A reporter published a fake study to expose how terrible some scientific journals are - Vox

A reporter for the Ottawa Citizen wrote a plagiarized, completely incoherent paper about soils, cancer treatment, and Mars. And eight scientific journals want to publish it.  Tom Spears' paper (the full title: 'Acidity and aridity: Soil inorganic carbon storage exhibits complex relationship with low-pH soils and myeloablation followed by autologous PBSC infusion') was written as part of a sting operation to expose predatory science journals.  So-called 'predatory' journals are online-only, for-profit operations that take advantage of inexperienced researchers under pressure to publish their work in any outlet that seems superficially legitimate. They're very different from more respected, rigorous journals like Science and Nature that publish much of the research you read about in the news — for one, the predatory journals don't conduct peer-review — the process where other scientists in the field evaluate a paper before it's published.  Spears built his article entirely from unrelated phrases copied from legitimate existing research, then sent it to 18 of these journals. Eight quickly responded, offering to publish his work for a fee ranging from $1,000 to $5,000.  One journal, the Merit Research Journal of Agricultural Science and Soil Sciences, even told Spears that they had had the piece reviewed by a soil expert and were willing to publish. You can check out the entire three-page paper at Weekly Science, a journal that describes itself as 'an International Research Online Journal publishing the double blind peer–reviewed research papers in all fields of multi-science' ..."