If you do a Google search for “uromycitisis,” the results make it clear that this “disease” only happens on TV, specifically on the sitcom Seinfeld. Soon, those search results will include a scientific paper written by John McCool. McCool is not a medical doctor. He owns a freelance scientific editing company, and is very concerned about “predatory scientific journals,” the kind that will publish your paper if you pay them. Since published papers are the real currency of one’s reputation as a scientist, these journals are flourishing. So McCool wrote a paper about uromycitisis for The Urology & Nephrology Open Access Journal.
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This was inspired by the classic 1991 episode, “The Parking Garage,” in which Jerry Seinfeld can’t find his car in a mall lot, has to urinate, does so against a garage wall, is caught by a security guard, and tries to get out of a citation by claiming that he suffers from a condition called uromycitisis. Seinfeld argued that, due to his illness, he could die if he doesn’t relieve himself whenever he needs to.
I went all out. I wrote my report as “Dr. Martin van Nostrand,” the physician-alter ego of another Seinfeld character, and listed more show-inspired names as bogus coauthors. I made an email account for “Dr. van Nostrand” and created a fake institution where the authors worked: the Arthur Vandelay Urological Research Institute. In the acknowledgements section of my report, I thanked phony physicians including Tor Eckman, the bizarre holistic healer from “The Heart Attack,” giving him a “Doctor of Holistic Medicine (HMD)” degree. Basically, I wrote the manuscript in a style as close to a real case report as I could, except that it was 100 percent fake.
The journal accepted his article, then asked for $799. McCool didn’t pay, but they published the article, which you can read here. Get more details about predatory journals at Retraction Watch. -via Metafilter
Source: neatorama