DEF CON 26 - Svea, Suggy, Till - Inside the Fake Science Factory

Have you thought about submitting your paper on predatory papers to a predatory conference and presenting it there? Trollception.

This is not just an issue with predatory pseudo journals. The whole process of peer reviews is very often flawed. Even non-predatory journals rely on thorough reviews - but nobody really controls the reviewers and if reviewers can stay anonymously (and unpaid) why should anyone give a damn about such a review? The main issue is the perverted way academic careers work nowadays: if you want to get a job at a university you need to publish and get quoted. That pushes your rating and that plays a huge part in the selection process of new professors. This often leads to self quotations and groups of researchers quoting each other. Relying on metrics is the big issue but metrics are also quite a lucrative business. Journal Impact Factor is another part of it. Researchers need to publish and should publish in reputable journals. The reputation of a journal is usually measured by its impact factor. Older established journals by big publishers like Elsevier or Springer Science charge authors quite significant fees because of their impact factor and then charge universities again for subscriptions - subscriptions that often include not just the interesting journal but less attractive journals as well. Those publishers make an insane amount of money without doing much. Researchers write for those journals without pay, researchers are in for doing the reviews - without pay. Layout is often done cheaply in China or India and at the end universities have to pay thousands of dollars in subscription fees. Reviewers do that job because they kind of have to in order for them to stay relevant. Even "reputable" journals publish rubbish that passed peer "review". Best example is something a friend of mine experienced: some medical doctors wanting to calculate the area underneath a curve, obviously totally forgetting about calculus, then thinking about an approximation via small rectangles, then being proud of that method, naming it after themselves and putting that in the manuscript. Accepted and published. There's just one way to improve: open public review. Put the article online and let people comment and annotate it while signing it with their name. So if you fuck up you have to have to deal with it and everyone can retrace the publication process. And ffs stop relying on stupid metrics like impact factors - those are mainly there for publishers charging you twice.

Thank you for not only warning us about fake science, but also doing true journalism. A practice long forgotten!

As a person trying to get published, this just makes me angry.

Reminds me of the antics of the "Yes Men" ...but these journalists are taking it to a whole new level. Bravo, we appreciate your efforts to expose these fraudsters.

I had a meeting for a course at my university last week where they 'warned' us about this fake science publications. But at the same time it was downplayed how bad this actually is. It was also said that these conferences and journals are great because you can easily get work published and have a holiday! Its horrific how this topic is treated at my university in Germany.

What strikes me as ingenious is releasing this to a group of hackers. Take a minute to think about that, investigative journalists posing a social issue to hackers while explaining the legal bottleneck in their reporting country from releasing further information. That's pretty genius.

This is still one of the most important talks I've seen at Defcon ❤️

Thank you very much. This is an important contribution to the integrity of science. I regret that I found it only a year late. There should be a publicly available software tool that can be run against CVs to expose this, just as there is for plagiarism. Such a tool would be used during reviews for tenure and promotion. The existence of the tool and the implied shame would deter academic use of these venues.

Just want to point out that some journal spam is really difficult to determine if legitimate or not. They've perfected the art of walking absolutely on the razor thin line of appearing legitimate.

This is PURE gold. E1: Also don't mess with people who have higher ups in patreva as friends.

5% is a LOT. That's 1 in 20. 1 in 20 publications is fraudulent? that's SHOCKING.

OMG. This is beyond awesome! Great work! I'm very happy to see that this is getting attention. Also LOVE the WASET sting. Maltego developers help too. Thank you.

We need more funding restricted to duplication of studies already published.

I don't get emotional very easily, but I sobbed like never before when watching the documentary in the latter half of this video. The predation, the cynicism. It's almost too much. Fuck those people in the strongest possible terms. Who does this to their fellow humans? Only someone with no conscience. With extreme prejudice. Fuck them. Thank you to the authors of this documentary. Our generation does not repay your sacrifiice to the truth... yet. But, it is so important. Science does work, but it will always face challenges by charlatans and profiteers. We must always hold those making claims accountable for their claims. Fuck the snake oil salespeople. Fuck them. And, ... ... Thank You.

What BS... 🤣🤣🤣 "Nobody has ever subjected Einstein's theory of relativity to peer review."??? Apart from the decades worth of science based on it that would all have failed if it was wrong, I guess really no one has ever done so... This Limburg guy is a serious champ in mental gymnastics.

This is absolutely terrifying. I hope this get's stopped somehow, not only a scam, it's dangerous to society.

Thank you so much for this, this is great and really impactful. Can we please make crimes against society a crime?

Thank you for highlighting something that has been plaguing science lately. Predatory publishing, Scientific new aggregators and a lack of fundamental scientific knowledge is causing some serious issues for western society.

This is the awesome presentation, and really high quality research. Thanks for sharing! P.S. the guy in documentary looks like Mr. Robot