Pear Pimples for Hairy Fishnuts

WTF did I just read?

“Quantum Biophysical Semeiotic” sounds like a reboot of the Sokal Hoax, written by people who were worried that Sokal’s original sting manuscript leaned too far in the direction of making sense. Alternatively, QBS could be a Spacemen 3 covers band. It reminds us that there are sub-levels and sub-basements and malebolges of incomprehension and worship-word-ridden cargo-cult cognition, far deeper than being “not even wrong”. The only way to elevate the whole brainfart towards that basic criterion would be to abandon any expectations that ‘quantum’, ‘biophysical’ or ‘semeiotics’ in the title are in any way related to physics, biophysics or semiotics.

The gist of QBS is that the humble stethoscope is not just an emblem of membership in the Medics’ Guild; in trained hands it is a diagnostic tool of scarce-dreamt-of capacity and specificity. For diabetes, arteriosclerosis, lithiasis and Alzheimers Disease are organ-specific outcomes of mitochondrial- / nuclear-gene defects (manifested through Rube Goldberg 'microcirculatory remodeling' mechanisms). Along with the breast-cancer risk-factor variants of the BRCA-1/2 genes, all can be detected early through auscultation, for all have their own distinctive sounds. As explained in a quartet of Opinion pieces and a Commentary by Dr Sergio Stagnaro (“Sempre arzillo a 87 anni”).




You can probably imagine what the References sections look like.

Fortunately Dr Stagnaro can also remediate these genetic shortcomings, with a hand-wavy invocation of Nonlinear Complexity theory... therefore irradiation with low-level 1-mm microwaves, which increase the fractal dimension of blood vessels by stabilising the attractor (I could be wrong about that, for my attention was distracted at this point by a skwirl, and it may be that the appropriate intervention is actually a hermeneutic reinterpretation of symbolism, or a projection of the wave-vector into a different Hilbert subspace before collapsing it).

Now the people of the Frontiers publishing behemoth – outlet for those Opinions – pride themselves on a whole new paradigm of Peer Review, which bypasses Editorial bias and subjectivity by matching peer-reviewers to manuscripts algorithmically (also obviating the old-fashioned notion that Editors should have some acquaintance with a field and be familiar with the knowledgeable authorities). The algorithms work so well that the paradigm is periodically redesigned, relaunched and reproclaimed as a breakthrough. In these five cases, the algorithm decided to skip peer review completely and just let the editors accept the manuscripts unaided. Unless “Just cash the cheque and print the paper” is an unannounced new feature of the Frontiers business model.

Hilarity continues to ensue from browsing the comments on these opinion pieces. They prove to be 100% spam left by an ingenious and industrious cannabis-oil scammer using identities like "Prattless Watterson". So at least the pieces are being read, if only by automated spambots.

Stagnaro brought himself to wider attention by leaving a comment over at Sylvie Cotaud’s blog, refuting her critical calumnies by pointing out the respect he receives from the Scientific Community… the proof of that respect being the unreviewed acceptance of his APC payments by Frontiers. Also the ingratiating invitations he receives to address a Euroscicon mockademic congress. Now EuroSciCon are well-known as a camouflaged polyp of the OMICS empire of academic grift, so boasting that they’re mooching for one’s money is onna par with boasting of the imminent wealth that was promised in emails from a Nigerian prince.



It is not a good look for Frontiers that they were promoting this fraudulent "7th Edition of World Congress on Cancer Research, Survivorship and Management", and had promised to provide it with livestream video services. The advertisement quickly disappeared down the memory hole in response to Sylvie pointing and laughing, though ads for other EuroSciCon scamferences remain on the Frontiers site.

Stagnaro curates his QBS braindrool on the website of the Società Internazionale di Semeiotica Biofisica Quantistica, which he would like you to look at. While another safe place for his output of Condamine calenture Toothpick is NeuroQuantology

NeuroQuantology was an outlet favoured by the much-missed Dr Martin Persinger. It also turns out to be the work of scammers and inept spammers, but I digress.

[h/t Sylvie Cotaud]