Man Trolls Scientific Journal With Fake Study About Fake Disease From ‘Seinfeld’

A journal was ready to publish a study on uromycitisis from Dr. Martin van Nostrand at the Arthur Vandelay Urological Research Institute. Anyone with even a smidgen of knowledge about Seinfeld would recognize those are all references to the classic TV show. And anyone with access to Google could easily search any of those words and find that they are all Seinfeld references. However, despite the study about a fake disease from a fake doctor from a fake research institue, a science journal was ready to publish the paper.

From The Scientist:

Last month I was invited to submit a paper to a dubious urology journal. I’m not a physician, much less a urologist. But I am an editor of scientific writing who has a strong antipathy for predatory journals. I’m also a Seinfeld fanatic.

So I decided to troll this publication, the MedCrave Group’s Urology & Nephrology Open Access Journal, to see whether they would agree to publish a totally made-up, Seinfeld-themed “case report” about a man who develops “uromycitisis poisoning.” This was inspired by the classic 1991 episode, “The Parking Garage,” in which Jerry Seinfeld can’t find his car in a mall lot, has to urinate, does so against a garage wall, is caught by a security guard, and tries to get out of a citation by claiming that he suffers from a condition called uromycitisis. Seinfeld argued that, due to his illness, he could die if he doesn’t relieve himself whenever he needs to.

The Urology & Nephrology Open Access Journal reviewed the submission, and three days later it was accepted as long as he made “minor revisions—including trimming the abstract and including the phony patient’s lab results.” The only other stipulation to getting his fradulent study published was to pay a “nominal” $799 fee, plus tax. McCool did not pay the fee, but on March 31 his report was published on the journal’s website. He has no intention of paying the fee.

Maybe don’t publish reports by anyone named Dr. Wexler, Jackie Chiles, or J. Peterman.

[PopularMechanics]

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