Do We Really Need More Controversial Ideas?

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A new journal encourages scholars to share their most dangerous and tasteless thoughts.

Dept. of Unsettling Thoughts

More than 30,000 academic journals publish in excess of two-million papers every year, which works out to something like 5,000 per day or about 200 per hour. That’s a lot; too many, some have argued. It’s not true that most of those papers go un-cited (

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A version of this article appeared in the June 11, 2021, issue.

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About the Author

Tom Bartlett is a senior writer who covers science and ideas. Follow him on Twitter @tebartl.