I have come across the paper titled "Acidity and aridity: Soil inorganic carbon storage exhibits complex relationship with low-pH soils and myeloablation followed by autologous PBSC infusion". This paper full of nonsense and plagiarism was written by science journalist Tom Spears in 2014 to identify predatory journals that would publish anything if they are paid.
As a science communicator, I find this highly interesting but despite some entries with the metadata I cannot find the full text anywhere. Was it maybe never published because the author never paid the fee that was requested?
Or can anyone provide me with the full text? Or with contact details of Tom Spears? It seems like he has stopped being a journalist and I cannot find him anywhere.
Any help is appreciated!
That's funny. I could try to write one like that hehe :)
I am dying to hear the end of the story, Svenja... Was the article actually accepted by one or more predatory journals? I would not be surprised, of course... But then, I am not sure it would not be accepted as well in "legitimate" journals. When one sees what they publish, these days...
Tom Spears appears to still work for the Ottawa Citizen newspaper -
https://ottawacitizen.com/author/tomspears1/
I appears in the 2014 article he was revealing which publications were accepting it for review or publication.
https://nationalpost.com/news/its-the-worst-science-paper-ever-filled-with-plagiarism-and-garble-and-journals-are-clamouring-to-publish-it
It would be interesting to try the same experiment now, 10 years later.
@Philippe Baveye I know a case of fabricated data published in an indexed journal.
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