User talk:Yilloslime/Questionable Sources

I'd be inclined to omit Regulation . The title isn't misleading, since the journal is mainly about (criticism of) regulation. Of course it follows the Cato line, but there isn't any effort to pretend otherwiseJQ (talk) 07:33, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see your point.Yilloslime (t) 15:05, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Antelan started WP:NOTRS a couple months back, but appears not to have had a chance to flesh out the essay. May I inform them of this page, or is it intended as a limited project for at least the nonce? - Eldereft ~(s)talk~ 18:45, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

At this point I'm not thinking of this as anything more than an informal list of suspect sources that should only be used very carefully, if at all. If it grows into something more (e.g. an essay), I'd be OK with that, but that's not my intention. So sure, go ahead and tell them about this page and encourage them to add other journals, but please don't make it sound like anything more than it is. Yilloslime (t) 18:56, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PLoS ONE?

Anyone have any thoughts on PLoS ONE? My preliminary research leads me to question its reliability: authors must pay to have their work published, there is only one referee per article (two is standard) and s/he isn't necessarily even an expert in the field, and the journal seems to be dumping ground for papers rejected from other PLoS journals: “Authors may request that papers…rejected from one PLoS journal be transferred to PLoS ONE, for further consideration there...Also, if an academic editor on another PLoS journal sponsors a paper, rejected from that journal, for publication in PLoS ONE, we will respect that sponsorship.”[1] Finally, without going into the details, the only two papers from the journal I've looked at closely ([2] and [3]) have, IMHO, some serious methodological problems.

But all this is WP:OR, and I could have the journal pegged completely wrongly. It certainly doesn't seem to be "captured" by industry the same way that Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology or Indoor and Built Environment are, or totally WP:FRINGE like JPANDS or 21st century. It just seems, to me, that the bar for publication is incredibly low. Anyone have any thoughts or know of criticisms from reliable sources? Yilloslime (t)

The pay-to-publish thing isn't necessarily a disqualifier by itself; there's a move toward open access, and many journals have at least the option for the authors to pay to make their articles open access. Certainly PLoS Medicine is a reasonably good journal (the only PLoS one I've looked at). But it appears that all of the PLoS journals are independent, so the fact that one or two are reliable doesn't mean they all are. In fact, PLoS ONE draws a distinction between PLoS Medicine, which has a professional peer-review/editorial process, and PLoS ONE, which has a "community-based editorial board", whatever that means. Dunno. MastCell ^Talk 18:13, 23 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say PLoS wants to maintain a high reputation, and will be fairly careful in publishing articles. It's not accurate to say that all PLoS journals are independent: they share the same name, and thus each journal has an interest in what the others publish. If you include PLoS ONE, you might as well include most newspapers -- although they generally aren't doing original research, they do often do investigative journalism. Incidentally, you should consider adding Quackwatch. Regardless of the Journal of Scientific Explorations' merits and lack thereof, Kaufmann's review does point out a strange lack of citing proficiency from Quackwatch's staff. I've looked closely at just one Quackwatch article, and I found two errors in it. Possibly I'm wrong, but I can find no reference to the mysterious 3rd Mayo Clinic study anywhere in Pubmed or elsewhere. No industry connections have been established to Quackwatch that I know of, but it is not very reliable. ImpIn | (t - c) 10:28, 11 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you mean by "if you include PLoS ONE, you might as well include most newspapers" can you explain? As for Quackwatch, it's not, to my knowledge, or journal or news source, so I don't think it fits here. My point with this page is to compile at list of reputable-sounding journals (and perhaps some orgs too) that are anything but reputable. The problem with JPANDS is not so much that it publishes "utter nonsense" but that it does so under the name Journal of American Physicians Surgeons and under the auspices of the " Association of American Physicians and Surgeons." It sounds all official and academic even though it's not, and people who don't know better can and frequently do mistake it for a "real" journal. Yilloslime (t) 16:19, 11 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd agree there. I think with a site called "Quackwatch", you know what you're getting into. It's not going to be be an open-minded exploration of alternative medicine - it's going to be polemical. The intent of this list, as best I can tell, is to catalog sources whose names or other attributes give the appearance of greater objectivity or independence than they actually possess. MastCell ^Talk 16:46, 11 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Quackwatch is not that much more obviously polemical than, say, JunkScience. And I certainly don't think many people are confused about NewsMax, at least not after they take one glance at the site. There are people who think Quackwatch is reliable (Fyslee argued with me when I said I was gonna take it out of the LP article). As far as PLoS ONE and newspapers, not entirely sure where I was going, except to suggest that most newspapers/weeklies/magazines are fairly unreliable, yet we use them anyway. I don't even trust the NYT much. These sorts of articles a pretty major source of "secondary" information, yet journalists are notorious for misinterpreting science. I don't see this discussed much on Wikipedia. We emphasize "secondary sources", yet in many cases primary sources are preferable, and easy enough to understand.

