Got an email over night from a publishing company out of Germany. Some person I don't know sent me this passive aggressive email, being all butthurt that I didn't respond to their first scammy email. And make no mistakes, there are scams aplenty for recent grad students to blunder in to.. Fake honors societies (make a one time donation to become a member!), publishing companies that would like to be so generous as to offer to publish your thesis for exorbitant fees and full sign-over of rights..
Critical thinking and common sense are not currently in vogue with the masses, and that's doubly true for the students that have graduated in the last couple of decades. Triple true for any politician, since creating unique problems to provide solutions for is more profitable than solving existing problems. So, it makes sense that these sorts of scams have popped up over the years, especially since emailing because cuts their advertising budget down to practically nil as long as they have a decent front*.
Here's the thing though; grad students are supposed to be well versed in critical thinking. It's one of the requirements of putting out innovative material; you've looked at all these papers and looked at your data and synthesized it into something new. I guess I'm just a little sad that there's overwhelming evidence, in the form of scams, to tell me that these same grad students are shutting off their critical thinking skills when they aren't looking at papers.
*Webpage
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