Stalking scientists and evading paywalls

But not in a creepy or illegal way (10 minute read)

As a student, I spent many, many hours at the Biological Sciences Library at the University of Auckland. Whenever I had an essay to write, I’d head for a dark corner at the end of a row of desks, where there were shelves containing the latest journals to have arrived in the library’s collection. I’d pick up a journal with a relevant title, something like Plant Pathology or the Journal of Ecology, and look for the page which listed the papers. If I found nothing promising, I’d pick up the next most recent issue, and so on, until I found something that looked useful. I’d give the paper a skim read and, if it looked good, take it over to the photocopier and make a copy.

The next step was particularly important. Every scientific paper has a list of references – other papers that the authors have referred to in their publication. I would go through the list of references, mark any that looked useful, then attempt to track them down.

One of the biggest problems with this system was that it only worked backwards. It was easy to see the references a paper had used, but there was no effective way to find out if subsequent papers had used a paper I was interested in. Finding information was a painstaking process, not to mention wasteful. It would take years before I was willing to consign my huge stack of photocopied papers to the recycling bin.

Today, I type some search terms into Google Scholar, and in less than a second I have a list with dozens of potentially useful articles. If I find a good paper, not only can I look at the reference list, but with one click I can get a list of other papers which have cited the paper I’m interested in. It’s free, and I don’t need to leave my spare bedroom.

It has never been easier to find information than it is today. But it isn’t easier to find good information. In fact, it seems as if finding good information has become progressively more difficult.

This is a topic we have looked at in the course I’m currently doing, but it’s also something that I’ve kept an eye on as part of my work over the last 20 years. Some of the skills I’ve developed and resources I’ve found are specifically related to science. Others are more general. Here, I’m sharing a mix of both, but they are mainly aimed at those without a science background, or those like me who are often looking at science outside the field they have trained in.

Lateral reading

Lateral reading is the practice of evaluating what you read as you read. It involves looking at who and what is behind a piece of information, and cross-checking against other sources. It’s an absolutely crucial skill for navigating the internet. Everyone should know how to do it.

I’ve seen it broken down in a number of different ways, but they all work. The course I’m doing describes it as looking at three questions:

1. Who is behind the information?

2. What is the evidence?

3. What do other sources say?

Lateral Reading: How to separate information from misinformation - Tohatoha (2 minute read)

Another good source I’ve found describes it as four steps:

1. Stop

2. Investigate the source

3. Find better coverage

4. Trace claims, quotes and media to the original context

I’ve shared these before, but they bear repeating.

SIFT (The Four Moves) – Hapgood (6 minute read)

SIFT - The Four Moves (4 videos, 12 minutes in total)

If you want to get better at this, there are a couple of online courses. The first is a series of videos, while the second has a mix of content, including some entertaining exercises (for example, evaluating an article on smart toilets – yes, there is a such a thing).

Check Yourself with Lateral Reading: Crash Course Navigating Digital Information (11 videos, most around 14 minutes)

Check, Please! Starter Course (notion.site) (5 lessons, each around 30 minutes)

Hills near Munnar, Kerala, India (image credit: Melanie Newfield)

Stalking scientists

In lateral reading, evaluating who is behind information sometimes means investigating the individuals who own a company or who have made a particular claim. I’m equivocal about this – we all have biases and it doesn’t mean we don’t have something useful to add to a conversation. But when someone is making what appear to be scientific claims, it is relevant to know what qualifications and experience they have which are relevant to the claim. I wouldn’t trust the medical advice of a mechanic, nor let a doctor fix my car.

There are some approaches and sources which are useful for finding out about scientists, and it’s not stalking them on Facebook or the site formerly known as Twitter. It can be worth checking LinkedIn, but that’s not where the important information can be found.

One of the main places I look up scientists is a site called ResearchGate. This is not, as you could be forgiven for thinking, a site cataloguing scandals about research. The name isn’t an allusion to Watergate, and I’ve honestly got no idea what the creators were thinking when they came up with it. ResearchGate is technically classed as a social media site for scientists, but not one which makes any pretence at entertainment. It links scientific and academic publications with their authors, so you can see what someone has published and who they have published with. Scientists also upload copies of their papers to the site, which means you can get hold of publications which would otherwise be behind a paywall (more on this in the next section).

Mostly, ResearchGate is used by scientists. But a non-scientist can use it to see whether someone who is, for example, making statements about the role of methane in climate change actually has any research experience in the topic. This is not to say that a soil scientist or an engineer can’t talk about climate change – after all, I talk and write about climate change all the time. However, I can’t talk about climate change as a scientist. And when I do write about climate change, my own background places an obligation on me to be transparent about my sources of information, and not to claim an authority I don’t have.

As an example, here is my ResearchGate profile. You can see that I’ve got a few publications related to invasive species but not many and not as the main author. It’s not a scientist’s profile, but it does show that I have some background in science.

