A paper by Maggie Simpson and Edna Krabappel was accepted by two scientific journals

Much like the incident I linked to a few weeks ago. This has a nonsense paper, fictional authors (literally) and a fictitious university.

One journal immediately accepted it, while the other took a month before accepting (perhaps as part of an effort to fake peer review), but has since published it — and now keeps sending Smolyanitsky an invoice for $459.

The fact that these journals would accept the paper is absurd, and the Simpsons connection is pretty funny. But it’s also a troubling sign of a bigger problem in science publishing.