Earlier this year, I received news that fake peer reviews were allegedly being submitted impersonating me and approximately six others I shared my story with Science to, hopefully, reduce the chance of this kind of breach happening again www.science.org/content/arti... - ThreadSky

michaelgbertram.bsky.social • 180 days ago

Earlier this year, I received news that fake peer reviews were allegedly being submitted impersonating me and approximately six others

I shared my story with Science to, hopefully, reduce the chance of this kind of breach happening again

https://www.science.org/content/article/it-felt-very-icky-scientist-s-name-was-used-write-fake-peer-reviews

Comments

bbeeler.bsky.social•179 days ago

I would be fucking pissed if this happened with me. And I would boycott those journals. But... They are probably the ones I would never submit to or review for anyway...

drkeithsmith.bsky.social•179 days ago

Sorry to hear about this, though it’s far from the first case.

There is an extremely simple solution to this problem, that all journals can adopt immediately: don’t ask authors for reviewer suggestions, and ignore any they do make.

Editors can find referees without needing authors’ suggestions.

sjcfishy.bsky.social•178 days ago

Icky indeed! Ugg...

drmichellebloor.bsky.social•175 days ago

Naming the handling editors and reviewers on a publications feels super important after reading this article, but only a few journals do this. Thanks for spotlighting your experience Michael.

michaelgbertram.bsky.social•175 days ago

Thanks, Michelle. And I agree!

cassiespeakman.bsky.social•180 days ago

Oh wow.. that would have felt icky.. Thanks for sharing.

retropz.bsky.social•180 days ago

Thank you for raising awareness of this important issue.

Would you like me to add you to the #ResearchIntegrity starter pack (https://go.bsky.app/5NJ9Z4N) as it seems you're likely to have lots of useful things to share to support good research practices? No worries if you'd rather not be on this list

asanchez-tojar.bsky.social•179 days ago

‪Hi Andrew, if you think it fits, please, consider adding the the Society for Open, Reliable, and Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (@sortee.bsky.social) to the starter pack. Thanks in advance. #openscience

retropz.bsky.social•179 days ago

Sure thing - let's do it!

michaelgbertram.bsky.social•180 days ago

Hi Andrew, thanks for the kind words, and I would be happy to be included. All the best.

retropz.bsky.social•180 days ago

Great - I've added you to the starter pack!

drtblew.bsky.social•178 days ago

Don’t forget to add @jutfelt.bsky.social

retropz.bsky.social•178 days ago

Done! #NeverForget

drtblew.bsky.social•178 days ago

Amazing!

jannehaugen.bsky.social•177 days ago

What a nightmare to deal with! I hope those who read the fake reviews submitted in your name see this and realize it wasn't you. Thanks for sharing!

justjami.bsky.social•180 days ago

Wow. So sorry this happened to you.

We've entered the age of blatant cheating and lying.

chansenwheat.bsky.social•179 days ago

Michael, I am so sorry this happened to you. Thanks for sharing your story and standing up for scientific integrity.

michaelgbertram.bsky.social•179 days ago

Thanks, Christina. It's been quite stressful but the support from the community has been really lovely.

chansenwheat.bsky.social•179 days ago

I am glad to hear that you got the support you needed. Only by sharing these experiences can we start to come together as a community to solve the many problems surrounding scientific integrity.

docdellaire.bsky.social•180 days ago

OMG - talk about worse nightmares. Your name/reputation are all you really have in Science.

imgregory.bsky.social•179 days ago

Everyone, no matter who you are or what you do needs to be vigilant. This is a revolution we are experiencing. There is no modern reference in U.S. to draw from.

emilykane.bsky.social•178 days ago

@katelaskowski.bsky.social check out this story, and more examples in the comments.

ecolojolly.bsky.social•180 days ago

Whoa! It had never occurred to me that someone would do that. Sorry that happened to you!

jaeseunghahn.bsky.social•178 days ago

Icky and disappointing indeed... I am sorry it happened to you, but you are right that it could happen to any of us. We definitely need to promote equity and transparency in peer review. Thank you very much for sharing your story!

michaelgbertram.bsky.social•178 days ago

Thank you for the nice words. 😊

ahmedhijazi.bsky.social•177 days ago

If you are a fair person who respects the human right to life and sympathizes with Gaza, support me and adopt my donation campaign. Certainly, if you help, the goal will be completed. Please, please.

