Frere Enterprise Watches in Admiration as FTC Drops Hammer on Fake Science Journals

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Aug 16, 2018, 08:00 ET

PETALUMA, Calif., Aug. 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The final step in the scientific method, sharing results with other scientists, is a safeguard against faulty or biased experiments taking hold as accepted fact. The peer review process is a vital part of the scientific strategy that has helped humanity advance from thinking the Earth was the center of the universe to knowing how to travel to the moon and back. For these reasons, Frere Enterprises, a company that focuses on digitally transforming companies for the modern age, applauds the FTC's preliminary injunction against a publishing group purposely distributing bad science under the guise of peer-reviewed facts and findings.

Over the course of a year, German journalist Svea Eckert and her team analyzed over 175,000 articles published in what she deemed to be "predatory journals," or scientific journals with low publishing standards. They found thousands of fake scientific papers, with as many as 13,000 coming from America alone. In 2016, the FTC took action against one such publishing group for "deceiving academics and researchers about the nature of its publications and hiding publication fees."

Essentially, the "scientific" journal was selling the right to have a paper published as "peer-reviewed" regardless of scientific accuracy. In late 2017, the FTC granted their preliminary injunction against the publishing group, banning them from "falsely representing that their journals engage in peer review" or claiming that "their journals are included in any academic journal indexing service."

Another Journal had such low standards that it accepted, and praised, a nonsensical paper written by a software program MIT student designed to generate fake science papers with the aim to "maximize amusement, rather than coherence." With such low standards, the door was open for anyone with an agenda to publish a paper supporting their biased view in a scientific journal without the inconvenience of needing to be factual. Fake science was the result, granting a level of legitimacy to biased research funded by groups like the tobacco or pharmaceutical industries.

With an eye toward the future, Frere Enterprises values the role that peer-reviewed science plays in moving business forward in new technological ways. Fake science is a threat, not just to the academic communities, but also to any person or business who values modern advances in computer sciences and financial technology. By publicly denouncing pseudoscientific research, the FTC has aligned itself with a scientific tradition responsible for some of the greatest advancements in human history.

About Frere Enterprises

Run by CEO Brandon Frere, Frere Enterprises is a California-based company with a global vision based around the usage of special financial technology, or SpecFinTech, with a current focus on financial wellness and productivity.

He has designed and created multiple companies to meet the ever-demanding needs of businesses and consumers, alike. Frere's website, www.FrereEnterprises.com, is used as a means to communicate many of the lessons, fundamentals and information that he has learned throughout his extensive business and technological endeavors. Through Frere Enterprises, he aims to apply those lessons to other business opportunities.

Frere Enterprises' mission is to acquire traditional businesses and digitally transform them to meet and exceed modern day demand. This mission seeks to transform such businesses by developing the newest and most evolved technologies to speed up the evolution of financial services in order to meet the demands of the modern consumer and exceed the potential of the modern era.

FrereEnterprises.com

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