How to tell if something is a fake publication
Fake publications come in three forms: prank publications, predatory publications and just plain bad science. For more on predatory publications and how to identify them, please see our earlier post below. An example of an AI that generates prank mathematics publications is here.
On the matter of prank publications, those are generally easier to detect since they make obviously ridiculous claims. However, the ability to detect whether the claims in the publication are indeed ridiculous depends on your academic backround. A particularly notorious case is the Sokal Hoax. In brief, a physicist called Alan Sokal sent a nonsense paper to a humanities journal:
"In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies. The submission was an experiment to test the journal's intellectual rigor, and specifically to investigate whether "a leading North American journal of cultural studies—whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross—[would] publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions." Unfortunately the article was published. You can read more about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair.
This prank demonstrated that academics are prone to Confirmation Bias — that is, that we are inclined to believe more things which are similar to what we already believe, or, which support our existing beliefs. Confirmation Bias is the bias which leads us all to fall prey to fake news and fake science. Most people fall for such things due to some or other cognitive bias. A definitive list of cognitive biases is here. You can obtain a nice poster about biases here.
On the matter of bad science, these are cases where the scientist or research has an ulterior motive behind their research. This is why declaring your funding source is so important, as is a literature review. Because unless you show an understanding of the existing literature, and show who is funding your research, it remains suspect. As an example, consider the case of Wakefield, 1998. His article caused hysteria around vaccines which still has not died down, despite the article being retracted.
"The final episode in the saga is the revelation that Wakefield et al.[1] were guilty of deliberate fraud (they picked and chose data that suited their case; they falsified facts).[9] The British Medical Journal has published a series of articles on the exposure of the fraud, which appears to have taken place for financial gain." (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136032/)
The same rubric applies as with fake news. If an article (be it from a professor or not), sounds hysterical and incredible, it probably is not worthy of serious consideration. Science is a sober serious business. Anything that is radical should be looked at with very careful scrutiny, and a replication of its experiments should always be performed to validate the findings.
