Fake papers are contaminating the world’s scientific literature, fueling a corrupt industry and slowing legitimate lifesaving medical research

Frederik Joelving, Retraction Watch; Cyril Labbé, Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA), and Guillaume Cabanac, Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse (from The Conservation) Over the past decade, furtive commercial entities around the world have industrialized the production, sale and dissemination of bogus scholarly research, undermining the literature that everyone from doctors to engineers rely on to make decisions about human lives. It is exceedingly difficult…

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Can Voters Tell When Politicians are Lying?

“… Dishonesty in politics is a long-standing tradition. Many politicians have clearly benefitted from telling voters what they want to hear or what they want to believe, and history is filled with examples of politicians lying to cover up crime and corruption.” “Dishonesty in politics is important because it poses a threat to electoral accountability. Citizens who can detect political lies are more safeguarded against…

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What is Alzheimer's disease?

Alzheimer’s Disease, Climate Change, Cancer, and more — keep up to date on science topics that matter to you with CuratedSci

Keep up-to-date on science topics that matter to you. Avoid being inundated by hundreds or thousands of articles or misled by out-of-date AI-generated summaries. Get current science news from five well-known, respected sources. For Alzheimer’s disease, climate change, cancer, and other topics, use CuratedSci. Questions? Please let me know (engelk@grinnell.edu).

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AI, finding information, and surviving

There is a vast amount of hype surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and its applications. And there are valid concerns about the use of AI and its negative impact on our society. Like the long lineage of communication technologies that have preceded AI, human beings will use it–some for good (or at least with good intentions) and some to further crime, greed, corruption, and to gain…

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Should information be free?

Should information be shared freely? That is, should content (text, images, videos, etc.) be shared without external control? Shared at no additional cost? Or, should information be controlled, manipulated, and limited–in the name of profit and/or ideology? There is no purity in this debate. All information has a cost, and often it is quite expensive. Producers of information may choose to give it away, others…

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black and white thinking

The thinking error that makes people susceptible to climate change denial

Jeremy P. Shapiro, Case Western Reserve University (The Conversation). Cold spells often bring climate change deniers out in force on social media, with hashtags like #ClimateHoax and #ClimateScam. Former President Donald Trump often chimes in, repeatedly claiming that each cold snap disproves the existence of global warming. From a scientific standpoint, these claims of disproof are absurd. Fluctuations in the weather don’t refute clear long-term…

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