Donation link below 👇👇
https://gofund.me/c37251a0

irenehames.bsky.social•179 days ago

Fake peer review: @retractionwatch.com has lots of examples, COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) has guidance on helping recognise it and features/patterns of questionable reviewer activity
https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts/how-recognise-potential-manipulation-peer-review-process

#PeerReview #PublicationEthics #FakePeerReview #ResearchIntegrity

irenehames.bsky.social•179 days ago

I was on COPE’s Council in 2011 when an editor submitted for advice the first case of fake peer review we’d come across and we were shocked: case 11-27 'Author creates bogus email accounts for proposed reviewers'

https://publicationethics.org/case/author-creates-bogus-email-accounts-proposed-reviewers

#PeerReview #PublicationEthics #FakePeerReview

irenehames.bsky.social•179 days ago

More cases followed in 2012: 12-12 'Compromised peer review system in published papers' and 12-16 'Compromised peer review (unpublished)'
https://publicationethics.org/case/compromised-peer-review-system-published-papers
https://publicationethics.org/case/compromised-peer-review-unpublished

#PeerReview #PublicationEthics #FakePeerReview #ResearchIntegrity

irenehames.bsky.social•179 days ago

#FakePeerReview prompted the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers in 2013 "impersonation of another individual during the review process is considered serious misconduct”.Lots of useful info in current version on being a #peerreviewer
#PhDlife #ECRchat #NewPI
https://publicationethics.org/node/19886

irenehames.bsky.social•135 days ago

COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) is redeveloping its website and the Ethical Guidelines for #PeerReviewers are no longer where given above. Can be found via
https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.1.9

#PeerReview #PublicationEthics #FakePeerReview #ResearchIntegrity #PhDchat #ECRchat #NewPI

ahmedhijazi.bsky.social•177 days ago

varunrgoswami.bsky.social•176 days ago

Thanks for bringing this outrageous impersonation out in the open. This is the first I’ve heard of fake peer reviews, and as an editor, it really helps to know that this can happen if one is not careful!

used2brn.bsky.social•180 days ago

My kid is a linguist- it would be interesting to read the fake reviews as some of your reviews to see if someone who knew you could have picked up that it was not your writing style.

used2brn.bsky.social•180 days ago

Aarrgghh- and not as!

whysharksmatter.bsky.social•178 days ago

The fuck

angelo-af.bsky.social•179 days ago

Here's a story of a completely fictitious author... Whose papers Elsevier still hasn't retracted. https://youtu.be/-H7-GbTkZFM?si=BqJGK86vFpkr0qJg

spottingthespot.bsky.social•176 days ago

Elsevier doesn't care.... There are other cases out there about eg a real person, but not a scientist at all publishing all sorts of crap. Elsevier is aware but refuses to retract.

kristina-keuper.de•179 days ago

This system is more broken than I thought…

ahmedhijazi.bsky.social•177 days ago

ravichso.bsky.social•179 days ago

Don’t journals require digital certificate verified emails for reviewers ?

angelo-af.bsky.social•179 days ago

Nope. Not even institutional emails.

oceanoculus.com•178 days ago

Since not all peer-reviewers have an institutional email or even a permanent organisation email, they shouldn't require institutional emails or emails with digital certificates either.

But the publisher should undertake their due diligence. Although rare (hopefully), this isn't a new issue

dutchscientist.bsky.social•176 days ago

As editor, I would only use gmail etc addresses if there was a clear trail of that address, like it being used as corresponding author on a paper.

Otherwise, no go for non-institutional email addresses.

dutchscientist.bsky.social•176 days ago

I remember seeing a paper with three suggested reviewers, all gmail addresses with a typo in the name. That is a desk-reject and the editor-in-chief informed, who can decide to inform the integrity offucer at the university of the corresponding author.

dutchscientist.bsky.social•176 days ago

All this is not too difficult, but takes time and effort. And that is something we have less and less.

spottingthespot.bsky.social•176 days ago

I laughed reading 'to inform the integrity officer at the univeristy of the corresponding author' . As if they care. Most don't lol.

angelo-af.bsky.social•177 days ago

When I worked in University IT I argued for community members to have permanent, at least forwarding, email, for exactly this purpose. Apparently it's not a corporate practise.

oceanoculus.com•174 days ago

One of my uni's gave out alumni emails, but it was completely divorced from the one I had while actually at the uni (not a conversion, no redirect from the old to new). Shame really

ravichso.bsky.social•177 days ago

Given the scale of scams attributable to fake IDs & emails , investing in a digital certificate is now necessary if your work & publications have public viewership . There’s no other way to minimise frauds of this kind .

anneaulsebrook.bsky.social•180 days ago

Wow, thanks for sharing - it also never occurred to me that someone might do this. Very sorry to hear that this happened to you!

