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elinaline · 4 years

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Why is no one talking about this ? or a guide to making the difference between scientific breakthrough and predatory bullcrap on Tumblr

First of all, I want to preface this by saying that I am myself doing a PhD in material science, so I know what I’m talking about, and I also know that academia tends to advantage senior scientists that are already well-known for their research, and that some countries are still under-represented despite their brilliant researchers (it is for example well-known in the field of soft matter that Indians and Chinese know what they are talking about, and yet most of the citations will be Western Europeans and Japanese people). However, I too often see tumblr posts showing the allegedly revolutionary findings of a random scientist that paradoxically no one has heard about, eliciting a strong emotional response and many reblogs, to turn out to be a fake published in a predatory journal that has been refuted years ago. It’s tiring, it creates distrust towards science which is the last fucking thing we need right now (looking at you, anti-vaxxers and 5G fear mongers), and it endangers people as it promotes pseudo-science bullshit (looking at you essential oils fans, and Didier Raoult).

So how to know if the thing you are sharing is truly a cool albeit under-promoted discovery, or if it is someone trying to sell you something dangerous and unethical ?

Without getting in the details of the article, a first easy thing to do, especially if the findings are presented as a huge scientific breakthrough, is to Google it. If it is truly so big, you can be guaranteed that some news outlet will have talked about it, so you can search some key words and the name of the authors to find what is said about it.

For example this post claimed Pr Ezeibe in Nigeria found a cure to HIV, so I went and googled “ezeibe nigeria hiv cure” and here’s what the headlines look like:

Lots of articles from newspapers of different political sides, half of them written by Nigerian authors, all of them suspicious of this finding, for valid reasons.

Now if you don’t believe news websites (I mean, me neither on some topics but not on everything, but that’s another subject entirely), you can examine the articles more in detail.

The first thing you want to search then is in which journal was the article published ? If you come from a news website you will have to go back to the original article, it’s sometimes a bit of a hassle because newspapers can be shit at citing their sources, but every scientific finding is published in a journal in a very codified way. However not all those journals are equal ! If you can be pretty trusting of any journal published by Springer, Elsevier or Wiley, some more independent ones will require further examination. Indeed in science, whether it be STEMs or humanities, there is the notion of predatory journals. Those journals that send hundreds of emails to researchers, and will publish any article as long as the authors are paying, like this Chinese journal publishing last week a joke article linking electric scooters accidents and hydroxychloroquine without checking it. Luckily, you can find lists of predatory journals that are updated and checked regularly, here are three of them: [x] [x] [x]

Now, not all articles published in those journals are false science however. And some journals are balancing on an edge between pseudoscience and really cool weird findings that could find no other publisher, like PLOS One which has some really interesting publications, and some others with a more -ah- discutable review I’d say. At this point if you still are not sure of how accurate the article is there is only one solution: you have to read it.

When reading an article to try and fact-check it, you are basically doing the job of a reviewer, and that is searching for some specific items. First of all look at the references: how many are they ? Are the citations concentrated in the introduction, as if the author was just trying to show how relevant they are, or are they disseminated throughout the text to explain some models and comparisons and draw common points and differences with other systems ? What proportion of the references are self-citations ? In those citations is the author working alone ? or are they in a team ? Are the co-authors always the same and if yes is it the continuation of a project ? or are they changing, and from various labs working on a similar domain and sharing their expertise ? I would say if the author is quoting themself a lot (as in maybe over one third of the references being themself), if the team never changes when the subject does and everyone seems to be in the same lab, I would be wary, but it can also mean that they are leading the way on a particular topic (that was the case of my team director last year, the lab had conceived a new composite material and was naturally the first to publish on it regarding different aspects), in which case if you’re really curious you can go even further and see how many citations in other works those references have. If it’s a lot of self-reference on different topics that are almost not cited by other authors that’s a huge red flag.

