CDC's 'forbidden' word list!

From: <osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Date: Friday, December 15, 2017 at 3:13 PM
To: Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu>, 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: Marcus & Oransky on predatory publishing and "garbage science"

And this probably circles back to David’s question about how do we define pseudoscience---you’re right.

But I guarantee you that astronomers (that’s my degree) can tell you how to define astronomers, and maybe that’s the right approach: Let each field decide who is qualified to publish in its journals. If you aren’t qualified, go peddle your paper somewhere else---there are obviously lots of alternatives. This might be one approach to keeping the unqualified stuff out of the mainstream.

From: Rick Anderson [mailto:rick.a...@utah.edu]
Sent: Friday, December 15, 2017 2:06 PM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>; 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Marcus & Oransky on predatory publishing and "garbage science"

Sorry, Glenn, I guess I was focusing more on your “stopping fake science” comment than on your central point, which I think is this one:

> Why do we let Joe Blow call himself a climate expert and convince half the US that the world is

> cooling, not warming, when we wouldn’t let Joe call himself a plumber and convince us to re-pipe

> our house with Tupperware? Indeed, there are vastly serious repercussions for Joe if he tries to

> pass himself off as a plumber or a heart surgeon, so why not as a scientist too?

And I guess the only answer I can think of is that the term “scientist” is (necessarily, I think) much more nebulous than the term “plumber” or “heart surgeon.” The practical barriers to coming up with a formal definition and then a licensure for someone who wants the title “scientist” would be enormous. Can you imagine the debate over whether a sociologist gets to be called a scientist?

My graduate degree is a Master’s in Library and Information Science, which, I have to confess, I find just a little bit embarrassing. Librarianship is a serious discipline and an honorable profession, but I’m not sure by what meaningful definition of the word it can be called a “science.” (Hang on while I put on my flame-retardant tweed jacket with the asbestos elbow patches. OK, colleagues, go for it.)

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

From: <osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Date: Friday, December 15, 2017 at 2:55 PM
To: Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu>, 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: Marcus & Oransky on predatory publishing and "garbage science"

Again, this is all just rhetorical---I’m not advocating, just exploring with you. But to your last paragraph, I’m not exploring whether it should be illegal to “publish things that contravene the current scientific consensus.” I’m exploring whether it should be illegal for certain people to pass themselves off as experts in forums that the public depends on for expertise---and along these lines, whether part of the problem we’re seeing with fake science is that “real” science and “real” scientists aren’t defined by law or convention. There’s no IEEE handing out credentials, no certification board handing out diplomas, no enforcement board checking licenses. And that’s a bit odd because that’s how the public is protected against everything from bad plumbers to bad heart surgeons. Why do we let Joe Blow call himself a climate expert and convince half the US that the world is cooling, not warming, when we wouldn’t let Joe call himself a plumber and convince us to re-pipe our house with Tupperware? Indeed, there are vastly serious repercussions for Joe if he tries to pass himself off as a plumber or a heart surgeon, so why not as a scientist too? If science is going to abdicate responsibility for protecting its brand, the consequences will include that this brand will be defined by imposters instead.

From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Rick Anderson
Sent: Friday, December 15, 2017 1:35 PM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>; 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Marcus & Oransky on predatory publishing and "garbage science"

> I don’t know if there’s such a clean break between publishing and content.

Totally agree – the break is not clean. One of the problems with fraudulent publishing is that it makes the publication of bad science easier. If you fraudulently claim that your journal provides a rigorous gatekeeping service, but in fact it publishes any wackadoo nonsense that comes over the transom (as long as it comes with an APC), then there are at least two problems: one is that you’re defrauding authors (or, more likely, helping authors deceive their colleagues), and the other is that you’re at least potentially presenting wackadoo nonsense as vetted science. (There’s a theoretical chance, of course, that everything you publish will, in fact, be legitimate science. But since you’ve abdicated the vetting role, it’s hard to see how readers could have any real confidence in what you’re publishing.) But the fact that there’s a relationship between these two things doesn’t mean that they’re the same problem, and I think we need to be careful not to confuse them. In other words, just because the break isn’t clean doesn’t mean there’s no break and that the break doesn’t matter.

