Science Publisher Retracts 44 Papers for Being Utter Nonsense

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

So much for the “Science”!

The publisher Springer Nature was forced to retract over 40 papers from its Arabian Journal of Geosciences after realizing they were nothing more than garbled jargon. This is just the latest in a series of shoddy research papers getting past the publisher.

First reported by research journal watchdog Retraction Watch, the slew of retractions comes on the heels of other issues at the publisher, where hundreds of papers were previously flagged with “expressions of concern” for research integrity breaches.

The retraction notice on one of papers reads as follows: “The Editor-in-Chief and the Publisher have retracted this article because the content of this article is nonsensical. The peer review process was not carried out in accordance with the Publisher’s peer review policy. The author has not responded to correspondence regarding this retraction.”

The journal is intended for geoscience research; discussion of volcanoes, soils, and rocks are par for the course. But these questionable papers’ topics were further afield, with many discussing sports, air pollution, child medicine, and combinations of the aforesaid.

Some titles of the farkakte research: “Simulation of sea surface temperature based on non-sampling error and psychological intervention of music education”; “Distribution of earthquake activity in mountain area based on embedded system and physical fitness detection of basketball”; “The stability of rainfall conditions based on sensor networks and the effect of psychological intervention for patients with urban anxiety disorder.” A complete list of the retracted papers can be found here.

Chris Graf, the research integrity director for Springer Nature, told Retraction Watch that “As previously stated, we are developing new AI and other-tech based tools and putting additional checks in place to identify and prevent attempts of deliberate manipulation.”

“Moreover, we are gathering evidence into how these subversions are being carried out to share with other publishers, [the Committee on Publication Ethics], relevant institutions and other agencies to help inform the development of industry-wide practices and ensure that culpable parties can be held to account,” Graf added.

Whether such measures are effective or not remains to be seen. Based on the previous issues seen at this and manyotherjournals, there’s not much reason to be hopeful.

https://gizmodo.com/science-publisher-retracts-44-papers-for-being-utter-no-1848004690

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November 9, 2021 2:09 am

They claim to be developing AI to guard against this, but it sure looks AI was used to submit.
Are we going to see an AI bot-war?

Actually the connection with earthquakes and basketball is hilarious!

Still, Greek Mythologists knew earthquakes were caused by Hephaistos (Vulcan) dancing with one short leg. Just shows AI is mindless.

Christina Widmann
Reply to  bonbon
November 9, 2021 2:31 am

Maori mythology knows that Mother Earth is pregnant and earthquakes happen when the baby is kicking.

Reply to  Christina Widmann
November 9, 2021 8:42 am

Right, but the kids father Maui had harnessed the Sun. What a family!

John
Reply to  bonbon
November 9, 2021 4:31 pm

and pulled the fish which became New Zealand out of the ocean and caused the mountains by clubbing the fish

Reply to  bonbon
November 9, 2021 2:41 am

We know comparable effects about bridges and soldiers crossing in lock-step.

Reply to  Krishna Gans
November 9, 2021 3:38 am

That could lead to dancing!

Richard Page
Reply to  bonbon
November 9, 2021 6:11 am

Whoa there! According to the Scots reformed presbyterian church dancing is most definitely forbidden – it’s sinful and leads to lust and fornication. Let’s just all take a step back from that slippery slope shall we?

MarkW
Reply to  Richard Page
November 9, 2021 6:31 am

Given the rate at which birth rates are falling, maybe we need more dancing.

John
Reply to  MarkW
November 9, 2021 4:32 pm

no the presbyterians are correct to stop climate change we need a smaller population

Fred Brohn
Reply to  MarkW
November 10, 2021 1:38 am

What my children call, “The Horizontal Polka!”

DrEd
Reply to  Fred Brohn
November 11, 2021 7:28 am

That’s why having sex while standing is forbidden. It leads to dancing!

Ken Irwin
Reply to  Richard Page
November 9, 2021 6:58 am

Tony Handcock: “Dancing is sinful!”
Sid James: “No it isn’t!”
Tony Hancock: “It is – the way I do it!”

Reply to  Richard Page
November 9, 2021 9:24 am

The Scottish Reformed Presbyterians should have checked the Old Testament first :
http://www.jokes4us.com/ethnicarchive/rabbicounselorjoke.html
Modern Woke army platoons take note!

MM from Canada
Reply to  Richard Page
November 9, 2021 10:05 am

“According to the Scots reformed presbyterian church dancing is most definitely forbidden”

King David danced before the Lord. Of course, his wife Michal was unimpressed. Maybe she was Scots Reformed Presbyterian? 😉

jorgekafkazar
Reply to  MM from Canada
November 9, 2021 9:31 pm

Was she one of the MacCabees?

