The Science of Science Corner

In a follow-up of my previous post  https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7504547925741326964/3379738657311648725  I came across a new example of this kind of scientific misconduct/fraud thanks to the following question in RG   https://www.researchgate.net/post/International_Journal_of_Science_and_Research_Archive_is_it_predatory   I stumbled in the profile of a certain “ Ruchit Parekh ”   https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ruchit-Parekh-4   on the following ‘paper’:     And pretty fast I became aware that this ‘paper’ is an exact copy of the following original:     Just changed the authors, affiliations and title (a little bit) and voila! You have your own paper...not! 😡 Is this a one time event? No, just have a look at: and compare this with the original: What a blunt example of fraud! It is apparently part of an attempt to artificially ‘boost’ citations (with numerous fake profiles in RG, all full of this type of papers and AI ge...

The following case ultimately led to a removal of the profile of this imposter on ResearchGate . The case involved numerous creations of fake papers that ‘just’ copy the template of legit journals and then fabricate a (non-existing) combination of volume, issue nr., page nr. etc.   This leads to a Google Scholar profile like this: Unfortunately the GS profile of this imposter is still there (just search for Onipe Adabenege Yahaya ).   If you look at the second best cited ‘paper’ it is not published in the mentioned journal!  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362634653_Do_CEOs_influence_earnings_management See the details: And look how bluntly the whole lay-out and fake details like received and accepted dates are generated (by AI ?) that makes it misleadingly real, but it isn’t: It is all even worse since the citations for this fake paper are in most cases (if not all) are from similar type of fake/fabricated papers. See  https://scholar.google.com/scholar?c...

PubPeer: a factchecking site of potential issues in publications Want to read what kind of comments researchers make when it comes to papers with ‘issues’?   Have a look at the great site PubPeer  https://pubpeer.com/static/about   See how researchers find examples of: - Fabrication of data - Plagiarism - Paper mill activity - AI generated texts, data and figures -Etc. I asked ChatGPT about the website PubPeer, this is what I received back: PubPeer  is a post-publication peer review platform where researchers can anonymously or openly comment on published studies. It allows the scientific community to discuss and critique research findings, often identifying errors, inconsistencies, or potential misconduct that might not have been caught during traditional peer review. I think it plays an important role in scientific accountability and transparency. Many significant issues in published papers—including image manipulation , statistical errors , and even outright frau...