Posted: Oct 05, 2018 1:47 am
There's probably only so mainstream you can get in fields like feminist geography, but these are all journals where articles are peer reviewed published at their expense and access is restricted by subscription. As such, it's a level above things like SciGen and the Sokal hoax.
That said, I think their choice of journals probably tells us more about their politics than any problems particular to those areas of academia. You could probably perpetuate this kind of hoax in any field, because peer review tends to assume good faith and that if your references check out, your diagrams and tables are free of obvious errors, and you take care not to cross any established paradigms in your writing, you'll probably get published. You'd need something rather better than SciGen for the top hard science journals, but I wouldn't think it impossible. Andrew Wakefield, perhaps?
After all, getting published doesn't equate to getting wider acceptance and papers are frequently challenged after publication, with back and forth responses that can continue for several years. It's perhaps worth noting that their hoax was rumbled precisely because a paper that had mange to reach a wider audience - albeit thanks to the promotional efforts of the journal that had been conned into accepting it - was subsequently challenged. The system, it would appear, works; just not always in the way that some people think it should.
That said, I think their choice of journals probably tells us more about their politics than any problems particular to those areas of academia. You could probably perpetuate this kind of hoax in any field, because peer review tends to assume good faith and that if your references check out, your diagrams and tables are free of obvious errors, and you take care not to cross any established paradigms in your writing, you'll probably get published. You'd need something rather better than SciGen for the top hard science journals, but I wouldn't think it impossible. Andrew Wakefield, perhaps?
After all, getting published doesn't equate to getting wider acceptance and papers are frequently challenged after publication, with back and forth responses that can continue for several years. It's perhaps worth noting that their hoax was rumbled precisely because a paper that had mange to reach a wider audience - albeit thanks to the promotional efforts of the journal that had been conned into accepting it - was subsequently challenged. The system, it would appear, works; just not always in the way that some people think it should.