Philip
Reply to  Richard Page
November 9, 2021 10:48 am

I happen to like slippery slopes no to mention lust and that other thing.

Bruce Friesen
Reply to  Richard Page
November 9, 2021 3:00 pm
Reply to  bonbon
November 9, 2021 2:50 am

It sort of reminds me of “Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog”. A book created by marketing and using popular topics to determine the title and story.

MJB
Reply to  bonbon
November 9, 2021 3:59 am

This was my first thought as well. A human behind the idea but an AI doing the writing.

Komerade Cube
Reply to  MJB
November 9, 2021 6:17 pm

Sort of like romance novels.

Reply to  bonbon
November 9, 2021 4:00 am

Just missing a link to CC 😀

Tom Halla
Reply to  bonbon
November 9, 2021 4:50 am

To cite Gore Vidal, the Byzantines thought earthquakes were caused by sodomy.

Reply to  Tom Halla
November 9, 2021 7:58 am

I guess you could say the retracted papers were created by screwing the system. 😉

D. J. Hawkins
Reply to  bonbon
November 9, 2021 8:09 am

Soooo, how about having a human being with more than two functional brain cells actually read the submissions? I know, I know, pretty radical idea.

jorgekafkazar
Reply to  D. J. Hawkins
November 9, 2021 8:37 am

Editors are too busy being woke to get any work done.

RoHa
Reply to  D. J. Hawkins
November 10, 2021 10:04 pm

Hard to find one.

jorgekafkazar
Reply to  bonbon
November 9, 2021 8:43 am

Artificial Intelligence is a misnomer. Such research may achieve simulated intelligence at most.

Reply to  bonbon
November 9, 2021 9:42 am

My first question is not about the editors and their earlier acceptance of such paper, but is what happend to the brains of these authors of such papers to research and write papers about such subject as the mentioned.

Reply to  Krishna Gans
November 9, 2021 9:52 am

Looks like an insider hack – Saudi targeted because of Aramco, or something more insidious.
Just imagine the brains of Aramco engineers reading that stuff after translation back to Arabic!
(Maybe submitted in Farsi?)

John
Reply to  bonbon
November 9, 2021 4:30 pm

it sounds as plausible as a butterfly flapping it’s wings causes a hurricane

Jay Willis
November 9, 2021 2:12 am

Will they be refunding the money they were paid to publish those papers?

SxyxS
Reply to  Jay Willis
November 9, 2021 7:19 am

Of course they will.Just as all those climate scientists did after all heir predictions turned out to be shit.
Oh wait,they didn’t as they need the money to buy front beach properties .

November 9, 2021 2:12 am

44 Papers were retracted from the Arabian Journal of Geosciences, many thousands are still candidates for retraction in the field of ‘Climate Science’.

Christina Widmann
Reply to  nicholas tesdorf
November 9, 2021 2:32 am

Maybe those papers were machine-translated into Arabic from other languages? The titles sound like it.

Teddy Lee
November 9, 2021 2:18 am

Arabian Nights wet dream.
Chris Graf or Chris Gaf?

Trying to Play Nice
Reply to  Teddy Lee
November 9, 2021 3:30 pm

Or just plain Griff?

griff
November 9, 2021 2:26 am

So the oversight process is working -which means we can have even more confidence in papers on climate science

Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 2:43 am

Be sure, your comments allways will be retractet, no need of AI, general “I” is enough. 😀

Richard S Courtney
Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 3:19 am

Griff,

The papers passed peer review but they were rubbish.
Got that, the papers were rubbish and they passed peer review.

Laughter at the published papers was so great that they had to be retracted.

Meanwhile, much other completely discredited rubbish (e.g. the MBH ‘Hockey Stick’) has not been formally retracted.

The “oversight process” known as peer review is working as presently intended by allowing publication of fashionable rubbish while blocking publication of informative research findings.
Please remember this the next time you are tempted to spout the falsehood that peer review demonstrates worth of a published paper.

Richard

Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 3:38 am

More likely it’s only beginning to work beginning with this example.

Oriel Kolnai
Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 4:27 am

That’s entirely correct, Griff. Peer reviewed climate science is about as good as it gets, as we can see from Climategate email dated 6/5/1999 from Phil Jones, head of CRU at that time, to Michael Mann:  

‘You may think Keith or I have reviewed some of your papers but we haven’t. I’ve reviewed Ray’s and Malcolm’s—constructively, I hope, where I thought something could have been done better. I also know you’ve reviewed my paper with Gabi Hegerl very constructively.’ 

