I am trying to keep tabs on examples of how #predatoryjournals are affecting patient care and public perceptions of health. I wrote about this before (see link a couple of tweets down). Today I’d like to point out this @sciam article blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/d… 1/n
There is a bit of storm on Twitter around this article as it has been perceived by some as a hit piece on @DrJenGunter ... I’ll reserve judgement on that - instead, here, I want to focus on two particular problematic paragraphs: 2/n 
So what is this “credible evidence”? Clicking on the link you’ll find this ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P… 3/n
This is from a #predatoryjournal - @ccsenet - a known predatory publisher that is even listed Beall’s list (a so-called “black-list” of journals/publishers). bit.ly/2QTImAa 4/n
As a second check, this journal is also NOT listed on the Directoy of Open Access Journals - a list of credible open access journals bit.ly/2L1GIJ7 5/n
The predatory article itself is full of typographical errors and appears to be generally low quality. Exactly what you would expect from a #predatoryjournal 6/n
So what does this mean? My take: @sciam is enabling the spread of predatory journals and their content. These journals fail to hold up the basic standards of scientific publication and the peer-review process. 7/n
This results in unvetted information, sloppily presented, entering the public domain. @sciam and @writingblock have legitimized this work by citing + promoting it. This is particularly troubling given that @sciam is a public-facing scientific publication (300k+ subscribers). 8/n
If you aren't aware of the massive issues created by predatory journals please take a look at our work published in @nature on this problem (ironically @SpringerNature publishes both @nature and @sciam) go.nature.com/2eLueEW 9/n
Earlier I also mentioned my own family’s brush with predatory journals. Here is that post: bit.ly/2pUfJXM 10/n
Finally, pinging some people who have written/tweeted about/or studied #predatoryjournals @dmoher @KDCobey @_Journalology @picardonhealth @jwoodgett @eggersnsf @KarimKhan_IMHA @ProulxLaurie @TO_dpr @DonnaRubenstein @annasvrn @MarthieMvn3 @glbryson @mattjhodgkinson @epi_rad
Pinging more people interested in predatory journals: @agrudniewicz @hildabast @stoppredatoryj @stefhaustein @Monya_science @AndCorteg @TomSpears1 @NakedScientists