However, PLoS ONE is a source for primary information. I think it is fine -- PLoS is on the upper tier of journals, especially open-access, and that sort of attention gets you good reviewers and requires you to maintain high standards. There are probably hundreds of journals which are less reliable than PLoS ONE. I'm curious as to what the methodological issues you saw in those papers -- you should consider dropping a short comment about them on the site if you have time, so people can correct their mistakes and future researchers will not make the same mistakes. This is what science depends upon, rather than peer review. As an open-access repository, PLoS one is depending to some degree more on community input, which makes sense. Many journals frequently publish papers with methodological problems. Take, for example, the NEJM's two Mayo Clinic trials which claimed to replicate and disprove Pauling's trial of vitamin C. The first study used heavy conventional chemotherapy, and neither used IV vitamin C, although Pauling did. Both also didn't extend the vitamin C therapy past 75 days; Pauling did. Obviously no replication. Yet NEJM is considered of the most reputable journals in the world. PLoS has a decent reputation. In PLoS ONE, competing interests are identified, the papers are reviewed by experts, and the papers are open to being criticized later. Depending upon peer review offers, as the peer review page astutely points out, a false sense of security. But really, I just don't understand why you would want to put PLoS on the same level as what you've got here. You have a list of journals with obvious conflicts of interest and distorted, and you want to toss in one of the journals which requires that all COI be announced. PLoS ONE may not be Nature, but it is not even close to JPANDS.ImpIn | (t - c) 00:43, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't necessarily mean to imply that PLoS One is on par with JPANDS--a source can be questionable without being as worthless as JPANDS. And while I remain unconvinced of PLoS One's reliability, I'm also not convinced that it actual is unreliable--that's why it's here on the talk page, and not and the page page. For the reasons stated at the top of this thread, I get the feeling that it's pretty easy to get a paper into this journal, and that it could become, or possibly already has become, a place for industry flacks to publish material in a "peer reviewed journal" that otherwise wouldn't make it into the scientific literature. And I guess I'm hoping that someone will come along and point me to an analysis in a reliable source that either confirms or allays my suspicion. Yilloslime (t) 01:53, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I just discovered I was mentioned above. Quackwatch is a notable source for critical and skeptical POV, and is not in the same category as a scientific peer reviewed source. It is considered reliable in that sense by many official organizations, such as the American Cancer Society. Even where it might not be best to quote it, it can be used as a place to find good sources that are peer reviewed. -- Fyslee / talk 19:47, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

More

Here are some more, some of which are already blacklisted here, which is why I had to nowiki them:

Mercola.com http://www.mercola.com/ CureZone http://curezone.org/ Gary Null's Natural Living http://www.garynull.com/ Dr. Clark Research Association http://www.drclark.net/ Quackpot Watch http://www.quackpotwatch.org/ The Bolen Report http://www.bolenreport.com/ Save Dr. Clark http://www.savedrclark.net/ Red Flags http://www.redflagsweekly.com/ DORway http://www.dorway.com/ Aspartame Victims Support Group http://www.presidiotex.com/aspartame/index.html International Advocates for Health Freedom http://www.iahf.com/ Orthomolecular Medicine Online http://www.orthomed.org/ WHALE http://www.whale.to/ DoctorYourself.Com http://doctoryourself.com/ National Vaccine Information Center http://www.nvic.org/ Vaccination News http://www.vaccinationnews.com/ AidsMyth http://www.aidsmyth.com/ Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients ([[Townsend Letter]]) http://www.tldp.com/ TALK International http://www.talkinternational.com/ Burzynski Clinic http://www.cancermed.com/ DrWhitaker.com http://www.drwhitaker.com/ Educate Yourself http://educate-yourself.org/ California Citizens for Health http://www.citizenshealth.org/ Progress in Medicine Foundation http://www.treatmentchoice.org/ NewsTarget.com http://www.newstarget.com

-- Fyslee / talk 19:42, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I find it interesting to use the external links search tool every now and then for some of these; amazing the things you find. MastCell ^Talk 20:28, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the article for the Townsend Letter, which is in the same class as the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. It should also be listed. -- Fyslee (talk) 14:04, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps. I think it would be useful to draw a distinction between journals that are dedicated to pseudoscience on the one hand, and ostensibly mainstream scientific journals that are really just vanity presses for industry "science" on the other. And of course there's probably some overlap between the two. I'm guessing Townsend would be more in the pseudoscience category?Yilloslime ^T_C 16:30, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It professes to support good science and legitimate methods, but in reality it supports all kinds of woo-woo, pseudoscience, and anti-mainstream crap. It often gets cited as if it were a reliable source of information for mainstream opinion, but that's far from the truth. -- Fyslee (talk) 04:53, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

British Nutrition Foundation?

they look kinda astroturfy, at least according to sourcewatch.Yilloslime (t) 18:38, 27 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Institute for Basic Research

At first glance looks the institute and associated journals look psuedoscientific.[4] Yilloslime (t) 02:25, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Threshold Editions

Publisher of this book, promoting the thoroughly discredited notion that Rachel Carson was wrong and DDT is harmless. Yilloslime ^T_C 16:25, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Food and Chemical Toxicology

What do you think about the reliability of "Food and Chemical Toxicology". The journal describes itself as "The Journal's editorial policy reflects the need for high-quality science in support of health and safety decisions. FCT is willing to consider papers of a more regulatory nature,". Read: Lobby.

I can't find which association publishes but (the main editor, Joseph F. Borzelleca, is the president of a company "Toxicology & Pharmacology, Inc"[5] also/formely known as "ToxPro", whose email was "toxpro@aol.com" and used to provide consultancy to the Tobacco Industry, like in this email to Philip Morris. And others: [6] --Nutriveg (talk) 14:35, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ya I don't know, but I've never heard of it. Can you find any independent criticisms of it? Yilloslime ^T_C 16:02, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

here. --Nutriveg (talk) 16:52, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Published (same ISSN) by BIBRA International (formerly British Industrial Biological Research Association), a consulting company that says to be "one of the most experienced and successful hazard and risk assessment organisations in Europe, and the most effective one-stop shop in the field of desk-based toxicology in the world today. We believe, unequivocally, that we should be your partner of choice in addressing all your requirements in the field of chemical risk and hazard assessment"--Nutriveg (talk) 17:54, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]