What are some of the worst academic papers ever published? | Hacker News Reader

What are some of the worst academic papers ever published?

quora.com

25 pointskumaranvpl24 comments

There is also this paper (which I may have gotten from a Hacker News post in the past):

Tsai, A Mathematical Model for the Determination of Total Area Under Glucose Tolerance and Other Metabolic Curves, Diabetes Care 1994 Feb; 17(2): 152-154. [1]

Related blog post: "Medical researcher discovers integration, gets 75 citations" [2]

[1] http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/17/2/152.abstract

[2] https://fliptomato.wordpress.com/2007/03/19/medical-research...

Yes, this is top ranked [1] peer-reviewed journal just in case anyone is wondering

[1] https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?category=2712

Here is the actual paper: https://math.berkeley.edu/~ehallman/math1B/TaisMethod.pdf

It even thanks a Professor of Electrical Engineering for his expert review.

The economist Gary Becker's paper "Crime and punishment: an economic approach" [0] is up there for me.

He argued that prior to committing a crime, the perpetrator weighs the potential benefits of the crime against the probability of being caught and the ensuing severity of punishment. If the benefits exceed the costs, the criminal commits the crime. It is then noted that enforcement costs money. Becker concludes that the maximally efficient way to deter crime is to do relatively little enforcement, but to hand out severe penalties to criminals who are caught.

Becker was a respected economist at the time of publishing this paper. One can always defend a publication like this with the claim that 'it's just a model' but there is some evidence that the theory was used to justify crime policy from the 70's onward.

[0] https://www.nber.org/chapters/c3625.pdf

I can imagine that this probably applies to white-collar and corporate crime (anti-trust, tax evasion, etc.)

The ethics arguments against the conclusions drawn by that paper are stronger than the plausibility ones.

But if you think Becker's theoretical model itself is dubious, it's got nothing on Kopczuk and Slemrod's "Dying to Save Estate Taxes" paper... http://www.columbia.edu/~wk2110/bin/dying-final.pdf

> there is some evidence that the theory was used to justify crime policy from the 70's onward.

In non-coincidental news, the crime rate is also a lot lower today than it was in the 1960s and early 1970s. So we can finally afford to lower the severity of punishments, because the overall costs/benefits profile has been shifted and a lower crime rate also makes enforcement easier. Sounds like the marker of a successful social policy to me - score one for Becker!

That also isn't a novel idea at all - Chinese legalist ideas called for the same thing. Of course said policy and its implementers were so stupid they had only a /15/ year dynasty.

Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity - Alan Sokal 1994, published in Social Text #46/47, pp. 217-252 (spring/summer 1996).

https://physics.nyu.edu/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_si...

Background for this artcile - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

> ...rise of deconstructionist thought, which eventually led to a deconstructionist critique of science.[citation needed]

Just perfect.

Here’s another popular (and thorough!) answer about a paper that claims gender bias causes more deaths from female-named hurricanes than male ones: https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-worst-academic-pa...

And here my answer was going to be that discredited one which triggered the anti-vaxxer movement.

That's the top answer (https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-worst-academic-pa...) - and deservedly so!

For those not clicking on the link (like me), it's Andrew Wakefield - who published a blatantly false paper in The Lancet in 1998 [1], linking MMR vaccines to autism [2] - triggering the anti-vaccination movement, leading to a resurgence of hitherto eradicated diseases [3].

[1] - http://briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-paper.htm

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_MMR_autism_fraud

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield#Epidemics,_ef...

Same. It's also been proved that he was making it up but people turn a blind eye to that part of it.

Paper Generator was also a nice experiment, in this context:

https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/scigen/

Maybe link to all the answers instead of just this one ? IMO the other answers are much better. It's crazy what journals will publish without even looking at it.

How do you see all the answers? When I click on the question, the page displays the text "20 Answers" and only one answer...

Click on the question. I had to use an incognito tab to bypass the login screen.

That's what I did. Still, only one answer (the one about the false research on autism and vaccines)

Click this link in incognito mode: https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-worst-academic-pa...

How did they even get a link to a single answer? I’m trying to share a different answer and Quora is trying really hard to prevent it.

EDIT: I figured it out and feel like a total doofus. The intuitive UI flow is to share to Facebook, grab the URL, dig out the relevant bit, and URL decode it (/s):

    https://m.facebook.com/login.php?skip_api_login=1&api_key=136609459636&signed_next=1&next=https%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com%2Fv2.8%2Fdialog%2Fshare%3Fchannel%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fstaticxx.facebook.com%252Fconnect%252Fxd_arbiter%252Fr%252FMmH55ZI0Z2G.js%253Fversion%253D44%2523cb%253Df172009273f7fca%2526domain%253Dwww.quora.com%2526origin%253Dhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.quora.com%25252Ff19f10ae593154c%2526relation%253Dopener%26redirect_uri%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fstaticxx.facebook.com%252Fconnect%252Fxd_arbiter%252Fr%252FMmH55ZI0Z2G.js%253Fversion%253D44%2523cb%253Dfed3dc98298c12%2526domain%253Dwww.quora.com%2526origin%253Dhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.quora.com%25252Ff19f10ae593154c%2526relation%253Dopener%2526frame%253Df2f7e2a89e66c68%2526result%253D%252522xxRESULTTOKENxx%252522%26display%3Dtouch%26href%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.quora.com%252FWhat-are-some-of-the-worst-academic-papers-ever-published%252Fanswer%252FHenry-Brice%253Fch%253D1%2526share%253Dfb45ccda%2526srid%253Dvxoy%26client_id%3D136609459636%26ret%3Dlogin%26sdk%3Djoey%26fallback_redirect_uri%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.quora.com%252FWhat-are-some-of-the-worst-academic-papers-ever-published%252Fanswer%252FHenry-Brice%252Fshare&cancel_url=https%3A%2F%2Fstaticxx.facebook.com%2Fconnect%2Fxd_arbiter%2Fr%2FMmH55ZI0Z2G.js%3Fversion%3D44%23cb%3Dfed3dc98298c12%26domain%3Dwww.quora.com%26origin%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.quora.com%252Ff19f10ae593154c%26relation%3Dopener%26frame%3Df2f7e2a89e66c68%26result%3D%257B%2522error_code%2522%253A4201%252C%2522error_message%2522%253A%2522User%2Bcanceled%2Bthe%2BDialog%2Bflow%2522%257D%26error_code%3D4201%26error_message%3DUser%2Bcanceled%2Bthe%2BDialog%2Bflow%26e2e%3D%257B%257D&display=touch&locale=en_US&_rdr

Related: The Ig Nobel Prize https://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/

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