Isn’t cheating in science journals just part of survival of the fittest?

The way David Coppedge puts it at Creation-Evolution Headlines, that’s a reasonable question.

Predatory publishers’ latest scam: bootlegged and rebranded papers (Nature). We’ve mentioned the problem of predatory journals before (13 Feb 2021, 2 Aug 2018). Now, they are evolving (by malicious intelligent design) to get around efforts to stop them. Why write bogus science when you can steal and rebrand other scientists’ work? It has already passed peer review, so cheaters can dodge efforts to root out fake science. The materialist pro-Darwin rag Nature is flustered about this trend, but what can it do? Isn’t this an example of survival of the fittest or evolutionary game theory in action? Maybe it’s just an evolutionary arms race. Nature believes that evolutionary arms races emerge from time to time, like bees against wasps, butterflies against birds, or moths against bats. Those symbioses are not right or wrong. They just are. Why are not predatory journals examples of the same phenomenon?

David F. Coppedge, “Character Flaws Give Big Science Woes” at Creation-Evolution Headlines (November 13, 2021)

If it’s only wrong when we do it, that must be because we are not just animals.

You may also wish to read: Neil deGrasse Tyson vs. SteakUmm on the philosophy of science The thing is, the saucy social media team at Steak-Umm has a point: What does it mean to say that science is “true”? Was all the contradictory nonsense barked at us during the COVID pandemic “true”? That isn’t even possible. Yet all the barkers will insist that whatever stuff they said was “science” and we will, it seems have to believe them on that one. But with what outcome… we shall see.

and

Springer Nature retracts 44 “utter nonsense” papers. As we’ve noted earlier, it’s getting to the point where “Trust the science!” is sounding more ridiculous all the time. It’s like saying “Trust the mountains” or “Trust milk.” It’s not a rational response to a lot of what we face just now.

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