From Canoe (Canada):
Here’s the latest way to cheat your way to success in the academic world: Give a speech at a science conference that’s so awful, it will let you present research about flying pigs.HT: Fark
All you have to do is pay cash.
Companies that host thousands of these conferences per year are now offering them in Canada, and one operator is using former Canadian companies as a front.
Fake — but expensive — conferences help people to become professors, doctors and other professionals without proper training by providing credentials they haven’t really earned. They are marketed heavily in the Third World.
And far from being a victimless fraud, this cheats the taxpayer and spreads misinformation and incompetence in important professions.
This form of research fraud is simple. It goes like this:
When a scientist discovers something big, he or she publishes the findings in a science journal.
But organizations known as “predatory” journals will publish fake studies and make them look like real science. They help unqualified people to get university jobs or promotions, by making it appear they published legitimate discoveries. The journal collects a steep fee.
Last fall, Postmedia exposed an Indian company called OMICS International for publishing fabricated papers and making them look legitimate. OMICS expanded into Canada last year, taking over two Canadian publishing houses.
But it turns out there’s more.
OMICS and others also run conferences that accept outrageously fraudulent work, Postmedia has now found. People who pay to participate in them can establish professional credentials without doing any real research work. They tell their own universities how they have been invited to present their important findings to a high-level symposium....MORE
Phi Scamma Jamma, baby!
