In addition to being a published author in fields relating to cultural geography, I am also a retired semiconductor process engineer who is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The argument of this Aero article is that the ability of them to successfully get some journals to publish some of these articles, written and submitted in poor faith, necessarily means these fields of study are invalid. However, this A then B is without merit.
Some years back the scientific press published a great many articles on the Sirtuins, a family of biochemicals of importance, showing a great many positive results in terms of regeneration and rejuvenation and possibly forestalling aging. Well it didn't turn out that way and hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital was lost.
It was such a failure in research that "Science" magazine had an article on it basically asking what happened and discussing how enthusiasm and other things caused such a massive failure.
However, the conclusion that molecular biology as a field of study was invalid wasn't asserted and even the importance of Sirtuins in biology wasn't questioned. Instead the focus was on not letting bias and enthusiasm result in poor research and to do better research in the future.
Aero instead is not interested in better peer review or critical studies but seek to discredit fields of study on the basis that they are very clever in getting journals to publish articles.
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