Alex WellersteinVerified account

There's no doubt that shoddy science gets published in "hard" science journals, but it's usually possible at least in principle to weed it out. But when your paper is based on opinion rather than statistics or data, my guess about its merit can be as good as yours.

1) There are different standards of evidence in different fields, including different fields of science. 2) These fields aren't pretending to be science (unlike some fields...). 3) Peer review sucks for catching deliberate fraud, including in hard sciences.

But I think part of the question here is precisely regarding the definition of those standards; if they are so all over the place that it's virtually impossible to even define what a "good" and a "bad" paper is, then isn't your field in trouble? The 2nd point I am sympathetic to.

I don't think one can conclude from a few editors being fooled by deliberate frauds that these fields have truly no sense of what makes a good paper — this is an epistemological and sociological claim that well exceeds the evidence.

....What's the number or percentage of papers that needs to sneak through before we can ask if their is legitimacy to the concerns.

If the goal is to show that deliberate fraud can get through peer review... I mean, the answer is "duh." (As it has, in the past, with other fields, even more "rigorous" ones.) The question is: what's the point? Who cares?

And I mean this seriously: what do you care if some other small field does things differently? Especially ones that appear to have literally zero influence over anything in the rest of the academy or society?

I don't think that's true at all. You seriously underestimate the reach. Questionable ideas from these fields are filtering throughout society and being treated by laymen/politicians/and HR departments as fact.