Elisabeth Bik

How to be a science sleuth: Research integrity experts share their tips for spotting and reporting fraudulent papers Rupali Dabas writes @ChemistryWorld Featuring @SmutClyde, @deevybee, @nickwizzo, Jack Wilkinson, Anna Pendlebury, and me.

@youmehim121 @DrAbdullahD Those are the dates for the retraction notice, which, once approved by the journal/publisher, should be fast. The dates for the actual article are more reasonable: Received 5 April 2022; Revised 18 May 2022; Accepted 21 June 2022;

@DrAbdullahD Received 8 Aug, Accepted 8 Aug, Published 9 Aug 🤪🤔🤔

شخصية قيادية في منصب قيادي مؤثر في أحدى المنظمات التعليمية ، تم أكتشاف أن له بحث علمي مسحوب لأسباب تتعلق بالنزاهة العلمية ومصداقية المعلومات حسب معطيات المجلة التي أوردت أسباب السحب ، ترتب على هذا البحث قبل أكتشاف سحبه ما بلي : (الترقية الاكاديمية ، منصب قيادي ، مزايا ماليه متعددة) ، ما هو الاجراء النظامي المتبع بشأن هذا القيادي ؟؟؟. هل سوف تتخذ هذه المنظمة إجراءات تحقيق وتحري حازمة بشأنه ، علما بأن أسمه الاول في البحث مع مجموعة باحثين أخريين من دول مختلفة أم سوف تغض النظر عن ذلك بإجراءات شكليه.

Patents, like peer reviewed publications, look impressive in CVs, and many institutions reward them. I have seen this with my own eyes, after my host institution offered a bonus for patent applications (not registrations!) my PhD-advisor promptly applied for a patent to convert garbage into energy with higher dimensional black hole relics (which, for all we know, don’t exist). A research team with lead at Northwestern University in the United States reports a new type of academic fraud: fake patents. They have found multiple companies which sell credits on UK registered designs to academics, mostly in India, who can use them to boost promotion scores and institutional rankings. UK registered designs are not technically patents. They protect appearance, not function, and are not checked for novelty before registration, which makes them fast and cheap to obtain. The companies sold these off for prices corresponding to roughly $20 to $400 per authorship. Many of the fake patents had long technical-sounding titles, multiple academic applicants, recycled images, and implausible products, including an alleged artificial intelligence skin-cancer device that appears to be a modified Glock pistol model (see image).

Dr. who? shared his fake PhD thesis: osf.io/preprints/thes… “Although the first positron emission tomography (PET) scanners were built… at Washington University with DOE and NIH monies…” Sadly, the DOE wasn’t formed until 1977 under Carter admin. The “thesis” is from 1974.

@maartenmiller Woohoo! Hoe hoog is het “all time” record?

Strijd om het draaien van de hoogste vaas tijdens de tweede Keramiekdag in #Gouda. Deelnemers krijgen 6 minuten tijd. Het dagrecord tot nu toe is met 54 centimeter zojuist gevestigd door de keramist links. Zijn rivaal kwam tot 50 centimeter.

Fake author (Alireza Heidari) with fake affiliation (California South University) has a retraction in what I thought was a predatory journal. Maybe not. 🤷‍♂️ pubpeer.com/publications/C…

Muurformules: Samen met @IvovanVulpen en TEGEN-BEELD werk ik aan het verrijken van de stad Leiden met lokaal beta-erfgoed. Doel: aan iedere voorbijganger laten zien welke belangrijke ontdekkingen hier zijn gedaan. Op de foto de slingerformule van Huygens. muurformules.nl

Attention @arxiv authors: Our Code of Conduct states that by signing your name as an author of a paper, each author takes full responsibility for all its contents, irrespective of how the contents were generated. 1/

Hallucinated citations highest in social sciences preprints site - but, as I point out, part of the difference could reflect differences in moderation and publication stage, rather than something inherent to social sciences themselves.

@NoContextDutch1 AI generated pictures - they don't even look like the real thing. Do better.

Which Dutch dessert could you eat every single day?

@maartenmiller De hoogste vaas-wedstrijd is altijd leuk. Deelnemers krijgen een klomp klei, draaien hoger en hoger, en dan zakt het vaasje net voor de eindbel in elkaar.... En ik heb nog steeds een paar mooie blauwe ballen in mijn Calif tuin van een festival van jaren geleden. Genieten!

In plateelstad #Gouda is vandaag en morgen het Keramiekfestival met tientallen standhouders uit binnen- en buitenland. Ondanks het regenachtige weer worden duizenden bezoekers verwacht. Hoogtepunt: wie draait de hoogste vaas?

The man, the myth, the legend, Joachim Boldt did it! He got 3 more retractions! He leads the @RetractionWatch leaderboard in a comfortable position and now he has 239 retractions, 3 more than previously! Unbelievable! I wonder what he is up to now?

@AlexanderRKlotz @mediumwhite @SciGuardians I must have done something good for science!

@mediumwhite @MicrobiomDigest @SciGuardians They basically exist to harass Elisabeth Bik.

The @SciGuardians website appears to be struggling to build a community. After an initial burst of activity, the number of commented papers dropped sharply and has remained relatively low for the last months. Analysis based on ~870 commented papers listed on the site.

@mediumwhite @SciGuardians Not really - see my blog post here. scienceintegritydigest.com/2025/04/18/sci… They claim PubPeer users are harassing authors, so they are harassing PubPeer users.

@MicrobiomDigest @SciGuardians Conclusion: doing new things is hard and often fails, or takes time to make work? (side note: I know nothing about SciGuardians, given that you are sharing news about it I am assuming it is 'good'?)

The first #FoSci Report is here! Mapping research manipulation, from individual paper fraud to coordinated networks & systemic failures. 👉 ow.ly/rOUo50YXAlz Involving experts across academia, publishing & #ResearchIntegrity, such as our VP Research Integrity & Security, Dr Leslie McIntosh.

71st retraction for the IHU in Marseille. The 59th for Didier "chloroquine4ever" Raoult. Lack of ethical approval. They didn't have it, but they lost it!

Kennedy Is Driving a Vast Inquiry Into Vaccines, Despite His Public Silence Working behind the scenes, he is spearheading an intense push to examine his long-held theory that vaccines are helping to fuel an epidemic of chronic disease #GiftLink nytimes.com/2026/05/11/hea…

@maartenmiller Ja, uw posts maken me altijd heel blij. Een feest der herkenning!

@MicrobiomDigest Leuk om dat via X weer terug te zien, lijkt me. :)

Kaasstad Gouda heeft nu aan de Korte Vest ook een Kaassteiger, naast de Cheese Experience (rechts op de foto) en tussen de Kleiwegbrug en de Kazernebrug. Hier kunnen bootjes aanmeren, maar het is ook een wandelpromenade met bankjes om van het uitzicht te genieten. #Gouda

@OncotargetJrnl @Thatsregrettab1 It's all on PubPeer - very public. Just do a search for comments under my name. I have left 1000s of comments on pretty much any scientific publisher 😀

@MicrobiomDigest @Thatsregrettab1 You also seem not very objective towards different publishers. And those data have to become public

I flagged this paper on PubPeer almost 6 years ago. While Oncotarget and their current EiC both spend many many words complaining about me, for more than 4+ years they haven't bothered to fix this. 🤡🤡 pubpeer.com/publications/E…