In the era of #fakenews, add #predatoryjournals.
What are “predatory journals?” Entomologist Matan Shelomi defines them as those that “appear legitimate, but practice no peer review, no editing, not even a reality check.”
Predatory journals are especially dangerous during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Shelomi, a Harvard graduate and ٺƵ-trained entomologist who is now an assistant professor of entomology at the National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. And what he recently did showed why.
Here’s what occurred.
Being an avid Pokémon scholar and fan — and a foe of fake news — Shelomi wrote a fictitious research paper about how eating a bat-like Pokémon sparked the spread of COVID-19. A journal editor accepted it for publication (without peer-review) and it appeared online, for a time, as open access.
As Shelomi recounted in his Nov. 1 opinion piece, “,” in The Scientist: “On March 18, 2020, the American Journal of Biomedical Science & Research published my paper claiming that eating a bat-like Pokémon sparked the spread of COVID-19. This paper, ‘,’ blames a fictional creature for an outbreak in a fictional city, cites fictional references (including one from author Bruce Wayne in Gotham Forensics Quarterly on using bats to fight crime), and is cowritten by fictional authors such as Pokémon’s Nurse Joy and House, MD. Nonetheless, four days after submission, editor Catherine Nichols was ‘cheerful to inform’ me via email that it had “” and was accepted for .”
, communications specialist with the Department of Entomology and Nematology, on her Bug Squad blog.
How to shop and celebrate safely this holiday season
What does ٺƵ Children’s Hospital’s chief of pediatric infectious diseases do when he finds himself at a crowded store? What is a safe way to celebrate the holiday season? Watch the above video for tips and guidelines for the holiday season.
Virtual cello quartet
The ٺƵ Cello Ensemble isn’t letting the pandemic stop them from performing together. The group, directed by Susan Lamb Cook, created a virtual performance of Biljana Bojović’s piece Flight of Freedom. Watch the video above.
The members of the group are, left to right, Alexander Condon, Ananya Narasimhan, Laura Houshmand and Clio Capaccioli.
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