Buzz
Science holds a special place in our society. When we come across phrases like “a study shows” in a newspaper, most of us tend to accept what follows as the truth. Similarly, when an article references an academic journal, we pause and think that finally, we are being presented with solid facts.
This trust is, in theory, a good thing—or it should be. We should be able to rely on the fact that these studies and papers are produced by individuals who are committed to uncovering the truth.
However, there are hidden issues behind the studies we often celebrate as fact. The truth is, academic journals that publish these studies are rife with flawed science—and there are several mechanisms in place that allow this to continue.
10. The Rise of Fake Academic Journals
Anyone who has attended university knows how highly academic journals are regarded. They are considered the ultimate source of truth. What’s published in an academic journal is typically seen as irrefutable because the papers are authored by professors and undergo rigorous review by esteemed peers.
Well, some journals follow these standards. Others, however, will publish just about anything you send them—as long as you include a $100 bill with your submission.
With the rise of the Internet, creating your own academic journal has become increasingly easy—even for those without the proper credentials. And many people take advantage of this. A growing number of pay-to-publish magazines now exist that don’t properly review submitted articles, yet still label themselves as legitimate academic journals.
The number of these fraudulent journals has surged since the advent of the Internet. In fact, between 2010 and 2013, the list of fake journals grew from 20 to a staggering 4,000.
It’s hard for people to tell the difference between real academic journals and fake ones. These counterfeit journals are designed to look like peer-reviewed publications. They’re filed in the same sections, sorted under the same categories, and cited by the same references. The ideas they present are just as likely to be shared by the media as those in reputable journals. Even well-regarded journals may repeat these findings as if they are undisputed facts.
But in reality, they’re not legitimate. These journals will publish anything you send them without bothering to review your submission for even a second.
9. Anything Can Be Published, No Matter How Outlandish
You can write literally anything and have it published in an academic journal. And when we say “literally,” we really mean it.
A pair of computer scientists, irritated by the endless spam from a pay-to-publish journal, decided to submit a satirical article. The piece was 10 pages of the same seven words repeated over and over: “Get me off your f—king mailing list.”
They formatted the article to resemble a legitimate journal submission. It was filled with charts and tables, all of which simply read “get me off your f—king mailing list.” The words appeared repeatedly across every page, but anyone who bothered to look would easily see it was a joke.
The problem? No one ever bothered to actually look at it. Instead, the journal’s automated system immediately responded, praising the article as a “masterpiece” and asking for $150 to publish it.
Curious to see what would happen next, the pair paid the $150. Sure enough, the journal’s next issue came out shortly after, proudly featuring the 10-page article titled “Get Me Off Your F—king Mailing List.”
So, yes. When we say they’ll publish “literally anything,” we mean literally.
8. Newspapers Will Publish Anything From An Academic Journal
Once you’ve paid the $150 fee and gotten your article published in an academic journal, the world will take whatever you say as truth—even if you don't believe it yourself.
A journalist decided to test this theory by conducting a truly awful experiment. His goal was to see what would happen if he provided newspapers with weak evidence suggesting that eating chocolate helps you lose weight—something that should be clearly false.
He gathered 15 people, gave chocolate to five of them, and measured their health across several categories. He believed that by testing a small group of people on various metrics, there was a chance, by random, that the chocolate eaters would show improvement in at least one area.
Sure enough, his results allowed him to claim that chocolate was a weight-loss miracle. He paid to have his flawed research published in a journal, then sent his conclusions to various newspapers.
The reaction was overwhelming. His bogus findings were picked up and reported by Cosmopolitan, The Huffington Post, news channels, and even morning talk shows. Not one person discussing his work mentioned his intentionally poor research methods.
7. Academics Will Accept Anything Published In A Journal
It would be nice to think that newspapers only repeated these findings because they didn’t know better. But they’re not the only offenders. Academic journals have also been known to reprint blatantly false claims that are just as obvious.
Every Christmas, The British Medical Journal releases a humorous edition packed with absurd studies, offering their readers a bit of lighthearted entertainment amidst the usual academic seriousness.
But not everyone catches on to the humor. For example, one of their reports studied the impact of retroactive prayer, where they prayed for individuals who had been ill 10 years ago and checked if they had recovered. If they did, the recovery was attributed to the prayers sent from the future. The premise was laughable, yet a few years later, their comedic findings were cited as legitimate evidence in a peer-reviewed article.
This wasn’t a one-off. Their most famous joke article, which measured how many calories children burn while playing video games, has been referenced over 400 times by academic journals.
It’s not just the mass media that gets duped, nor just the frauds pulling the strings. Once an idea makes it into a journal, it’s deemed worthy of replication—even by those who work at the journals.
6. Articles With Shorter Titles Tend to Be Cited More Frequently
Even when scholars are citing credible studies, their reasoning for selecting them isn't always what we might expect. We tend to believe that researchers meticulously check every source and only include the most reliable ideas, but that’s not always the case.
The process by which academic journals decide which ideas to feature isn’t all that different from how teenagers choose which BuzzFeed article to read next. In fact, the headline plays a huge role in their decision-making.
A study analyzing 140,000 academic papers found that one of the key factors in deciding which ideas get cited is the length of the title. Time after time, shorter, more concise titles are cited more frequently than longer ones.