Compare this to the profile of Chris Cornwall, whom I interviewed about coral and climate change last year. He’s got over 100 publications, and they are all highly relevant to coral and climate change.

Evading paywalls

Most of the time, when you are lateral reading, you aren’t actually looking at scientific or academic papers. But there are times that this can be helpful, especially if someone has linked to a particular paper as their source for a claim. But many papers are behind paywalls, and if you don’t either work or study at a university or research institute, you can find yourself stuck with only a summary, unless you’re prepared to spend a lot of money. A single paper from a scientific journal can cost more than a whole book, including postage.

For someone like me, this is a serious problem. I’m not affiliated with any institution, and I can’t afford journal prices. But I’ve learned that there are a number of ways to access articles, and I can get most of what I need.

I’ve mentioned ResearchGate already. Not only do many authors upload their papers, but if they haven’t, and you are a member of the site (it’s free), you can often contact them through the site to request a copy. I’ve got a number of useful papers this way.

There are a couple of other sites it is worth joining if you need to get hold of papers and don’t have access through your organisation.

The first is JSTOR, which is run by a not-for-profit organisation. This mostly offers access to older articles. You can sign up for free membership, which allows you to read 100 articles per month (although some of the articles they hold are not included in this total). You can’t download the articles, only view them, though.

The second site is Academia. It has a few issues, not least that they’ll send you a ton of emails if you sign up, although you can unsubscribe from them and still retain access. But it’s been very useful for me.

The best bit, though, is that you don’t usually need to check these sites individually to see if they have an article you need. Google Scholar usually tells you if the article is available free. In the image below, you’ll see an article about parrots by S.L. Crowley (I pulled up this example as I’ve been referring to some of her work for a project I’m working on). In one of the green circles, it says All 5 versions – click that, and you’ll get taken to a page with different places where you can access the article. In the second green circle, it says [PDF] Researchgate.net, indicating that there is a PDF of the paper available on ResearchGate.

A case study

In the climate disinformation course I’ve been doing, we looked at some examples of mis- and disinformation and did some of our own lateral reading. I then did some more digging and found examples of my own. One of them, in particular, intrigued me, because it’s an example of something which might intimidate a non-scientist. At first glance, it’s an apparent scientific paper full of mathematical calculations disproving the role of methane in climate change. But it isn’t quite what it seems.

I’m not going to direct more traffic to the sites promoting dubious information, but I’ve put together a summary of three major issues I encountered (If you are particularly interested, reply to this email and I’ll send you a link to the article). What’s useful is that these are things that a non-scientist can look out for when someone is attempting to confuse a discussion with jargon, graphs and equations:

A climate researcher may not be a climate scientist. The author of the paper was described on one website as a British climate researcher. I did all of my usual checks (e.g. ResearchGate and GoogleScholar) and found little evidence of who he was – definitely not a publishing climate scientist. He did have some affiliation with the Royal Society of Chemistry, and appeared to be the author of a long out-of-print book on a specific area of chemistry not connected to climate change. Eventually, I found a sentence about him in the introduction to the issue of the journal that his single paper had been published in, which said he:

has long participated in discussions of climate science, and though retired pursues his own research.

An academic journal may not be what it first appears. The journal which published the paper from the “British climate researcher” came from a reputable publisher of both journals and academic books. But the journal in question was not a scientific journal, it was an “interdisciplinary journal” with a focus on policy, specifically energy policy. The journal’s own description says it invites:

energy policy analysts, natural scientists and engineers, as well as lawyers and economists to contribute to mutual understanding and learning

This doesn’t mean that it can’t publish papers which make a useful contribution to the discussion of climate change policy, but it’s unlikely that it would publish ground-breaking research overturning the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. When I looked further at the journal, it seemed less and less credible. The reputable publisher had acquired it after the publication of the dubious paper, and it had since had a change in editor.

Always check the references. The questionable paper had a lot of mathematical calculations in it, but there was something crucial missing. There was only one citation or reference, a web link to the Frequently Asked Questions page from an Australian government research organisation. This is a pretty major red flag for something which claims to be a science paper.

More on fact checking

I’ve written more about fact checking and dodgy science, so here is some additional information.

This article mainly has a medical focus, but covers predatory journals, something which it’s worth understanding for any area of science.

The Turnstone: talking about vaccines #25 (substack.com)

This article includes some tips for evaluating Wikipedia articles, a useful skill for anyone, because Wikipedia is a great source if you know how to use it.

Talking about climate change #15 - by Melanie Newfield (substack.com)

These two articles look at science fraud and some resources to help you pick up if other scientists have raised concerns about a publication.

Talking about climate change #22 - by Melanie Newfield (substack.com) (suspect science)

Talking about climate change #23 - by Melanie Newfield (substack.com) (followup)

Alappuzha backwaters, Kerala, India (image credit: Melanie Newfield)