Every science student should know the importance of peer review that it involves other experts in the same field to check the validity of academic paper and suitability of publication. However, in real life peer review still lacks sufficient attention and that has much impact on the public more than you think!
John Bohannon is a journalist and PH.D. in molecular biology of bacteria. He thinks many publishers pay little attention to peer review and one of many reason is for profit.
In 2013, he made up 304 papers about a biologist Ocorrafoo Cobange at the Wassee Institute of Medicine in Asmara found some anticancer element collected from a lichen. They are unusual because the biologist and the Wassee Institute of Medicine do not exist, and this anticancer element is fake. John submitted 304 papers to 255 open-access journals worldwide and 157 of these papers were accepted. Only 36 papers were reviewed and 16 of them were still accepted after “peer review”. Certainly, John withdrawal these 16 papers before they actually get published. The results of his “experiment” were quite shocking. Based on this outcome, he published a paper on Science revealed many publishers consider profit from publication before subscriptions.
He did another experiment 1 year later. In 2014 he recruited 15 people through facebook to do a 3-week experiment. They aged from 19 to 67 years old, and 5 of them were male and 10 of them were female. John randomly assigned them to 3 groups. One group followed regular diet. One group followed a low-sugar diet and the other group followed a low-sugar diet plus 40 grams of black chocolate. John with his partners measured 18 kinds of health data for 15 people everyday and after 3 weeks they found that 2 groups followed low-carb diet lost 5 pounds of averaged weight. Between the 2 treatment groups, the group ate a bar black chocolate everyday for 21 days lost their weight faster than the other group and their cholesterol level had decreased.
John and his partners started to write paper after the defective experiment. After some time they finished the paper ” Chocolate with high Cocoa content as a weight-loss accelerator”, which was a well-formed paper. It has proper format, eligible literature review and figures displaying data. They submitted it to 20 publisher and accepted by some of publishers within 24 hours. In 2015, John published this paper on International Archives of Medicine after he paid 600 euros. John did not stop his “experiment” then. He recomposed his paper and made a news manuscript. In a short time, many newspapers companies reprint it and resulting in a widespread across the world.
After a few months, John wrote an article “I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here’s How.” and explained how bad lacking peer review can impact on everyone’s life.
The paper has been removed from the International Archives of Medicine website but people can still see it online.