Other things to look for are the sample sizes, the statistics and the calculation for the error margins, especially if the sample sizes are small (small being generally under 100 for complex systems), if there are figures how are the axes ? Are there error bars ? How are these error bars calculated ? Are there guides for the eyes ? do those look coherent or could any other guide be placed instead and the conclusion would change ? If there are models are those deducted over a hundred data points or just three ? Where do these models come from ? If you’re feeling in a math mood you can try to look up the scientific units in the formulae to see if they’re homogeneous or full bullshit but that’s getting a bit too invested.

With all those hints you should get a better idea of how precise the researchers were and whether the article is interesting or if it is full of false claims ! Of course it cannot prevent genuine error like when we thought we’d proved the existence of superluminal neutrinos, but at least it should stop you from reblogging sensationalist titles leading to a general distrust in scientific research.

If you’ve come this far thank you so much for taking the time to read this !

#long post #here ya go #I tried to be as exhaustive as possible #predatory journals #pseudoscience #peer review #how to make the difference

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wgst3812a · 5 years

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Capital and (Trans) Political Labour

Marian Ali – 100787908

This week’s reading connected capitalist theory and consumerism to trans vulnerability and exploitation. In ‘Affective Vulnerability and Transgender Exceptionalism’ gives examples form mainstream media and pop culture on how vulnerability of certain transgender folks are being capitalized and exoticized by certain media to appease and be recognized by the mainstream audience. The author refers to the transgression spectator gaze which highlights the victimized position of the trans subject, taking away agency and gives the viewer who is more than often white cis-gendered the notion to ‘do-something’- industry is capitalizing over the victimhood of others (Aizura, 2016). The author also discusses the burden of symbolic representation that trans woman of color who are also immigrant face to represent as victims. They suggest that positionality is important to consider regarding exploitation of certain bodies, not only in the media but also in academia (Aizura, 2016).

In the second article ‘Capital T Trans Visibility, Corporate Capitalism, and Commodity Culture’ it was interesting to see how the author illustrated their argument on the relation between trans visibility politics and the production of trans value, by using current films and tech media industries seen today. They gave the example of say yes to the dress episode with Precious Davis and who the wedding industrial complex - which is already ‘recession proof’ is further making capital over people’s difference (David, 2017). As a viewer you don’t realize that you are participating in it, I remember watching this episode and it being an hour long compared to all the other episodes that were thirty minutes. The author gets us to complicate and question the medias behavior and how it reflects the fantasy and value of the consumer in order to become successful – such as using cis-gender people to play the role of trans folks, capitalizing over real people’s stories and social struggles. The bride in the episode explains that this exposure and search for the prefect gowns means a lot and is a form of her activism. The author talks about this activism linked to ‘shopping for rights’- when trans market and movements converge (David, 2017). The other example that the author gave was that on TransTech Social Enterprise, a tech company that claims to be giving financial freedom and independence to trans folks in developing countries. The author points out that although the idea great, the founder left out many important facts. In actuality they are falling into the corporate capitalist mind frame of using cheap labor and masking it with empowerment and liberation to the far “far east/south”. It is pointed out in the article that the working conditions do not come with safety benefits and there is this workers surveillance to manage the workers time and maximize capital growth. This tech company like many companies that employ in similar ways are relying on the inequalities and “reinforce economic imperialism and a global race to the bottom (David, 2017).

Dan Irving in the article ‘Capital’ brings together the articles by discussing the ways in which capitalism works in a neoliberal society. He talks about how capital mediates and the construction of “homo economous” (Irving, 2014). The neoliberal policies in place have led to a gendered, hierarchal system of capitalism that puts growth first above all, “end result is sub-ordination of the already marginalized. Neoliberal capitalism is believed to produce, progress and development, but who is actually benefiting from this system? And who is suffering under it?

Work Cited

Aizura, A. Z. (2016). Affective Vulnerability and Transgender Exceptionalism. London: Rutgers.

David, E. (2017). Capital T Trans Visibility, Corporate Capitalism, and Commodity Culture. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 4.1, 28-44.

Irving, D. (2014). Capital. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 1.1, 50-52.

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