Just what the scientist ordered – anonymous, third party, disinterested referees with no dog(s) in any fight. 

Hide the decline! 

commieBob
Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 4:50 am

Well trolled my friend. You are truly a master of the art. 🙂

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  commieBob
November 9, 2021 10:35 am

The art of baiting?

Ed Zuiderwijk
Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 4:50 am

Always the optimist. Haha.

fretslider
Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 5:44 am

Why are you impersonating a singer…. griff?

“Griff placed fifth on the latter list, which was won by Pa Salieu. Along with this, Griff can add a BRIT Rising Star award to her collection”

https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/celebs-tv/who-griff-winner-brits-rising-5402497

You can find fretslider on spotify, deezer, iTunes, Amazon etc etc etc

I am me, you are fake.

Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 5:49 am

“even more confidence”. The only thing griff could have done to be even more truthful would have been to finish with /sarc.

Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 5:58 am

The Guardian an the BBC will publish the papers.

His Majesty
Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 6:13 am

How do you retract idiotic, mis-formed opinions developed from reading rubbish science, outright falsification, and pure nonsense? You can’t, but you can keep “spreading the news” about AGW, infecting half the planet with this garbage and keep the foolishness (social disease) alive.

MarkW
Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 6:33 am

If the “oversight” process was working, those papers would have been rejected after just reading the titles.

commieBob
Reply to  MarkW
November 9, 2021 7:28 am

I’m feeling grumpy this morning so …

Griff is right. His timing is just a bit off. Sooner or (decades) later science will indeed correct itself, after the guilty have gone on to meet their maker.

In the mean time, the damage is being done.

A hundred years from now folks will talk about CAGW the same way they do about Tulip Mania. They will feel much wiser than those benighted people of yore (ie. us) and they will turn around and do something equally stupid.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  MarkW
November 9, 2021 2:06 pm

They must be using AI reviewers, too.

SxyxS
Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 7:28 am

The oversight process is working,the way your brain works.
Slow,incompetent and corrupted.

If the process was working there would never be more than 3 BS papers at once inside the system.
Your logic is kind of claiming that communism works just because they shut down the gulags after 50years and because there was food to buy on the 14th of June 1967 in St Petersburg.

BCBill
Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 8:11 am

Well yes, the oversight of RetractionWatch.com is working. Except I can’t acess them right now. I fear they are being hacked by Big Pharma or BigGreen. You can only ridicule the settled science for so long before you catch the jaundiced eye of BigMoneyInc.

jorgekafkazar
Reply to  BCBill
November 9, 2021 8:50 am

Up and running. Maybe your browser is faulty.

Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 8:30 am

Griff, Sorry to read that they are now retracting your paper, “Renewable Energy Successes and My Journey to Transgenderism.”

Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 8:56 am

Griff, this time you must be joking!

Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 9:06 am

So the oversight process is working …

Yes, but NOT the peer review inner system of the publishing group “Nature”!

The barber shaves all the village. But who shaves the barber, griff, who shaves the barber?

Rick C
Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 9:35 am

Griff: You probably should use a <sarc> tag. Folks might think your serious. Good one though.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 10:33 am

The point being, if peer review was working as intended and expected, they never would have been published in the first place. Since these papers got past the gatekeepers, how can we be sure that there aren’t many more that haven’t yet been found?

Robert Hanson
Reply to  Clyde Spencer
November 9, 2021 1:59 pm

Au contraire, we can be sure there are many more yet to be found.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Clyde Spencer
November 9, 2021 2:08 pm

The scandal is in publishing this garbage.

WR2
Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 11:06 am

I am starting to think he’s just trolling us for fun. There’s no way a real person can actually believe this is the key takeaway.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  WR2
November 9, 2021 2:09 pm

He’s doing the best he can. He doesn’t have much to work with.

Komerade Cube
Reply to  WR2
November 9, 2021 6:28 pm

He is paid to spout this nonsense.

Glen
Reply to  griff
November 9, 2021 2:46 pm

you forgot the /sarc

Pamela Matlack-Klein
November 9, 2021 2:36 am

It is obvious that peer review is close to worthless now. How did these “papers” even get past being read by human reviewers?

I recently reviewed a paper for Elsevier, recommending publication. The other day I got an email from the editor telling me they decided to reject the paper based on the appended three negative reviews. I read them and each one was openly from a CAGW believer! I was surprised that these other reviews were shared with me and even more surprised that I was told the paper was rejected. The other three reviewers went to great lengths to nit-pick the paper and accuse the author of poor science. Basically, the paper was about the LACK of accelerated SLR as demonstrated by tide gauges….