This is significant because when a paper gets cited, its ideas are more likely to spread. So, a catchy, brief title could have a larger influence on whether an idea is embraced by the scientific community than the quality of the research itself.
This is also a significant factor in academic careers. Citations are often seen as a standard measure of how well an academic’s ideas have been received. As a result, someone who can craft a concise title might gain more recognition than their colleagues.
5. Most Experiments Can’t Be Reproduced
Reproducibility is arguably one of the most crucial elements of the scientific process. The results of an experiment are only valuable if others can replicate them. Otherwise, it’s merely an anomaly that remains unexplained.
The problem is, a shocking number of scientific experiments can’t be replicated. The statistics vary by field, but the numbers are still alarming. For example, only 36 percent of psychology experiments can be duplicated. This is troubling, but even worse in cancer research, where just 11 percent of discoveries can be successfully reproduced by others.
It’s an issue that many people are unaware of, yet the academic community is fully conscious of it. In a survey, over half of all researchers referred to the reproducibility problem as a “crisis,” and an even larger percentage confessed to having been unable to replicate an experiment on their own.
In a way, this is positive. The fact that we’re attempting to replicate these experiments shows that crucial quality control is taking place. But when failure rates for reproductions soar as high as 89 percent in some fields, it indicates that many experiments may not have been conducted properly in the first place—and a lot of false ideas are making their way into the scientific discourse.
4. Scientists Hide Faked Data By Using Big Words
Often, the scientists behind these misleading studies are fully aware of what they’re doing. They’re not simply misinterpreting a few data points; they’re deliberately deceiving and trying to cover it up.
A study group examined 253 studies that had been retracted from journals and found a recurring trend. Whenever scientists fabricated data, they used the most complex and convoluted language possible. The articles were laden with obscure terminology, intricate sentence structures, and overly abstract concepts.
In essence, they purposefully made their work as difficult to understand as they could, hoping that readers would simply abandon it rather than realize the falsehoods they were presenting.
In theory, this should make it obvious which articles are untrustworthy. If you’re struggling to comprehend what they’re saying, there’s a strong chance they’re not being truthful.
However, the problem arises because these journals are often already filled with incomprehensible jargon simply because it’s ingrained in the academic culture. Scholars often add unnecessarily complex language because they’re worried that their writing might sound “like a magazine” unless it’s at least somewhat perplexing.
So, it can be challenging to differentiate between those who are lying and those simply using complicated words to appear more prestigious. Still, one thing is crystal clear: those who are lying are fully aware they are doing it.
3. Experts Tend To Be Closed-Minded
A significant shift in the academic world could resolve many of these issues. However, these scholars are authorities in their disciplines, which makes it more difficult for them to adjust their perspectives. One study found that being an expert inherently makes people more closed-minded.
A group of psychologists surveyed random individuals about their political views. Some participants were given simple questions that made them feel knowledgeable, while others faced challenging questions that left them feeling inadequate.
Afterward, they were assessed on their openness to considering other perspectives. Those who had been made to feel ignorant were highly receptive to alternative viewpoints, while those who believed they were experts dismissed ideas that differed from their own.
It’s a disturbing realization because it means the experts who shape our understanding of reality are just as resistant to new ideas. If there is a significant issue in the scientific community, addressing it will require drastic reforms. And such reforms will only succeed if people are open to change.
2. Professors Must Publish Or Face Consequences
In academia, there’s a saying: 'Publish or perish.' In essence, if a scholar doesn’t get something published in an academic journal annually, their career is at risk.
Some research suggests that this pressure to constantly publish could be the main reason for so much flawed science. Academics must sustain their careers, secure funding, and keep their jobs, so they’re driven to publish whatever they can—often quickly. This leads to research with limited sample sizes and articles in pay-to-publish journals.
A team of neuroscientists criticized this practice. After identifying studies they believed were authored by individuals merely trying to sustain their careers, the neuroscientists attempted to replicate the studies. As expected, when they repeated the experiments, the outcomes differed dramatically.
This issue has been called out by some scientists as the primary problem within the scientific community. When researchers feel compelled to publish something, it often leads to many experiments being fundamentally flawed.
1. Pharmaceutical Companies Bribe Researchers
Throughout his career, Harvard professor Joseph Biederman published numerous dubious and poorly structured studies on childhood bipolar disorder. His research repeatedly emphasized one conclusion—that children could be diagnosed with bipolar disorder, that medication was necessary, and that age was irrelevant.
His writing made a significant impact. He was instrumental in altering how the psychiatric field understood childhood bipolar disorder, and as a result of his recommendations, doctors began prescribing medications to children as young as two years old.
Upon further scrutiny, several issues with his claims were revealed. Similar to the journalist who claimed chocolate could help with weight loss, Biederman designed his experiments in a way that would confirm whatever he wanted. Additionally, he had received $1.6 million from the pharmaceutical companies he frequently endorsed.
His statements were widely accepted simply because he was a Harvard professor publishing in scientific journals. Unfortunately, his ideas led to many children being medicated unnecessarily. It was all a result of poor science, and he wrote it all because he was financially compensated to do so.
