Jerry Seinfeld Contributes To Medical Journal

There's a reason most of those medical magazines in the doctors' lounge are described as throwaway journals. Their standards for publication are suspect at best. John McCool, senior editor of Precision Scientific Editing set out to prove how vacuous the contents of those journals are.

Being a big fan of the TV show Seinfeld, he submitted a case report based on one of the show's episodes. It is the one where Jerry is caught urinating in a parking garage. Jerry tells the security guard that he suffers from uromycitisis, a condition where he needs to urinate as soon as a feels the urge or otherwise he will die.

Mr. McCool created a paper based on uromycitisis, including false references, and submitted it to a journal called Urology & Nephrology Open Access Journal. The author doubted that such a blatantly imaginary medical condition would pass peer review and get published. After all, any person on the magazine's editorial board who has watched Seinfeld would catch on. Even a simple Google search of uromycitisis would instantly expose the paper as a fraud.

But lo and behold, the journal wrote back to Mr. McCool and said his article will be published after a few revisions. In return, they asked him for $799. He refused to send any money but the journal published his paper anyway on March 31.

After all the notoriety, the link to the article has been removed from the website. But surprisingly it is still on their home page table of contents. Next time you're bored and perusing all the journals in the lounge, be extra skeptical of the "research" that are being presented. Their credibility may be less than meets the eye.