Skewered: Who's afraid of the second look?

Trade magazines cost their subscribers a lot of money, sometimes thousands of francs. In return, the well-paying readership relies on the fact that all the information they are served is nailed down, checked at least once, preferably twice. Publications in journals such as Nature or Science open up the academic Olympus to scientists. Because at least two of the experts working for these journals always take the time to check every paper submitted for formal and substantive accuracy. Only those who pass this peer review check will see their article in print.

Many other specialist magazines can only dream of such a procedure. Submitted texts are often simply waved through to the galley proof. Due to a lack of time or because nobody can judge whether what is written is correct anyway. And readers, it is thought, won't notice anyway if not all the details are correct. Apparently, more and more people are paying less and less attention to issues that should actually interest them. The surface is our favorite place to be. Writers and readers alike have become comfortable with it.

A nasty touch to your own nose

Only sometimes we are shaken awake, disturbed, embarrassed. For example, when someone like the American science journalist John Bohannon does a nasty little test on us. And thus proves that not everything that costs a lot of money is really good - and not what you get for free anyway: Bohannon faked a study on the supposedly resounding effect of a lichen extract against cancer cells. As the author of the study, he created an Eritrean doctor who does not exist and - in the interests of fairness - peppered his paper with serious errors such as outrageous data analysis. Bohannon offered his "study" to 304 specialist journals. Over 150 journals printed the fake and Bohannon made his test public in Science (vol. 342, p. 60).

Admittedly, the journals that fell for the scam were predominantly those that do not apply peer review practices. But this is only reassuring at first glance. After all, magazines published by reputable publishers such as Wolters Kluwer, Elsevier or Sage Publications are also among those deceived. In Bohannon's opinion, any editor who was even halfway attentive should have noticed the hair-raising errors in the study. It would have been enough, for example, to do a little research on the Eritrean doctor who wrote the study to realize that he didn't even exist. And to become suspicious.

Writing under pressure

And now? There are the evil journos who didn't check the paper properly. Expecting a sensation, a little of whose glitter shines down on them, they simply wave the bogus crap through. And there is the pressure to always be faster than the competition with the latest news. The lack of time to deal with a topic in depth and stumble across mistakes. The expectation of readers to always get the best for free. The Internet, which seems to make all information freely accessible at all times, is accelerating this trend. How do we get out of this dilemma? Awareness that it is often not enough to "quickly google" something or look it up on Wikipedia would be a start. And then we need time and a budget for skepticism.