Some updates to the ever-growing lists

Been pretty busy the last few weeks and am a little behind on updating my lists.

As sham journals (and scam journals) are on the rise. There has been a recent push towards recognizing predatory open source "journals" that take your money, but have nothing to do with peer reviewing or sometimes even publishing your work. Scholarly open access has an ever growing list that I couldn't possibly top, so a link will get added to my list.

As for my list of religious companies, seven more get added. Anthem coffee shop in Tacoma, WA for canceling on hosting an event after finding out it's an atheist group. Oklahoma Joe's in - you guessed it - Oklahoma that decided not to given it's promised donation to Camp Quest after they got all the extra business from supporters expecting that their eating at the restaurant will go to a good cause. Eden Foods, Domino's Farms and Weingartz Supply Co in Ann Arbor, MI for fighting the new national healthcare requirement to cover contraceptives (and unfortunately winning). Come on, Ann Arbor, you could do better than that. A bed and breakfast in Cornwall, England for refusing to accommodate gays because of their religious beliefs (sorry, once you have a business that is open to the public, you can't discriminate). Finally, the United States Postal Service for a pattern of not delivering packages that say atheist on them.

Social Science Research: Not very scientific

To add to the list of journals that overlook the scientific process is Social Science Research, in which both science and research can be in quotes. The published a politically motivated anti-gay parenting "paper" which conveniently bypassed the full peer review process.

More bad journals

Synthese - Apparently criticism of intelligent design is frowned upon.

Psychology Today - Racism dressed up as science in the form of an essay by a regular contributor to their website called "Why are black women rated less physically attractive than other women?" Yes, it was quickly removed, but the fact that it was written in the first place is disturbing. How can this guy have evidence that "black women are objectively less physically attractive than other women"? Has he seen Halle Berry?

Both are added to the list.

If your doctor is praying to heal you...

... you haven't got long to live (or you should find another doctor). Time to add to the list of science journals that have little regard for science. Here's a presidential address published in the American Journal of Surgery entitled "Can prayer help surgery." Unfortunately, the answer is "yes" (or more like, "No, but I'll say yes anyway"). Despite the fact that the author acknowledges that there is no scientific evidence that prayer works, he decides to add the old religious line of "What if those results are the will of God?" Really? Hell, I should have just responded to all the tough questions I got from reviewers by saying "It's the will of God. Who are you to question it?" This presidential address makes a mockery of science. The field of surgery is already decades behind the rest of medicine and Dr. Schroeder of St. John Hospital in Detroit (along with the American Journal of Surgery) just sent it back a couple of centuries. (uggh, I'll be working in a Catholic hospital next year, hopefully I don't run into these types)

Once again, I have to say that if any physician claims that their successfully treating a patient was God's doing, they should give up their salary.

Gotta bring back the Jesus surgeon picture. It makes me wonder why a surgery residency is 5 years. It must take that long to not get creeped out by Jesus giving you a shoulder message while helping you with surgery.

(PZ Myers has a better evisceration of the address and Orac discusses how ethically and scientifically inappropriate it is).

Another fake journal

Journal of Cosmology. Another fake science journal to make the list. As the title of the article reviewing it says "Aliens riding meteorites." Need I say more? OK, I will. Here's a description of the field of cosmology according to the journal's website:

Cosmology is the study and understanding of existence in its totality, encompassing the infinite and eternal, and the origins and evolution of the cosmos, galaxies, stars, planets, earth, life, woman and man.

Hey, I study something that fits in there, so I'm a cosmologist! Clearly everyone would be interested in this journal.

Not so:

The interdisciplinary Journal of Cosmology is devoted to the study of "cosmology" and is dedicated to those men and women of rare genius and curiosity who wish to understand more and more about more and more: The study of existence in its totality.

Man, now I kind of feel bad about putting PLoS One on my list.

PLoS One: Not a real science journal

I love the open-access concept for scientific journals. There is no reason why someone should have to pay $35 to read my papers. PLoS is one of the first and largest open-access science journals out there. Some of their journals, like PLoS Biology, are very prestigious places to publish and have put out many amazing studies. They also have a vigorous peer-review process. Unfortunately, to subsidize publication in their premier journals, PLoS pretty much lets anyone who's willing to pay a couple of thousand dollars to publish anything in their barely peer-reviewed journal PLoS One. Their argument for minimizing the peer-review process (and ignoring the scientific merit of their papers) is that it is reviewed by the global community. Unfortunately, all it does is get a bunch of non-scientists make a big deal of a crappy study for being published in a scientific journal. Don't get me wrong, there have been some nice papers I've read in PLoS One, but they also let in a lot of crap (70% of what's submitted is published), like this recent one about a model for Moses parting the Red Sea, that has absolutely no scientific merit. Because of this, PLoS One made it to my Fake Science list.

Fake science legitimized

There's a lot of pseudoscientific or grossly biased "studies" out there that pretend to be actually doing real science. That really can't be stopped. Lots of organizations spend a lot of money to come up with "evidence" to back up whatever they like to promote. What upsets me is when these "studies" get published under the guise of actual scientific work. Some of theme are even peer reviewed. The great PZ brought up an example today from the Southern Medical Journal of a study that showed that prayer improves vision by recruiting subjects from a church revival, not blinding and not having a control. If the Southern Medical Journal is a legitimate medical journal, how did this study make it past the editor (let alone through peer review)? Clearly, the scientific process doesn't matter for this journal.

There are a lot of science journals that have been publishing pure crap (I suppose in order to get more readers) and it really diminishes their value. Not quite this bad, but even bigger named journals like the New England Journal of Medicine have been trending towards legitimizing pseudoscience, such as this recent review of acupuncture (discussed by Orac). A few years ago, I actually got in an argument with an editor from the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy because they published a letter to the editor that used a posting from prolifeblogs.com to support their argument against the availability of over-the-counter emergency contraception. The response I received from the editor was that they can't be selective against the literature their contributors cite (yes you can! And, a blog post can't count as scientific literature).

So, similar to my post on companies that underhandedly promote religion, I want this post to include a (probably) growing list of scientific journals that aren't exactly scientific:

Completely Fake:
Journal of Cosmology
The Open Information Science Journal - accepted a fake paper without review from a couple of people from MIT claiming to be researchers at the "Center for Research in Applied Phrenology" (CRAP) - as long as they sent an $800 check to an address in a tax-free zone in the UAE.

Has Ulterior Motive:
Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine (sham journal for Merck provided by the supervillain of scientific journals: Elsevier).
The Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice - funded by the Department of Justice and only publishes "research" that shows that punishing people is the only way to reduce drug use.

Ignores scientific process for publicity/money/religion:

An exhaustive list of preditory open-source journals can be found at Scholarly Open Access
American Journal of Health-Systems Pharmacy
American Journal of Surgery
British Journal of Psychiatry
Journal of Medical Hypotheses
PLoS One
Social Science Research
Southern Medical Journal
Psychology Today
Synthese

... and more coming when I get the chance to get to them.