Alasdair Fairbairn
Reply to  Pamela Matlack-Klein
November 9, 2021 3:35 am

To me one of the best peer review processes is to be found on the better sceptical Sites.
Big Brother cannot tolerate this so goes to great lengths to see that these sites do not appear in the media.

MarkW
Reply to  Alasdair Fairbairn
November 9, 2021 6:35 am

I’ve been saying for quite a while that sites like WUWT do a much better and much faster job of peer review than do any of the major so called science publications.

MJB
Reply to  Pamela Matlack-Klein
November 9, 2021 3:49 am

I’ve had similar experience. Working in a relatively small field word can travel. After reviewing a recent paper I came to find out who the other two reviewers were. In this case all three of the initial reviewers, including myself, recommended publication. But the editor disagreed for some unknown reason and found another three reviewers to provide negative reviews. I suppose that’s their prerogative as editor, but it just seems rather base, particularly given the editor selected the initial three reviewers. I won’t be reviewing for that editor again without a satisfactory explanation.

MarkW
Reply to  MJB
November 9, 2021 6:37 am

Since you didn’t provide the review the editor was looking for, it’s unlikely he/she will ever ask you to do another review.

November 9, 2021 3:36 am

The most serious fault is if a paper is reviewed by a peer whose own paper was not cited.

By the way :
¨Arabian Journal of GeosciencesISSN: 1866-7511 (Print) 1866-7538 (Online)
DescriptionThe official journal of the Saudi Society for Geosciences, the Arabian Journal of Geosciences examines the entire range of earth science topics focused on, but not limited, to those that have regional significance to the Middle East and the Euro-Mediterranean Zone.¨

Anyone note that this a Saudi publication? There the worlds largest petroleum firm Aramco, for sure needs geological research.

Is this, as the editor suggested a hack? Were Saudi’s represented at FLOP26, or Aramco? And what about those financial ghouls that blame energy prices on OPEC+.

This reeks like a bucket of crude….

Craig W
November 9, 2021 3:48 am

These retracted articles made as much sense as using computer modeling to predict the future.

Russell Cook
Reply to  Craig W
November 9, 2021 2:31 pm

But wait! I’m a militant CAGW skeptic who also suffers from urban anxiety disorder, which by default proves AGW to be settled science. Or something.

MJB
November 9, 2021 3:59 am

“…development of industry-wide practices [to] ensure that culpable parties can be held to account,” Graf added.

Right, it was them pesky AI nonsense authors that are culpable here. Surely it couldn’t be the fault of an editor asleep at the switch, if there even was an editor.

Perhaps the publisher had switched to using AI editors as an experiment, and someone with inside knowledge thought that was BS, and either perpetrated or encouraged this heinous crime to prove a point. :O

DiggerUK
November 9, 2021 4:14 am

I have the feeling that Sacha Baron Cohen has recruited some who infest this blog and successfully sneeked a few articles across the publishers desk.

If any of you are asking if I “is talking to you like that because you is a denier” the answer is, yes, I am. Well done…_

PaulID
Reply to  DiggerUK
November 9, 2021 6:14 am

Nah, we just assumed that was the normal way you spoke, use of the word “denier” indicates gullibility and and lower than average brain function.

jorgekafkazar
Reply to  PaulID
November 9, 2021 8:55 am

The Artificial Stupidity is strong in this bot.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  PaulID
November 9, 2021 2:12 pm

Use of “denier” means he doesn’t have an argument. So name-calling is the fall back.

Richard Page
Reply to  DiggerUK
November 9, 2021 6:18 am

You are posting like that because you have mistakenly assumed that all readers of WUWT are ‘deniers’ and thinking really isn’t your strong suit. Might I suggest that you ask a grown up for advice before posting in future – might save you from a public exhibition of your ignorance and obvious defects.

DiggerUK
Reply to  Richard Page
November 9, 2021 12:26 pm

I personally take no offence at being called a Denier, I’m proud to be described as such, especially because it pisses the Alarmists off when I do so.

I can truthfully claim that some of my best friends are Deniers and that I would have no problem if Deniers moved in next door.
But somehow I feel the irony would be wasted.

I do plead guilty though to missing how many snowflakes visit this site…_

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/599602

Russell Cook
Reply to  DiggerUK
November 9, 2021 2:36 pm

Dude, your psychological projection is showing. It was the folks at the long-forgotten “Ozone Action” environmentalist group who sneaked in one fake name to the Oregon Petition Project (and subsequently falsely claimed there were more in it) in order to trash the entire collection of petition signatures of scientists who questioned the IPCC’s reports.

