Wow. That’s some scam. Read about Research Features, a publisher who will write a glossy story about your work for their fancy magazine, which I’ve never heard of before and have never seen. Looks slick and very professional.
Is there a catch? Of course there’s a catch. You have to pay them $2230 for your vanity puff piece. It’s just like those awful Who’s Who books — I’ve been contacted so many times (the first when I graduated from high school, which is apparently an amazing accomplishment) about getting a small, brief blurb in a Who’s Who book, for a small fee, and I’ve always blown them off. Not because the fee, but because it was obvious that no one reads these things, and they’re purely ego fluff and clutter, and profit for the publisher.
Although I might be tempted to browse Research Features, if I ran across it, purely to determine who was so narcissistic to throw money away on this crap. It’s negative advertising.
I hope no one used grant money to buy this kind of useless padding.
(Several days ago, I tried to post a long-ish comment with many links at that FtB blog, but it got ate, presumbly due to the number of links. I then tried to post a mostly link-free summary, similar to below, but it also got ate; I have no idea why and have given up.)
My suspicion is Herr Doktor Bimler, in
Comment on Spammers Invite Researchers to Pay to Advertise Their Research by Herr Doktor Bimler (November-2016), has put his finger on it: “Research Features” is intended to impress politicians and other non-specialists who influence / control grants, which nicely explains the glossary appearance and self-confessed simplification.
That guess is related to the question, Who is the readership?
(I also like poopyhead’s suggestion it’s just a vanity puff scam similar to “Who’s Who” (I also remember those snail mails!).)
Hum… several days ago I tried to comment at that FtB blog, but it got ate, as did a follow-up short summary of what I tried to post. I just now tried to post a very similar summary here, and it also got ate — obviously, something in even the short summary is triggering some filter, but I haven’t a clew what.
PZ:
On another topic, here’s a story you might … I was gonna say “enjoy” but that’s not the right word. BYU surveyed people who had dropped out, and one woman’s response was…..
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/08/03/byu-idaho-wanted-to-know-why-a-student-dropped-out-so-she-told-them-the-truth/
handsomemrtoad, #2: Do you have the original URL from FA for that piece? I can’t use patheos: if I forbid their ads, the page loads and is immediately replaced by an iframe saying “the page won’t load”, but if I allow their ads, my pc winds up thrashing its widdle heart out and I still can’t read the page.
se habla espol@3, Here’s the link to the individual’s original(?) post, My response to an email requesting me to take a survey, they interested in why I never returned to BYU Idaho. There is some addditional commentary at Patheos:
(I’m not having any problems with reading stuff at Patheos with ads blocked. I’ve never tried commenting there, however.)
Are there scientist versions of Trump?