been heavily inflated. I am sure you would appreciate that authors are unlikely to be enticed to submit to a journal if they feel from initial contact that they are being misled by a journal that cannot be trusted to adhere to academic norms.
Perhaps I am not using Google Scholar correctly, and you can point me to the evidence for your impressive Impact Factor. I look forward to your response.
It may well be that 'The best way to predict the future is to invent it' but I hope this does not include the Impact Factor you cite.
Best wishes Keith
On 19/05/2022 12:42, Clinical Trials & Results wrote:
Dear Dr. Keith S Taber,
The best way to predict the future is to invent it. So, lets make this year as a year of finding and fulfillment.
On behalf of Biomedical Journal of Scientific and Technical Research (ISSN: 2574-1241) with an Impact factor: 1.229, we take the great opportunity in inviting you to submit your manuscript for new issue release i.e., Volume 43 Issue 5 by 03rd of June.
We would be delighted if you would take part in this issue with your significant article being published in our reputed journal.
We look forward to hearing a positive response from your end.
Angela Roy Biomedical Journal (BJSTR) clinical@biomedres.us Address: One Westbrook Corporate Center, Suite 300, Westchester, IL 60154, USA Ph. No: +1 (502) 904-2126
Note:
By far the most common practice in journal publishing is to have one volume per year – so typically all issues published in 2021 would comprise one volume. In 2021 Biomedical Journal of Scientific and Technical Research published volumes 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39 and part of volume 40.
Is the editor of a dubious journal a real living person?
Keith S. Taber
A katydid on a flower (Image by Zw Ma from Pixabay)
I've become a bit worried about Dr. Wu.
That is Kuang-Ming Wu, Ph.D., who is (at least, according to a number of internet sites) Professor Emeritus at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, USA.
To be honest, I had not heard of Dr Wu before I received an invitation to review an article for a Philosophy journal. But having been introduced to him, so to speak, in this way, and having done some 'digging' around the web, I became, initially, suspicious (did he really exist?), and, then, actually quite concerned about his well-being. Prof. Wu certainly was at one time considered a serious academic, but what I could easily find through the internet led me to ponder:
Are you crazy Dr Wu?
Or, perhaps, under the influence of some intoxicating substance?
Indeed, are you actually still with us, Dr Wu?
Or, is the persona on the internet just some kind of digital shadow of a previously respected academic?
That is, is Kuang-Ming Wu's name being used unscrupulously by various predatory organisations, perhaps without his knowledge?
But, I am getting ahead of myself.
A questionable invitation
I received an invitation to act as a peer reviewer for a research paper. Peer review is a key feature of how academic publishing works, and research journals reply upon academics being prepared to give up time to carefully read a submission, and prepare a report for the journal editor on the merits, and weaknesses, of a submitted manuscript.
This task usually takes several hours (and sometimes considerably longer) and is normally completed gratis. During my career as university teaching officer I undertook hundreds of such reviews – all without payment. 1
Since I have retired I have continued to undertake some reviewing, but limit this and have got more fussy about what I take on. In particular, if a journal publisher is charging authors hundreds (sometimes thousands) of pounds for publication, then why should I review for the journal for free when I am no longer receiving a stipend that I can consider makes this work 'part of the job'?
A deluge of mythical garbage
The invitation came from 'The Open Journal of Philosophy'. That was not a journal I had any association with, or indeed was familiar with. I have done some work which, if you are being very (very) generous, could be considered to have some philosophical content, but I am not recognised as a philosopher, so this was not a journal I would expect to review for. But, then again, some journals have wide scope, and some work is cross-disciplinary or inter-disciplinary, and so might involve, say, philosophy and science education, so one needs to consider specific request on their merits.
