Communication experts suggest that the best way to get a conversation with someone with whom you disagree is to ask them to talk about themselves. Unfortunately I discovered that he asked: “What the hell is you wrong with you ??!?” Is really not a good way to start a productive conversation. But I am not ready to give it up completely.
My most recent voice of that question was the answer to last week’s announcement that the US Department of Health and Human Services, under secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., had canceled his subscriptions on the 3,000 or so scientific journals published by Springer Nature. According to Andrew Nixon, the spokesperson for the HHS, “all contracts with Springer Nature Nature are terminated or no longer active. Precious taxpayer Dollars may not (SIC) be used on unused subscriptions to Junk Science.”
As a former editor at Nature Publishing, I would bicker with the wrongly informed assessment of Nixon of the quality of science published in the Peer-Revieweded Nature Magazines, and the central importance of most of those publications for general scientific knowledge and progress. I suspect his real objection to the Nature Titles (or the objection of his boss, whom he clearly parrotes) is not that the published science is mess, but rather that it contradicts the pseudo-scientific brainworm droppings of the HHS secretary and the people around him. In that context: “What the hell is wrong with you?” Seems a reasonable thing to ask.
To be honest, there is a regrettable increase in the number of scientific articles that can only be described as, good, ‘junk science’. This contamination of the literature includes an alarming proliferation of outright fraudulent publications in a growing avalanche of new “science journals” for only digital digital digital digital reason for this rapid growth is the relentless pressure on scientists to even and in the best possible magazine to earn and earn a postdoc. biotech pipe dream company. Publication and quality have put aside aside in many places in many places.
Unfortunately and predictable, despite constant efforts to stop it, the publication quality has been suffered as the quantity has increased. About two million articles in all history of scientific publication history were indexed in the most important publication databases in 2016. Five years later, three million articles were published, despite a decrease in the number of new PhD students and researchers. Fewer scientists write and/or revise many more articles than ever before: a non -durable situation. As a result, the quality of Peer Review-De Primary Guardian lies of scientific quality, which in turn leads to worthless papers and the non-somewhat inaccurate statements such as those of HHS’s Nixon.
It is also true that the leading global scientific publishers are companies with a profit motive that generally reach large annual profit margins, the majority of the tense budgets of academic and company libraries. By “bundling” a number of less worthy magazines with their flagship titles, they can control striking prices for subscription access. There is a fundamental tension between the goals of publishing meaningful science and publishing to promote shareholders, a tension that can be used by opponents such as RFK to ask questions about the entire company.
But to concentrate exclusively on the negatives of what an overwhelming positive aspect of the scientific company is, it is exactly what the Trump administration wants. They are skilled in watching the less due to due to due to because of many of our institutions and programs and to convert it into the determining functions for public consumption. Although I cannot fully reject the formal claims of HHS about Junk Science, I can insist that exaggerating the size of those claims only distracts from the much greater overall good that is provided by scientific publishing.
Being constant about defended negatives, on this subject or about immigration, gender identity, health care, etc. is tiring. It is also demoralizing to see most of our chosen representatives defeating themselves in defensive, almost apologizing squat instead of pushing back – hard. Perhaps we can start changing the current dynamics “on-ur-heel” by going into the violation, including the public and hard questions where necessary: ”What’s wrong with you?”
Fintan Steele is an ex-delivered monk and priest with a Ph.D. In biology/genetics. He spent most of his life in science communication, including scientific publishing and, recently, for biopharma and academic centers. He and his husband live in hygiene. E -Mail: fsteele1@me.com.
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