107. Nick Wise: Publication fraud, buying authorships, and tortured phrases

Nick Wise is a postdoc in fluid dynamics at Cambridge University. We talk about his 'detective work' on publication fraud which has gotten more than 800 papers retracted to date, including tortured phrases, discovering Facebook groups and Telegram channels in which people sell authorships on papers, how 'Special' issues can be exploited, and what we can do about this.

BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.

Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon

Timestamps
0:00:00: How Nick got involved with publication fraud: tortured phrases
0:18:26: Why do people try to publish nonsense papers?
0:24:27: The ecosystem of fraudulent publishing
0:30:22: 'Special' issues
0:49:02: How does Nick do this detective work?
1:00:37: What can we do about publication fraud?
1:38:52: There are practically no jobs to work full-time on fraud detection
1:49:37: A book or paper more people should read
1:55:13: Something Nick wishes he'd learnt sooner
1:57:21: Advice for PhD students/postdocs

Podcast links

• Website: https://geni.us/bjks-pod
• Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-pod-twt

Nick's links

• Website: https://geni.us/n-wise-web
• Google Scholar: https://geni.us/n-wise-scholar
• Twitter: https://geni.us/n-wise-twt

Ben's links

• Website: https://geni.us/bjks-web
• Google Scholar: https://geni.us/bjks-scholar
• Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-twt

References & links

Episodes with Eugenie Reich: https://geni.us/bjks-reich

Episode with Elisabeth Bik: https://geni.us/bjks-bik

Episode with Adam Mastroianni: https://geni.us/bjks-mastroianni_2

Dorothy Bishop awards 2024: https://www.ukrn.org/2024/03/28/winners-of-the-2024-dorothy-bishop-prize/

Nick's guest blog post on Dorothy Bishop's blog: http://deevybee.blogspot.com/2022/10/what-is-going-on-in-hindawi-special.html

Nick's talk at Cambridge: https://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/4117618

Everything Hertz podcast: https://everythinghertz.com/

James Heathers's series of posts on Hindawi: https://jamesclaims.substack.com/p/the-hindawi-files-part-1-the-timeline

Coffeezilla: https://www.youtube.com/@Coffeezilla

Barnaby Jack's talk at DefCon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkteGFfvwJ0

Cabanac, Labbé & Magazinov (2021). Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science. Evidence of critical issues affecting established journals. arXiv.
Mastroianni & Ludwin-Peery (2022). Things could be better. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/2uxwk
Reich (2009). Plastic fantastic: How the biggest fraud in physics shook the scientific world.