The title of the submission was long and complex and referred to the ideas of two specific scholars in relation to a topic totally unrelated to my own research. I was not familiar with the work of either of the named thinkers, neither of whom, to be best of my knowledge have contributed work to my areas of scholarship. 2
I read the abstract. It referenced "dominant interpellative historiographies…the deluge of mythical garbage…so-called facilitators of our process of humanization…alternative respiratory orifices to our survival…the aegis of commoditized auction blocks…the soft-ware of catacombic memory…" and so on. (Yes, this was just the abstract.) I was pretty sure it was not about teaching and learning in science. As a general rule, if you do not understand the abstract you probably should not volunteer to evaluate the paper.
An 'alternative respiratory orifice'? (Image by bluebudgie from Pixabay)
Perhaps this is a very worthy contribution to knowledge, but it was very clear to me that I was not qualified to evaluate it. What was not very clear to me was why anyone thought I would be so qualified. An academic invited to review has a responsibility to decline the invitation if that academic does not feel qualified to review the work: but a journal also has a responsibility to only invite referees to review where there is a prima facie case that they have the right expertise, and not to invite people arbitrarily and then rely on the person invited to make that call. (Especially as completing reviews is disproportionately useful in building the c.v. for novice and junior academics, so one can imagine the pressures for inexperienced scholars yet to develop expertise in a field but seeking an academic career to take on such work if invited.) Peer review invitations sent out without a reasonable rationale are simply a form of email spam.
It seemed that someone at the Journal had examined the manuscript and then, when considering suitable reviewers, had decided that I had the right expertise to advise on whether this manuscript was suitable for publication as a novel and substantive contribution to public knowledge.
How could they have reached that conclusion? Perhaps there was a phrase which seemed to match?
"A deluge of mythical garbage, huh.
For some reason I'm thinking Taber, in the Education Faculty at Cambridge, would be just the person to comment."
The Open Journal of Philosophy
I looked up the journal on line. I saw it was an Open Access journal that charged authors for publication. Its standard rate was $599 (but with discounts for authors from less-well resourced countries). It was not published by a scholarly society, or a university press, or even by one of the long-established commercial publishers. That cannot be considered to be sufficient reason to judge a journal will necessarily be of poor quality, but – given the profile of many dodgy predatory journals – is enough to make one suspicious.
The website claimed that
"All manuscripts must be prepared in English and are subject to a rigorous and fair peer-review process. Generally, accepted papers will appear online within 3 weeks followed by printed hard copy."
My own experience as an author and an editor suggest this was dubious – a rigorous peer review process is likely to mean most published manuscripts will pass though at least one round of revision, and that journals will need to give reviewers sufficient time to evaluate the original submissions and then later the revisions. Of course, some submissions may be excellent and need minimal revision, and some reviewers may be able to give the work their immediate attention. So, there is no reason why a good paper might not be published in a good journal three weeks after submission – and I have known this to happen – but these tend to be exceptions. A journal that generally publishes work after three weeks is unlikely to have rigourous review.
Unless, of course, the clock does not start on submission. "Generally, accepted papers will appear online within 3 weeks" seems to suggest
Generally, accepted papers will appear online within 3 weeks [of submission]
but could mean
Generally, accepted papers will appear online within 3 weeks [of acceptance]
which is not only not exceptional, but by today's standards seems a little tardy.
The website also claimed
"Submitted manuscripts adhering to journal guidelines are reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief or an Editor, who will assign them to reviewers".
So, assuming the claimed procedures were being followed, I was selected to review this particular manuscript by either the Editor-in-Chief or one of its Editors. Now the website included the details of the Editor-in-Chief, who it appeared was the only editor (there was also an Editorial Board – consisting of people who supposedly advise on editorial policy). So, presumably, I must have been assigned to this manuscript by the Editor-in-Chief.
And the Editor-in-Chief (according to the website) is – as you may have anticipated
Prof. Kuang-Ming Wu,
Professor Emeritus at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, USA
The editor-in-chief seems to have a hands-off approach
I sent a polite response to the invitation, copying in Prof. Kuang-Ming Wu.
"Thank you for your email.
