Science Lichen Spoof

Recently Science magazine spoofed a bunch of other journals to test their peer-review procedures. It revealed what one might call a very porous filtration system on the part of many journals. A fake study with some pretty obvious problems was accepted for publication in quite a number of journals. You can read more about it here. One thing that caught my attention was that the fake article was on lichens and their potential anti-cancer properties. It is worth noting that there have been several recent articles that were not part of the spoof that show some anti-cancer properties of Usnic Acid; however, it's always important to carefully evaluate the legitimacy of any particular study and remain skeptical until results have been widely validated!

- Brendan