How to deal with published (and indexed) baloney?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the issue of published academic papers that some participants consider to be of low quality or "baloney." The focus is on how to address or respond to such publications, particularly those indexed by reputable agencies, and the implications of their existence in the academic community.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • One participant expresses frustration over a volume of AIP Conferences that they believe contains fundamentally flawed papers, questioning why the publisher does not filter out such content.
  • Another participant requests more specificity regarding the volume in question and the reasons for labeling it as "baloney."
  • A participant emphasizes their desire to keep the discussion general, citing past experiences with a self-published journal that also contained questionable content, rather than focusing on specific publishers.
  • Concerns are raised about the validity of some papers based on their scores on John Baez's crackpot index, suggesting that some papers require new mathematical frameworks that could accommodate inconsistencies.
  • One participant defends Elsevier, stating that they have had positive experiences publishing and refereeing articles in their journals, and provides a historical anecdote about Galileo to illustrate their point.
  • Another participant clarifies that while they do not label Elsevier or AIP as inherently "baloney" publishers, they acknowledge that sometimes such publishers release low-quality work.
  • The discussion includes a specific example of papers attempting to disprove established theories, such as the Theory of Relativity, which are criticized for containing elementary mathematical errors.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express differing views on the quality of published work and the role of publishers in filtering content. There is no consensus on how to effectively address the issue of "baloney" in published papers.

Contextual Notes

Participants reference specific journals and indices to support their claims, but the discussion remains broad and does not resolve the question of how to deal with published work deemed to be of low quality.

mind
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There is an entire volume of AIP Conferences full of baloney. The volume is indexed by several agencies, like NASA ASD, Scopus, etc.

How does one deal with it? I'm thinking of putting a comment on arxiv.org, but I'm willing to comment only on one paper, because I do not want to spend time checking in detail other papers.

I'm wondering why wouldn't AIP filter the garbage? I've read how APS meetings are open to anyone (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22171039), but the papers in this volume are so obviously wrong, that if one would want them to be correct, one should change the mathematics as well.
 
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Do you want to be more specific and give a reference to the volume and why you think it is baloney?

Garth
 
Thanks for the reply.

I'm sorry, but I'd rather not be specific on the volume, because I want the question to be general. If I recall correctly, a few years ago there was an almost self-published journal (editor published his own papers) by Elsevier that had a lot of baloney, and many people complained on receiving this journal with the bulk subscription. What I want to point at is not the publisher, but the already published and archived baloney.

I know that it is baloney (not a mistake in calculations), because papers earn many points in John Baez's crackpot index (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html). Although this index is not so scientific, I can assure you that for some of the papers there to work, one needs to develop a new kind of mathematics, which might accept inconsistencies.
 
mind said:
Thanks for the reply.

I'm sorry, but I'd rather not be specific on the volume, because I want the question to be general. If I recall correctly, a few years ago there was an almost self-published journal (editor published his own papers) by Elsevier that had a lot of baloney, and many people complained on receiving this journal with the bulk subscription. What I want to point at is not the publisher, but the already published and archived baloney.

I know that it is baloney (not a mistake in calculations), because papers earn many points in John Baez's crackpot index (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html). Although this index is not so scientific, I can assure you that for some of the papers there to work, one needs to develop a new kind of mathematics, which might accept inconsistencies.

Elsevier isn't "baloney." I've personally published in and refereed articles in Elsevier journals. For your information, Gallileo published his last book while under house arrest in Elsevier, he had to have it smuggled out of his house and transported to the Netherlands.

Edit: and the poor guy was blind at that point. He is quoted as saying that he had expanded the universe for ordinary mortals a 100-fold, and now he was confined to the extent of his bodily skin
 
Last edited:
The journal published by Elsevier I had in mind is Chaos, Solitons and Fractals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Chaos.2C_Solitons_.26_Fractals). I am not saying that Elsevier nor AIP are baloney publishers. I am saying that sometimes they publish baloney.
So, my question is: how does one act when one finds published and indexed baloney? By baloney I mean things that, for example, try to prove Theory of Relativity wrong, while those things have elementary mathematical mistakes. Based on what they write, I am not sure that authors of those papers are able for rational discussion.
 

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