This does not immediately seem to be in my area of expertise. I wonder if you would be kind enough to explain the Editor-in-Chief/Editor's rationale in nominating me to review this particular submission. Perhaps I am missing an obvious link, but does the journal really think my expertise is strongly enough matched that I am sufficiently qualified to review this particular manuscript?"
(I resisted a mischievous temptation to ask how much of the £599 publication fee I might be paid for reviewing.)
The next day I received a very polite and apologetic reply from the journal office explaining "I read your article on the Internet before and thought I might invite you to review the manuscript". This was from the journal's Editorial Assistant. It would seem that the task of identifying referees with appropriate expertise had been delegated to the Editorial Assistant and was not, as claimed, being carried out by an Editor. 3
Is Dr Wu incommunicado?
I failed, however, in communicating my message directly to Dr Wu.
According to the publisher's website his affiliation is:
Prof. Kuang-Ming Wu Philosophy Department University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, USA Professor Emeritus, Rosebush University Professor
As Prof. Wu was apparently affiliated with the Philosophy Department at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh I checked the departmental website to see if I could find an institutional email contact. A page detailing 'faculty & staff' listed current faculty and also emeritus faculty, but there was no mention of a Prof. Kuang-Ming Wu.
So, this was looking a little suspicious:
someone else was carrying out the editor's work
the email address given for the editor was unserviceable
the claimed academic affiliation did not seem to be corroborated
Was Dr Wu a real person?
What has happened to Wu?
I soon found that some of Dr Wu's books could be purchased from well-known internet sellers. I also found evidence that Kuang-Ming Wu had indeed taught in the philosophy department at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, USA. A university house magazine from 1991 reports that Kuang-ming Wu 'professor, philosophy' had that year given a lecture series at a University in Taiwan.
One of Kuang-Ming Wu's books – this was published by State University of New York Press in 1990 as part of its 'Religion and Philosophy' series
So, according to information on the worldwide web, Dr Wu was a respected academic and certainly had been in the faculty of the philosophy department at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh – even if that was decades ago, and no such affiliation is now acknowledged on the website.
Emeritus professors are retired from academic positions in universities, but it is not automatic that such a title is granted. If Dr Wu was entitled to use the title Emeritus Professor at Wisconsin-Oshkosh one would expect this should be acknowledged on the University website, but if he was long retired and no longer in contact it is feasible his department had inadvertently failed to include him as Emeritus Faculty. 4
Beyond Philosophy?
However, the internet also gave access to more recent information on Dr Wu. This includes affiliation to journals and conferences related to philosophy and other subject areas. Some of these subjects would not usually be considered cognate with philosophy.
For example, a journal called 'Account and Financial Management Journal' included amongst its list of Board members:
Kuang-ming Wu Ph.d. [sic] John McN. [sic] Rosebush University Professorship, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh
Even further from philosophy, a member of the 'technical committees' [sic] of The 2nd International Conference on Electrical, Control and Automation (ICECA 2018) was
Prof. Kuang-ming Wu, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, USA
and similarly, a member of the 'Technological Committees' [sic] of The 4th International Conference on Electrical, Control and Automation (ICECA 2020) was
Prof. Kuang-ming Wu, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, USA
Unless another Prof. Kuang-ming Wu from an area such as electrical engineering or similar was also associated with University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, this seemed an odd association.
The 'Technological Committees' [sic] of the 3rd World Conference on Management Science and Human Social Development (MSHS 2020),which will be held during December 26 to 27, 2020 in Tianjin, China, includes
Prof. Kuang-ming Wu, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, USA
and the 'Technical Committees' of The 5th International Symposium on Application of Materials Science and Energy Materials (SAMSE 2022) to be hosted by Thailand Institute of Science and Engineering Technology during October 2022 includes:
Prof. Kuang-ming Wu, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, USA
It is by no means unlikely that an academic philosopher will be invited to be on such committees as sadly such invitations are often offered regardless of subject expertise – but it less clear why an academic philosopher would agree to be part of a committee responsible for the academic programme in a discipline or subject area they did not work in.
