Gresham’s Law Comes for Science
Yves here. KLG below describes how science publications have become much less reliable over time, with the proliferation of “open access” journals part of the problem. As he said via e-mail:
As science has hypertrophied, the bad is supplanted the good as spurious quantification of scientific research has come to rule the practice of science. This has in many ways ruined the practice, the art, and the craft of scientific research. Yes, I am one of those.
This has been facilitated by the rise of open-access, mostly virtual publishing, which was not originally considered a threat. On the contrary, open-access online publishing was expected to be a positive good. And it often is. But it often is not. Predatory publishers were not long in appearing as online publishing became accepted. Neo-predatory, if not outright predatory, “journals” are now the repositories of an ever growing mountain, and a form of Gresham’s Law – the bad drives out the good – has taken over much of the scientific literature, which has become “pay-to-play.”
And the finish is something my colleagues and I have only recently determined. Pay-to-publish has extended its tentacles into medical education, probably with equally deleterious effects.
IM Doc has regularly inveighed against a narrower but more dangerous corrupting influence: the way Big Pharma games drug-related studies and touts (typically) small scale studies that promote off-label uses.
By KLG, who has held research and academic positions in three US medical schools since 1995 and is currently Professor of Biochemistry and Associate Dean. He has performed and directed research on protein structure, function, and evolution; cell adhesion and motility; the mechanism of viral fusion proteins; and assembly of the vertebrate heart…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
