Hacking Google Scholar

Finally, we enjoyed (but were dismayed by) the account given on Reese Richardson's blog about how Google Scholar can be "hacked".  Phony papers are uploaded onto ResearchGate, to boost citations to one's own (possibly equally fraudulent) papers.  There are companies offering to carry out such a citation-boosting campaign for paying customers, but Richardson shows how easily one can do it oneself.  However after he wrote about it, Google Scholar removed the fraudulent citations to the work of "Larry Richardson" (a cat), without necessarily implementing a global solution to the problem.

Predatory conferences: an expose!

Also in this week's Nature, an investigation of predatory conferences!  Journalist Christine Ro actually attended one.  Her observations are eye opening.

I get spam emails from these conferences on a weekly basis.  I've never been tempted to attend one.  I tend to go to conferences sponsored by professional societies that I know fairly well, or other established conference series.  However, as the article shows, many do not have the luxury of being as picky as I am.  Predatory conferences are basically rip-offs, of both the attendees and those who evaluate their CVs.

DTLR hereby denounces predatory conferences, and urges scientists to boycott these sham events.

More Earth Science

The June issue of Physics Today featured an interesting article by Gayen and Klocker, "Deep Convection Drives Oceanic Overturning", pointing to the inadequacy of the classical Rayleigh-Benard model of ocean convection.  This reinforces my questioning of the sincerity of those who study small aspect ratio thermal convection, when they make claims that their research is somehow relevant to real convection in planetary or stellar environments.

This month's Eos has a really nice summary of the flaws of the Colorado River Compact, by Ge et al.  Although I don't live in the Colorado River catchment, I am not far away, and this is a case study of the inevitably ugly collision of science and politics.

Speaking of which, this week Nature has a news article by Jeff Tollefson on a whistle-blower at the U.S. Geological Survey.  Unfortunately, any government bureau is necessarily politically accountable, and this leads to unavoidable clashes betweeen scientific "experts" and political authorities.  Formal whistleblower protections codified in federal law have little or no actual value in the real world. though federal employees are forced to take annual trainings on them.  It is a colossal deceit.