I have seen an example in the past of such a committee listing being posted with names, photos and c.v.s of academics who were not even aware their names were being used in this way – so inevitably I am suspicious of whether Prof. Kuang-ming Wu (if he is still even with us, as he must be in his eighties) has agreed to give his name to some of these committees – or whether his name is just being used without his active involvement (just as I was invited to review for the journal he is supposed to edit without his involvement).
Are you crazy, Dr Wu?
Unless I can find a live email address for Dr Wu, I am unlikely to ever know for sure.
I found some of his more recent published work on line.
A 2014 article (described as 'a research/review paper') in 'Global Journal of Management and Business Research: g Interdisciplinary' is entitled 'Praise, Flattery: Common Cosmopolitan'. This two page article has no academic references, and begins
"Surprisingly, things common can have cosmopolitan import, such the praise-flattery pair in a common commercial deal and beyond. Flattery is for us, praise is to others, and both appreciate to move the world. It is a common oiling of our business deal all over the globe, in "sale" in "free" in every store, to promote our win-win deal, as buyers satisfy their need to profit sellers.
Doctors also do healthcare in "bedside manners," and as scholars do so to inter-enrich. As flattery praises much, so praise prizes a person; as babies cannot be spoiled, so no one can be praised too much. Thus "flattery gets anyone anywhere," even by "I know you'd never accept flattery!" Such joy goes around coming around; we are all in smile, cosmopolitan. "
Is this the writing of an academic philosopher lauded for his excellence? Perhaps it is, but it seems to have the feel of something generated by a 'bot'. Certainly if I was a judge in the Turing test I would fail this entry. 5
Are you high?
The 2018 article 'On Tender Pain' in the International Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation Journal is described as a Book review. It begins:
"Human life is constantly surrounded with pain, both as justified one and as unjustified one. Unjustified pain is violent and bestial even below innocent animals, and it is caused by offending justified pain. Justified pain is tender pain in acts of love. Love means to cherish and serve heartfelt. We are human because we love, cherish, and serve three sorts of beings precious to us. These precious beings are our parental others, our beloved posterity, and our own self. …"
Whether this is good writing or not, there is something very odd about this article. It continues in much the same vein for about six-and-a-half pages,
"Sex is joy because sex shares its pleasures. In contrast, Hitler's mass-murder hatred is his sadistic pleasure staying one-sidedly with him alone, without sharing it with his massive victims. Of course, it took Hitler's enormous talent of demagoguery to keep up such sadistic satisfaction, but still it actually collapsed in just four years. Brutal dynasties in China's ugly history and elsewhere did last a few centuries, but they all ended in disastrous revolutions, all so bloody. Violence on the others has never lasted for ever. World history testifies to this solid fact worldwide, that no violence is everlasting."
Whether this qualifies as a carefully constructed argument or is simply rambling ("This paper roams around...") may be a matter of judgement (and as this is open access, anyone can read the work and make up their own mind) but again the article has no academic references – which seems odd for a scholarly piece.
Even stranger, however, if 'On Tender Pain' is intended as a book review, it is the only book review I recall reading which at no point lets the reader in on the secret of which book is being reviewed.
Have you done all you can do, Dr Wu?
If these works are genuinely by the Kuang-Ming Wu who had worked in the Philosophy Department at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and was made a Rosebush University Professor, then this seems a sad decline. Perhaps this is a sign of diminishing capacity, which I can fully appreciate. Perhaps Dr Wu is now just a shadow of the the scholar he was when he was younger?
Perhaps, however, Dr Wu is simply kindly responding to some of those emails academics arbitrarily get asking them to contribute to journals and conferences from diverse fields. Predatory journals will ask for an article, preferably by next week, and point out that it you are busy they are happy to accept a short commentary or opinion piece or a book review or a shopping list. (Well, to be fair, I've never actually had a request from a journal explicitly asking for a shopping list, but one gets the impression that as long as the author is able to pay the publication fee, it would not be ruled out of hand).
