To be honest the distinction between a sham scientific society and a real one feels blurry to me. I was advised to join IEEE hoping that at some point they'll give me an award or title for my CV. But you pay thousands of $ over a career for this.
The claim is that these societies represent members' interests. Maybe that's partly true, but the main example I know of from the IEEE is that they lobby against publishing reform that would make science better and reduce costs wasted on publishing.
They're also bureaucracies that serve themselves foremost. It takes the membership dues of around 10,000 members just to pay the $1.1m salary of the executive director.
@neuralreckoning
Same is true of the Society of Neuroscience. The one clearly positive service is that they run the Journal of Neuroscience and eNeuro, but these could also operate without the society itself.
I was, but I am not any longer and haven't been for a long time, a member of the Society of Neuroscience. What particularly put me off were their emails begging for subscription payment, in the hundreds of dollars annually, which came across as from a racket of sorts.
#ScientificPublishing