Weekend reads: Savage peer reviews, cosmology claim bites dust, $50 million diet pill hoax

booksThis week at Retraction Watch featured polar opposites: Two new entries in our “doing the right thing” category, and one in our plagiarism euphemism parade. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

7 thoughts on “Weekend reads: Savage peer reviews, cosmology claim bites dust, $50 million diet pill hoax”

  1. Reading all of this exceeds challenging. This is borderline depressing. I don’t fully agree with the “savage peer reviews” perspective by Elizabeth Pain: it tends to give a blanketed demonization of the peer review process. However, I do agree with Robert Sternberg’s opinion that there are instances in which “the language is excessive … for the gravity of the sins”. A discussion on this paper has been started at PubPeer:
    https://pubpeer.com/publications/C1719697A58FAD00AFC242FA7515C7

  2. And here’s how a snake oil salesman turned an appearance on the show into $50 million.
    If I read that story correctly, the snake-oiler had never heard of “green coffee extract” when Dr Oz’s staff rang him to call upon his expertise, but he got the hint quickly, told them of his abiding interest in the topic, and already had his website up-to-speed to to sell the stuff by the time they had scheduled him to appear on the show. It sounds like a close symbiotic relationship.

  3. Regarding Dr. Oz and the diet pill scam he helped foster, John Oliver did a great video on Dr. Oz’s promotion of miracle cures and “magic beans.” (Magic bean is actually a quote from Dr. OZ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA0wKeokWUU
    (you HAVE to watch the video)

    Notably, John Oliver, a comedian, has far more scientic accuracy than Dr. Oz.

    Anytime Oz covers a topic I have even a little understanding of, it’s clear it’s being distorted.

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