[Irtalk] Why Medicine is Plagued with Fake Research

[Hilton Gibson]

*It’s easy to be suspicious of the medical field.* Most people don’t have
the training to know what’s legitimate and what’s not, so we have to rely
on the health care industry, which we know has plenty of political
power. Perhaps that’s why so many Americans still believe in medical
conspiracy theories. But when it comes to published medical research, there
are papers out there that any layman would recognize as bogus.

*It’s a known problem in both science and medicine, often referred to as
“publication pollution.”* Essentially what happens is certain predatory
publishers in academia will publish, well, almost anything, even if it
lacks authenticity or basic common sense.

*That is, they’ll publish it so long as they get paid. A 2013 report in
Science found that certain online journals will publish bad or fictitious
research in exchange for a fee.*

http://www.cheatsheet.com/business/why-medicine-is-plagued-with-fake-research.html/
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