This came in the email one day:

Dear Dr. Gelman,

I found your article on the statistical crisis in science and its relevance to clinical neuropsychology very insightful. Your discussion on how statistical practices affect research validity raises important questions. How do you see the role of Bayesian methods evolving in addressing these concerns?

I am organizing a theme issue on Statistical Methods for ** journal **. This issue aims to explore diverse statistical approaches and their implications for clinical practice and research.

Would you be willing to consider participating?

Sincerely,

Alex **
Editorial Team
**
**
ISSN: ** | PubMed ID: **

I always want to reach new audiences so I was inclined to say yes. A quick click on the organization’s website and it looked legit. I did some googling, though, and it appeared that this was actually a “predatory” (i.e., scam) journal. I guess the “theme issue” thing should’ve been a tipoff. Legitimate journals have theme issues too, but they are said to be characteristic of scam journals.

So I sent the following email reply:

Sorry but I looked it up and it seems that your journal is a scam and so I would not want to participate.

Amazingly, a response appeared in my inbox a minute later:

Thank you for your email. I understand. Could you possibly recommend anyone who may be able to help?

Sincerely,

Alex **
Editorial Team
**

I replied:

No–I can’t recommend that someone contribute to a predatory journal!

What were they thinking?? Couldn’t they just earn their living some honest way, something like mugging people in the park or scalping concert tickets?

P.S. A few days after writing the above post, I received another email from the person or bot named “Alex”:

Dear Dr. Gelman, I hope this message finds you well. I wanted to follow up on the journal theme issue on Statistical Methods we discussed recently. Have you had a chance to consider participating in this exciting opportunity?

Sincerely,

Alex **
Editorial Team
**
**
ISSN: ** | PubMed ID: **

Can’t take the hint, huh? There may be a job at Wolfram Research for you, “Alex”!

P.P.S. A few days later this came in the email:

Dear Dr. Gelman, I hope this message finds you well. I understand you have a busy schedule, but I would greatly appreciate it if you could get back to me regarding the upcoming journal theme issue on Statistical Methods in the next day or two. Would you like me to put your name down as one of the participants?

Sincerely,

Alex **
Editorial Team
**
**
ISSN: ** | PubMed ID: **

What an asshole, huh? Yeah, yeah, I know, they need to put food on the table . . . I don’t buy it. There’s gotta be something they could do that’s productive rather than destructive of society. These are bad people, kind of like the scammers at the “International Peace Institute.”