56 | New Scientist | 4 June 2022
our schedule,” said Larry Connor,
a real estate billionaire from Ohio.
One experiment that had been
slated to take 2.5 hours ended up
taking twice that time, he said.
Another sticking point was
how much the real astronauts’
schedule was disrupted by having
to hand-hold the tourists. In a
review afterwards, safety expert
Susan Helms admitted that the
tourists’ arrival had a “larger-than-
expected impact on the daily
workload” of the crew, something
they would try to reduce in future
trips, according to SpaceNews.
The trip was originally
scheduled to last eight days, but
was extended to 15 because of
bad weather at the landing site –
something the tourists said they
were thrilled about. We didn’t
hear how the crew felt. Feedback’s
suggestion: next time, NASA
should forget the experimentsand let the tourists bring along
their butlers.Define ‘define’
An unusual outbreak of cross-
disciplinary collaboration began
on Twitter recently, when @ halvorz
made the provocative claim that
every academic discipline has
at its core a “word of power” that
everyone has given up trying to
define. In genetics, that word is
“gene”, in chemistry it is “molecule”,
while in medicine it is “health”,
according to some who chimed in.
In Feedback’s experience, for
many of these words, the definitions
haven’t so much been given up on,
as become the subject of rancorous
debates that have destroyed
relationships, careers or even the
odd world, metaphorically speaking.
If astronomers could have agreed
from the start on the definition of
“planet”, poor old Pluto wouldn’t
have lost its status so humiliatingly.
Fortunately, there was little
rancour visible in this particular
debate, although the linguists
couldn’t agree on their impossible-
to-define word. One suggested
“word”, while another insisted it
was, in fact, every word. The big
surprise was from ornithology,
where someone thought it might
be “warbler”. Who knew?New word needed
Speaking of words, Feedback’s
proudest achievement is giving
the world the term “nominative
determinism”. Now, reader
Philippa Sandall – who isn’t a
shoe-maker – thinks the column
and its readers should devise
a timely new word to describe
the phenomenon of people who
expound on controversies despite
knowing no more about them
than the average person – possibly
even less. Feedback is usually
stuck next to them at parties.
We need a word that means
the exact opposite of expert, but
“anti-expert” is too boring. Sandall
proffers “nixpert”, but is sure
that New Scientist readers could
do better. Suggestions please. ❚Spaced out
If you think journal editors have
a tough life, spare a thought for
those multimillionaires who took
part in NASA’s first tourist trip to
the International Space Station.
Possibly stung by criticisms such
as the fact that each person’s trip
will release hundreds of times
more carbon than a typical
holiday on the Costa del Sol, NASA
had been vocal about plans for the
tourists to do some useful work
on board, such as experiments
on human cells and optical lenses.
Awkwardly, at a press
conference held when the three
men landed back on Earth, one of
the main topics was how they had
been worked too hard. Not what
you might expect from a holiday
that cost $55 million a head.
“With the value of hindsight,
we were way too aggressive onRogue editors
If you ever feel in need of some
light entertainment alongside
insights into the decline of research
integrity and the scientific method,
try perusing a website called
Retraction Watch.
As New Scientist has previously
described, some fear that papers in
peer-reviewed journals – once seen
as the most authoritative source of
information – are increasingly
untrustworthy, because scientists’
careers these days hinge on their
publication tally, incentivising
quantity over quality. Retraction
Watch documents official
retractions of papers – either
due to honest errors or outright
fraud – often accompanied
by wry commentary and the
occasional eye-roll.
Feedback thought we already
knew most of the ingenious ways
that fraudulent papers could get
published, but Retraction Watch’s
latest find is a new one on us,
involving the phenomenon of
“rogue editors”. This sees fraudsters
impersonating real scientists when
they write to a journal’s editor
suggesting a special issue on a
hot topic that they kindly offer
to guest-edit. You can guess what
happens next: they accept papers
written by their confederates or
perhaps even themselves, which
could, for instance, be full of
gibberish copied and pasted from
the internet. These papers artificially
inflate someone’s list of publications.
Victims include the Arabian
Journal of Geosciences, which
suffered the embarrassment
of somehow publishing a special
issue that included discussions
of aerobics, running wear and
Latin dancing, and the Journal
of Nanoparticle Research, which
said after an attack that the main
problem is the “exponential growth
of scientific publications... which
leads to the publication of a huge
background noise of useless and
low-level articles”.
At last, official confirmation from
a journal of something Feedback
has long suspected: most scientific
papers are useless.Got a story for Feedback?
Send it to [email protected] or New Scientist,
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