I just wonder how people can believe they’ll never get caught out with this stuff. But I guess it took a while.

arty-san.bsky.social•179 days ago

Speaking of irregularities. Dr. Douglas G. Frank who spoke at Lindell's Cyber Symposium, has the most unusual publication record I've ever seen.
All papers with this name are co-authored with Arthur T. Hubbard. Hubbard who has a long career in biochemisty. Frank, oddly, has not authored with others.

arty-san.bsky.social•179 days ago

Hubbard's track record is very good, long time biochemisty author and co-author.

Frank, on the other hand, has never authored with others.
They are not contemporaries (maybe 20 years younger than Hubbard).

Is there more than one Douglas G. Frank in science? Yes. A journalist should look into this.

arty-san.bsky.social•179 days ago

Frank is claiming 60 papers in physics. Okay, maybe he or someone with the same name co-authored with Hubbard.

Frank claimed to be a science teacher with a gifted program. Oddly, when I looked up the school online it said he was the music teacher. Not much later he was apparently laid off.

arty-san.bsky.social•179 days ago

I thought it odd that someone who purportedly wrote many biochemistry papers calls himself a physicist (Hubbard calls himself a biochemist).

It was odd to find him listed as a music teacher after he repeatedly said he was a science teacher (maybe he did both?).
https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Douglas-G-Frank-33868290

arty-san.bsky.social•179 days ago

Hubbard is a co-author in every one of Frank's papers that I was able to locate.

Unlike Hubbard, who also wrote books, Frank suddenly stopped authoring white papers.

Hubbard is about 20 years older than Frank (maybe Frank was a student of his?) currently living in CA, if he's still with us.

arty-san.bsky.social•179 days ago

Why does this matter?

At the Cyber Symposium music teacher Frank, presented "evidence" of election interference that was insufficiently cited and did not hold up to scientific scrutiny.

I can't help wondering if there are two Douglas Franks, or irregularities in the co-authorship of the papers.

dianvanderwaldr.bsky.social•179 days ago

@elisabethbik.bsky.social
this is next level. Any tips for catching AI?

michaelgbertram.bsky.social•179 days ago

In my opinion, AI checks should be incorporated into all journal editorial systems asap, scanning submitted manuscripts and peer reviews, etc. AI checks are becoming increasingly common at initial submission but, to my knowledge, not yet for reviews.

dianvanderwaldr.bsky.social•179 days ago

Yes 💯 agree

chriswheat.bsky.social•180 days ago

Great you are getting this out there. Seems like having some proper admin at the journal, for ORCID validation, could easily prevent this? Any thoughts?

michaelgbertram.bsky.social•179 days ago

Thanks, Chris. Careful checking, ORCiD verification, using only institutional emails, etc. In my opinion, any and all of these options would help the situation as it is currently.

mccurley.bsky.social•155 days ago

Institutional emails change, in which case authors often lose control of their ORCID. I presume that ORCID has a procedure to deal with this, but it often needs to be done for a deadline. This is one reason why we will never _require_ ORCID.

tom-demeranville.bsky.social•123 days ago

A bit late to the party here but we've been encouraging users to add two emails (work, personal) for quite some time because of this exact issue. Going by the number of support tickets we get for this going down over time, it seems to be working :)

robknell.bsky.social•180 days ago

Yeah, thanks for telling us about this. What a disturbing thing to happen.

tmigratorius.bsky.social•180 days ago

Question is, why would they do that? What's the purpose?

michaelgbertram.bsky.social•180 days ago

The retraction notices posted so far state that the fictitious email addresses were mostly submitted by the corresponding author of the articles. If this is the case, the author would have been able to submit peer reviews for their own papers.

tmigratorius.bsky.social•180 days ago

oh hmm. Thx

jensphylander.bsky.social•179 days ago

The minimum procedure should be that if submitting authors also submit name suggestions, editors need to verify the email address suggested. It has never occurred to me before reading this, but of course theres an open goal for cheating if submitted e-mail addresses aren’t verified.

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