Nothing new under the sun, but I have a huge problem with this being framed as somehow a social sciences thing.
Well known fact: a lot of supposedly "peer reviewed journals" are BS. This is not a social sciences phenomenon, it's a publishing phenomenon. I'd go as far as to say that these guys are not really sceptics trying to unlight pseudoscience, but just some guys (unsurprisingly guys) purposefully framing a real issue incorrectly so they get to badmouth gender studies and social sciences in general.
Here's another example of what gets published in other fields. Digging up more examples isn't hard.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/ne.../#.WXXhijy0nbg
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A number of so-called scientific journals have accepted a Star Wars-themed spoof paper. The manuscript is an absurd mess of factual errors, plagiarism and movie quotes. I know because I wrote it.
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The American Journal of Medical and Biological Research (SciEP) accepted the paper, but asked for a $360 fee, which I didn’t pay. Amazingly, three other journals not only accepted but actually published the spoof. Here’s the paper from the International Journal of Molecular Biology: Open Access (MedCrave), Austin Journal of Pharmacology and Therapeutics (Austin) and American Research Journal of Biosciences (ARJ) I hadn’t expected this, as all those journals charge publication fees, but I never paid them a penny.
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Here's an example of what "peer reviewed" can mean. In other words: just because a journal says it's peer-reviewed, doesn't make it so.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/22/s...-journals.html
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The applicant’s nom de plume was not exactly subtle, if you know Polish. The middle initial and surname of the author, Anna O. Szust, mean “fraudster.” Her publications were fake and her degrees were fake. The book chapters she listed among her publications could not be found, but perhaps that should not have been a surprise because the book publishers were fake, too.
Yet, when Dr. Fraud applied to 360 randomly selected open-access academic journals asking to be an editor, 48 accepted her and four made her editor in chief. She got two offers to start a new journal and be its editor. One journal sent her an email saying, “It’s our pleasure to add your name as our editor in chief for the journal with no responsibilities.”
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In other words:
A whole bunch of "science journals" have figured out that science publishing is basically free money. The reviewers don't get paid and scientists desperate to get published are willing to pay for the privilege of getting their work out. Once people get published in a journal, they have no interest in calling those journals out because it might hurt their own careers.
It's a natural result of the "publish or perish" science funding system really.