Ed Zuiderwijk
November 9, 2021 4:49 am

They developed AI techniques …. clearly the real intelligence at Springer Nature was a bit under par. Even a total novice would have picked up on such titles and suspect something fishy. Or do editors nowadays not read the submitted papers?

fretslider
November 9, 2021 4:49 am

First reported by research journal watchdog Retraction Watch,

Wanted

Scientifically trained proof reader…

Tom Abbott
Reply to  fretslider
November 9, 2021 2:14 pm

Isn’t that the truth!

fretslider
November 9, 2021 5:01 am

“Global heating induced excess sweat and it’s impact in accelerating the degredation of various gauges of plain and wound Nickel guitar strings”

For the paper contact fretslider c/o spotify, iTunes, deezer etc etc etc

Juan Slayton
Reply to  fretslider
November 9, 2021 7:21 am

degradation

Paper returned for revision….
: > )

fretslider
Reply to  Juan Slayton
November 9, 2021 7:51 am

Without an error it isnt authentic

Humour by-pass detected…

That really is a green trait

Juan Slayton
Reply to  fretslider
November 9, 2021 9:13 am

Humour

Un-american spelling detected. Author’s credentials enhanced….

Philip
November 9, 2021 5:21 am

Wait. I thought “nothing more than garbled jargon” was the new, peer reviewed, settled science.

Reply to  Philip
November 9, 2021 10:52 am

Yep. “Garbled jargon” is a nice phrase, but generally I prefer “eco-babble”. The retracted papers were obvious hoaxes, but eco-babble papers are the norm, in fact required for publication in most (all) enviro-science journals. Actual science is rare if not deliberately banned.

Capitalist-Dad
November 9, 2021 5:38 am

Instituting new AI? Great idea, especially because there appears to have been a severe lack of actual human intelligence. Merely reading the titles should be a sufficient clue that everything below it is ridiculous nonsense.

ChrisB
November 9, 2021 5:40 am

They dont need AI, but EI – editor with I

roaddog
November 9, 2021 5:43 am

When did Greta and AOC begin writing scientific papers?

Ian Smith
November 9, 2021 5:57 am

These titles read like the pranksters who make careers out of writing nonsensical complaints letters.

It does not need AI, a reasonable high stream primary school kid could spot them a mile off.

jorgekafkazar
Reply to  Ian Smith
November 9, 2021 9:09 am

Note that the general principle that will subsume these editorial failures is not quite equivalent to deliberate language misuse. It must be emphasized, that a deceptively adequate ersatz grammar is unspecified with respect to an abstract underlying translation, if any. Of course, the descriptive power of the Arabic language components does not affect the structure of a corpus of nonsensical utterances upon which conformity to climate change theory has been defined. Nevertheless, relational information can be defined in such a way as to impose irrelevant publication contexts in selectional rules, particularly of peer reviewers. It may be, then, that an important property of these types of AI is rather different from the levels of acceptability from fairly high (eg (99a)) to virtual gibberish (eg (98d)).

http://rubberducky.org/cgi-bin/chomsky.pl

D.M. Anderson
November 9, 2021 6:02 am

Maybe they could read the papers before they put them in print? Just an idea.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  D.M. Anderson
November 9, 2021 2:15 pm

Good suggestion. Reading them might have saved them a lot of trouble.

michael hart
November 9, 2021 6:26 am

“The journal is intended for geoscience research; discussion of volcanoes, soils, and rocks are par for the course. But these questionable papers’ topics were further afield, with many discussing sports, air pollution, child medicine, and combinations of the aforesaid.”

That’s about par for the course these days. It often seems like every man and his dog has to mention global warming and climate change, however irrelevant it is to their real area of research.

November 9, 2021 6:34 am

The very first level of report quality control is to read it for spelling, grammar, and content consistency. So these were never proof-read by anyone.

ASTONERII
November 9, 2021 6:52 am

Is it too much to ask that the publishers read what they publish?

PaulH
November 9, 2021 7:14 am

It sounds like someone was having too much fun with websites like this one: 🙂

Communications From Elsewhere

jorgekafkazar
Reply to  PaulH
November 9, 2021 9:14 am

Ooh! Excellent!

Aaron Schnelle
November 9, 2021 7:29 am

Absent was the phrase “due to climate change” or it’s close cousin “linked to climate change.”

November 9, 2021 7:32 am

Were these papers written by the Biden teleprompter team?