The mysterious Dr Wu
So, in conclusion, I am left wondering. Is the Dr Wu who was a respected scholar and professor of philosophy still with us? If so, is he still actively engaged in scholarly activities? Does he (sometimes at least) actively edit the Open Journal of Philosophy? Has he approved of the various uses of his name on scientific committees for fields such as electrical engineering and materials science? So,
Is Dr Wu a once productive academic who's intellectual powers have declined?
Or, is Dr Wu a retired academic who has decided to allow the use of his name for various predatory conferences and journals
Or, is Dr Wu the victim of having his name and affiliation 'borrowed' without his knowledge?
I suggested at the start of this piece that "I had not heard of Dr Wu before I received an invitation to review an article for a Philosophy Journal". But, perhaps, I had, and had just not immediately made the connection. I have in my music collection the track 'Dr Wu' by Steely Dan (perhaps the only successful music act to have named themselves after a fictitious dildo). This includes the lines:
"Are you with me Doctor Wu Are you really just a shadow Of the man that I once knew Are you crazy are you high Or just an ordinary guy Have you done all you can do Are you with me Doctor"
Walter Becker and Donald Fagen (from the lyrics of 'Dr Wu' from the album 'Katy Lied')
Steely Dan's 'Katy Lied'. (What Katydid next?)
Are you still with us Dr Wu?
Notes:
1 Book publishers (even when they are also journal publishers) tend to offer something (money or books) for reviewing book proposals or manuscripts. Funding organisations (including charities and national governments and their bodies) vary – some expect the academics to review for free, and some feel it is appropriate to pay a professional fee for their time and expertise. Reviewing is a kind of consultancy, and in most professions an expert would not expect an external organisation (especially a commercial one like most internet publishers) to ask for consultancy yet not offer to pay a fee.
2 I had intended to include the manuscript title, but think this should be treated as privileged information – even though the journal had not asked for it to be kept confidential, and I had never expressed any interest in reviewing for this journal, so it was sent to me 'on spec.'
That is, there is an ethics of peer review, and most well-respected journals will have policies asking reviewers (or potential reviewers) to treat any communications about submissions as confidential material. The invitation I was sent was not marked as private or confidential which might suggest no obligation to treat it as such exists. In any case, I am not criticising or evaluating the work here, as I do not have the right expertise to do so. However, I think the author has a reasonable expectation to confidentiality, and so I decided not to publish a complex and very specific title that may later appear in print.
3 It is possible that a scholar with great knowledge of the field could be working as an editorial assistant – however, such a role is administrative not editorial and it would be (very) unusual for an assistant to have the expertise to deputise for the editor rather than support them.
4 I emailed the Philosophy department, and have now had a reply – but they do not seem to have any current contact details for Dr Wu in their records.
5 That is, if I was asked to confirm this was written by a human being, and not an AI system designed to imitate genuine human language, I would assume this was prose put together by a machine using a crude algorithm to mine internet sites and compile a text. (Sorry Dr Wu – perhaps this was your work and this evaluation just confirms I should not be reviewing work in your field?)
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
The paper header
'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".
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.
Standardisedpeer 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)
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'),
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.
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.
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.
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 1st and 3rd 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]
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 & Hepatologypaper 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):
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.
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.
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 studydue 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 happinessif 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.
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
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 viralencephalitis,
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%.
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
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
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.
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!
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:
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 & Hepatologywas 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 [emphasisadded] 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 scoreis the most uniquely dangerous surveillance mechanism ever invented. Tempted by this vision, people will continue to inviteIQ 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-scanningtechnology 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. …
… BecauseIQ 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 pitchingIQ, 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
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.
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."
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. 45
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.
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!)
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.)
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."
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.
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.
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.)
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 QuÃmic, 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