> There is no First Amendment right, after all, to yell “fire!” in a crowded theater.

No, but the problem is that even the worst scientific discourse doesn’t usually amount to yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater. Once we start arguing that publishing climate-change skepticism in a journal creates the same kind of public danger as yelling “fire!” in a theater does, we’re on a very, very slippery slope. That’s not how science works. It doesn’t say “you must not publish dangerous garbage”; it says “if you try to publish garbage you should expect that it will be caught and exposed as such by peer reviewers—or, if they don’t catch it, by other scientists when you publish.” Admittedly this is a deeply imperfect system, and it does allow dangerous garbage to get published sometimes, even in elite journals. But prior restraint is a cure that’s worse than the disease.

> The argument I’m making here (albeit just rhetorical) is whether science has a

> responsibility to society to protect its brand.

Of course it does, but the mechanism by which it protects its brand is vitally important. Making it illegal to say or publish things that contravene the current scientific consensus is absolutely the wrong mechanism – it is, in fact, an anti-scientific mechanism, one that will kill science much more surely than ignoring predatory publishing will. A much better mechanism for protecting science’s brand is editorial gatekeeping (including rigorous peer review).

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

From: <osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Date: Friday, December 15, 2017 at 2:09 PM
To: Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu>, 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: Marcus & Oransky on predatory publishing and "garbage science"

It’s always a pleasure to discuss these nuances with you Rick, and just so everyone knows, Rick and I pepper each other with far more emails than ever make it to the list. I wish there were a way to have some of these conversations more publicly, but alas, you all get enough spam as is.

But Rick---I know this is a tangent and again apologize to everyone for wading around out here (David started it!), but I don’t know if there’s such a clean break between publishing and content. Part of the challenge ahead, as more and more of the world’s information becomes open, is to still able to effectively sort fact from fiction as we lose the traditional gatekeeping mechanisms of the past. Making sure the publishers in our midst do their jobs is certainly one approach, as is improving the information literacy of consumers. But keeping fraudsters out of science writing needs to be another approach. There is no First Amendment right, after all, to yell “fire!” in a crowded theater. The argument I’m making here (albeit just rhetorical) is whether science has a responsibility to society to protect its brand. There have always been fraudsters and always will be, but in today’s day and age, when it’s easier than ever for these people to fool large swaths of the population and create harm on a vast scale---not just tricking a few customers into buying snake oil but convincing millions of people that climate change is a hoax or that vaccines cause autism---doesn’t this create something of an imperative to act? Isn’t this a downstream concern of the open science movement---be careful what you wish for?

Best,

Glenn

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

2320 N 137th Street | Seattle, WA 98133
(206) 417-3607 | gham...@nationalscience.org | nationalscience.org

From: Rick Anderson [mailto:rick.a...@utah.edu]
Sent: Friday, December 15, 2017 12:48 PM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>; 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Marcus & Oransky on predatory publishing and "garbage science"

I really doubt that there’s anything we could (or, honestly, should) do to actually stop fake science from being published. The laws that would be required would infringe way too much on First Amendment rights. The reality is that you do, in fact, have the Constitutional right to say (either vocally or in print) “I believe the pertussis vaccine causes autism.” I can’t see any practical way to limit someone’s right to say that that wouldn’t also limit someone’s right to say, for example, “I believe the scientific evidence for climate change is far less conclusive than the current scientific consensus suggests it is.” No one should be prevented from saying these things. But those who make such claims about autism or about climate change should expect that their views will be challenged, and if they fail to defend their views with solid evidence, they can expect their views to be dismissed. (Except by people for whom evidence doesn’t matter, of course – but there’s not much we can do about that.)

But as I understand it, OSI’s brief isn’t about preventing either flawed science or incorrect scientific conclusions from being published. That would be crazy; flawed science and incorrect conclusions are published all the time. That’s the natural state of science; it’s always wrong to some degree, and that’s why we keep doing it, and it’s one major reason we publish it—so that it can be seen, questioned, and tested.

One thing we can do, however—and this I think _is_ part of our brief—is help prevent fraudulent scientific publishing, which is not the same thing as publishing flawed science or incorrect conclusions.

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah