A blogger fooled three scientific journals into publishing a fake Star Wars-themed paper
The bogus manuscript about ‘midi-chlorians’ was written by ‘Dr Lucas McGeorge’ and ‘Dr Annette Kin’.
A science blogger has revealed three medical journals published a fake scientific study littered with absurd Star Wars references in a “sting operation” orchestrated by them.
The blogger, who goes by the name Neuroskeptic, wrote in a post on Discover Magazine that they “wanted to test whether ‘predatory’ journals would publish an obviously absurd paper”.
Neuroskeptic created a bogus manuscript with a very convincing title – Mitochondria: Structure, Function and Clinical Relevance – and sent it to nine publishers.
“I created a spoof manuscript about ‘midi-chlorians’ – the fictional entities which live inside cells and give Jedi their powers in Star Wars,” they wrote.
“I filled it with other references to the galaxy far, far away, and submitted it to nine journals under the names of Dr Lucas McGeorge and Dr Annette Kin.”
The name of the authors are thinly-veiled references to George Lucas, the original creator of the Star Wars franchise, and Anakin Skywalker, one of the characters in the film instalments.
They claimed a fourth journal – The American Journal of Medical and Biological Research (SciEP) – requested a $360 (£276) fee to publish the paper, which wasn’t paid.
All the four journals did not immediately respond to request for comment, although MedCrave and Austin have removed the manuscript from their sites on Monday.
The paper also included a passage lifted from Star Wars Episode III, in which the villain Emperor Palpatine tells Anakin about Darth Plagueis – a dark lord who gained the power to bring people back from the dead.
Neuroskeptic said the paper “should have rejected within about 5 minutes – or 2 minutes if the reviewer was familiar with Star Wars”.
“So does this sting prove that scientific publishing is hopelessly broken?” they continued.
“No, not really. It’s just a reminder that at some ‘peer reviewed’ journals, there really is no meaningful peer review at all. Which we already knew, not least from previous stings, but it bears repeating.
“All I did, as Lucas McGeorge, was test the quality of the products being advertised.”
