If at first you dont succeed, deny, deny again

I think the unofficial Favorite Journal of ScienceBlogs has got to be the journal, Medical Hypotheses. It used to be, you could take two different approaches if you wanted to publish in Medical Hypotheses. 1-- Smash your face into your keyboard for 15 minutes. Submit for publication. Or, the less expedient 2-- Leave your laptop open on your bed and let your cat walk/take naps/play on the keyboard for a couple of days. Submit.

See, Medical Hypotheses had no peer review step in its publication process, so the kookiest, most dumbdiddilous crap could get published there, from anti-vax idiocy to HIV Denial.

Well, another SciBlog fave, HIV Denier Peter Duesberg, literally broke Medical Hypotheses when he published an HIV Denial screed there. Elsevier yanked the article, canned the journals editor, and implemented a peer review stage in the publication process at Medical Hypotheses.

Now, while having one of your articles cause such a fiasco might give a normal, sane scientist pause, we are talking about Peter Duesberg here. Dude *will not* give up his failed hypothesis from 30 damn years ago that HIV doesnt cause AIDS (what does? I dunno. Aliens?)

So he just turned around and submitted his article to, apparently, 4 or 5 journals, and one of them accepted it: Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology

Wow, here I am working on a degree in Microbiology and Immunology like a sucker, when REAL HIV/AIDS research goes on in the Anatomy and Embryology department! OF COURSE!

Hey, somebody tell Judy Mikovits that all is not lost-- she can just resubmit her crap paper to Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology too! I bet they will also accept all her SUPER SECRET autism data! XMRV, HIV, autism, epidemiology, embryology, all the same thing, amirite?

Jackasses...

I am just rolling my eyes at this (to quote Max Essex, "It is just so far out that it is hard to respond in an intelligent way"), but Blog Brother Mark Hoofnagle is blogging again at one of my old favorites, Denialism Blog, and has got this shit covered.

More like this

The very first sign Judy Mikovits was not just a little 'off-her-rocker' kook-coo, but full on 'off-the-rocker-set-it-on-fire-and-dancing-around-the-flames-nude-while-using-feces-as-war-paint' kook-coo, was this comment she made about XMRV, vaccines, and autism, before her shit paper was even…
Pity poor Peter Duesberg. Back in the 1980s, he was on the top of the world, scientifically speaking. A brilliant virologist with an impressive record of accomplishment, publication, and funding, he seemed to be on a short track to an eventual Nobel Prize. Then something happened. The AIDS epidemic…
These days, I'm having a love-hate relationship with Elsevier. On the one hand, there are lots of reasons to hate Elsevier. For example, Elsevier took payments from Merck, Sharp & Dohme in order to publish in essence a fake journal designed to promote its products, and then got caught doing it…
I don't mean to beat up on Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick. I really don't. I realize I rather harshly criticized him yesterday for being so hostile to the concept of "denialism," to the point where he characterized even the use of the term as a means of "suppressing" free speech. Normally, that criticism…

Probs for your humor.

By mo (one of Abb… (not verified) on 06 Jan 2012 #permalink

LOL. If I am not crazy, I think I remember hearing an interview you did (or debate?) and i thnk on the phone was some dentist guy who was an AIDS denier, who made the claim that he had his ideas published and when you asked him which journal it was MH!

But as I recall (and could be totally wrong) at the time you were not familiar with it and all its lunacy.

Yeah but does the Smash your face into your keyboard thing work for the Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology?

By starskeptic (not verified) on 06 Jan 2012 #permalink

I totally tried the cat method, but it never worked.

You ever try giving a cat a bath? - How do you keep the fur from sticking to your tongue?

By starskeptic (not verified) on 07 Jan 2012 #permalink