No one here at EvC has mentioned this yet, so I'd like to bring attention to a recent paper that was published by
PLOS ONE, entitled "Biomechanical Characteristics of Hand Coordination in Grasping Activities of Daily Living."
A glance at the title of the paper reveals nothing particularly strange. However, one need only read the abstract to come across this:
"The explicit functional link indicates that the biomechanical characteristic of tendinous connective architecture between muscles and articulations is the proper design by the Creator to perform a multitude of daily tasks in a comfortable way."
Of course, the broader scientific community took to Twitter in a valiant effort to understand how such a paper could have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Fortunately,
PLOS ONE has retracted the paper, immediately apologized, and appears to be going in a frenzy in an attempt to clean up this mess. See
here for some discussion and comments regarding
PLOS ONE.
I'd like to use this thread to:
1. Discuss any bad science papers that somehow make it to print.
2. Stimulate broader discussion of the peer-review process and how it can be improved.
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