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I recently watched a very interesting DEF CON 26 talk given by three investigative journalists. The journalists present their findings about fraudulent pseudo-academic conferences and journals. There are fake science factories that are cashing in on millions of dollars every year, while giving studies scientific credibility. We should not underestimate the damage these pseudo-academic conferences can do to society.

Predatory open-access publishing is an open-access academic publishing business model that is charging fees to authors without providing the services associated with legitimate journals. The model is exploitative. Academics are tricked into publishing whithout benefiting from editorial and publishing services.

Similarly, predatory conferences/meetings, despite being set up to appear as legitimate scientific conferences, do not provide proper editorial control. These conferences also claim involvement of prominent academics, which are not involved.

The characteristics associated with predatory open-access publishing include:

• Accepting articles quickly with little or no peer review or quality control, including hoax and nonsensical papers.
• Notifying academics of article fees only after papers are accepted.
• Aggressively campaigning for academics to submit articles or serve on editorial boards.
• Listing academics as members of editorial boards without their permission, and not allowing academics to resign from editorial boards.
• Appointing fake academics to editorial boards.
• Mimicking the name or web site style of more established journals.
• Making misleading claims about the publishing operation, such as a false location.
• Using ISSNs improperly.
• Citing fake or non-existent impact factors.

Characteristics of predatory conferences/meetings include:

• Rapid acceptance of submissions with poor quality control and little or no true peer review.
• Acceptance of submissions consisting of nonsense and/or hoaxed content.
• Notification of high attendance fees and charges only after acceptance.
• Claiming involvement of academics in conference organizing committees without their agreement, and not allowing them to resign.
• Mimicry of the names or website styles of more established conferences, including holding a similarly named conference in the same city.
• Promoting meetings with unrelated images lifted from the Internet.

You might ask, why mention this on a space blog? Well, this affects the scientific community overall, and there are quite a few aerospace pseudo-academic conferences out there that employ these practices. Heads up!

The above-mentioned DEF CON talk is available on YouTube and I encourage you to take the time to watch it: DEF CON 26 – Svea, Suggy, Till – Inside the Fake Science Factory.

References and other useful links:

Predatory open-access publishing

Predatory conference

Beall’s List

Low frequency sounds of the Sun explained by NASA heliophysicist Alex Young.

Video Credit: NASA Goddard

Wikipedia dixit:

“Clean technology refers to any process, product, or service that reduces negative environmental impacts through significant energy efficiency improvements, the sustainable use of resources, or environmental protection activities. Clean technology includes a broad range of technology related to recycling, renewable energy (wind power, solar power, biomass, hydropower, biofuels, etc.), information technology, green transportation, electric motors, green chemistry, lighting, Greywater, and more. Environmental finance is a method by which new clean technology projects that have proven that they are “additional” or “beyond business as usual” can obtain financing through the generation of carbon credits. A project that is developed with concern for climate change mitigation (such as a Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism project) is also known as a carbon project.

While there is no standard definition of “clean technology”, it has been described by Clean Edge, a clean technology research firm, as “a diverse range of products, services, and processes that harness renewable materials and energy sources, dramatically reduce the use of natural resources, and cut or eliminate emissions and wastes.” It notes that “Clean technologies are competitive with, if not superior to, their conventional counterparts. Many also offer significant additional benefits, notably their ability to improve the lives of those in both developed and developing countries”

Video Credit: ESA

NASA dixit:

“A combination of lightning, drought, and human activity caused fires to scorch more than one-third of Yellowstone National Park in the summer of 1988. Within a year, burn scars cast a sharp outline on the 793,880 acres affected by fire, distinguishing wide sections of recovering forest, meadows, grasslands and wetlands from unburned areas of the park. After more than two decades, satellite instruments can still detect these scars from space. In this time-lapse video, a series of false-color images collected by USGS-NASA Landsat satellites from 1987 to 2018 show the burning and gradual regeneration of Yellowstone’s forests following the 1988 fire season. Landsat Project Scientist Jeff Masek talks about how Landsat satellites detect the burn scars from space and distinguish them from healthy, un-burned forest and from new growth. Watch as burn scars (dark red) quickly replace large expanses of healthy green vegetation (dark green) by 1989. Notice how the scars slowly fade over time as new vegetation begins to grow and heal the landscape.”

Video Credit: NASA Goddard

ULA dixit:

“A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta II rocket carrying launch NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) mission lifts off from Space Launch Complex-2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on September 15, 2018. ICESat-2 is the 155th and final launch of the Delta II rocket. From its origin as the launch vehicle for the first Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites to NASA’s Earth observing, science and interplanetary satellites including Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity to vital commercial communication and imaging satellites, the Delta II rocket has truly earned its place in space history.”

Video Credit: ULA

Wikipedia dixit:

“Hurricane Florence is the wettest tropical cyclone on record in the Carolinas and the ninth wettest tropical cyclone to affect the contiguous United States. The sixth named storm, third hurricane, and the first major hurricane of the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season, Florence originated from a strong tropical wave that emerged off the west coast of Africa on August 30, 2018. Steady organization resulted in the formation of a tropical depression on the next day near Cape Verde. Progressing along a steady west-northwest trajectory, the system acquired tropical storm strength on September 1, and fluctuated in strength for several days over open ocean. An unexpected bout of rapid intensification ensued on September 4–5, culminating with Florence becoming a Category 4 major hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson scale with estimated maximum sustained winds of 130 mph (215 km/h).

Environmental conditions tore the storm apart, and Florence degraded to a tropical storm by September 7. Shifting steering currents led to a westward turn into a more suitable environment; the system regained hurricane strength on September 9 and major hurricane status by the following day. At 16:00 UTC on September 10, Florence again became a Category 4 hurricane, later reaching a new peak intensity with winds of 140 mph (220 km/h) and a central pressure of 939 mbar (27.7 inHg). Afterwards, Florence weakened slightly as it underwent an eyewall replacement cycle, but began to restrengthen late on September 11. However, increasing wind shear caused the storm’s winds to gradually taper over the next few days, though the storm’s wind field continued to grow. By the evening of September 13, Florence had been downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane. Early the next day on September 14, Florence made landfall just south of Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, and weakened further as it slowly moved inland.

Early in the storm’s history, the system brought squall conditions to the Cape Verde islands, resulting in some landslides and flooding; however, overall impacts were negligible. With the threat of a major impact in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic United States becoming evident by September 7, the governors of North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, and Maryland, and the mayor of Washington, D.C. declared a state of emergency. On September 10 and September 11, the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia all issued mandatory evacuation orders for some of their coastal communities, as it was expected that emergency management personnel would be unable to reach people in those areas once the storm arrived.”

Video Credit: NASA