About
Background information and meeting format
Background​
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Research progress depends on trust. It is often assumed that fraud is rare and does not cause lasting damage because "science is self-correcting". It is becoming clear, however, that this rosy picture may be mistaken. First, there have been several high-profile cases of eminent researchers whose work has been found to be fraudulent. Second, there has been growth of "paper mills", commercial operations that commit fraud on an industrial scale by offering publications for sale, sometimes colluding with corrupt editors to place articles. The seriousness of the threat from paper mills became evident in 2023 when the publisher Hindawi, a subdivision of Wiley, retracted over 8,000 articles.
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Research fraud is usually included with other behaviours under the more general term "research misconduct". Our focus will be specifically on cases that correspond to fraudulent research, i.e., severe research misconduct involving falsification and fabrication of data.
Sources of information about fraud are scattered and are not in peer-reviewed papers. There is a sense of two broad constituencies focused on the problem, with on the one hand a body of volunteer "sleuths" who report on fraudulent work, and on the other hand publishers, academic institutions and funders whose responsibility it is to take action. For many years, these two constituencies, who may be termed "non-establishment" and "establishment" have been out of step, with the sleuths becoming impatient with what they see as a slow and inadequate response by the establishment, and the establishment arguing that sleuths often fail to appreciate the logistical and legal difficulties raised when investigating cases of serious research misconduct.
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As the scale of the problem appears to be growing, publishers have joined forces to improve the identification of fraudulent papers before they get published, and institutions have started to change their criteria for hiring and firing, as they recognise that the current reward structure for academics provides incentives to commit research misconduct. There are moves to prevent operations such as paper mills, but a concern that this will just increase bureaucracy. Also, there is little agreement about whose responsibility it is to investigate accusations of serious research misconduct and what sanctions should be applied when fraud is proven. See this NHMRC report from Australia for an example.
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These issues were included in the agenda of UK government Select Committees in 2018 and 2022. The 2018 report recommended that UKRI should establish a national committee on research integrity, and in 2021 the UK Committee on Research Integrity (CORI) was formed. CORI's brief did not, however, extend to regulation or determining sanctions. Indeed, as noted in the 2023 Select Committee report, the Chief Executive of UKRI argued against such a role: “it would be better, in the context of supporting research integrity in those institutes, if the investigatory and regulatory powers were outside our walls”.
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But no other central organisation has such investigatory or regulatory powers. In general, dealing with serious research misconduct is left to universities, who may lack expertise (particularly when dealing with new developments such as paper mills or use of AI to generate fraudulent papers), who are likely to have conflict of interest, and who may be reluctant to apply sanctions, even when fabrication or falsification is clearcut, because of concerns about litigation. The impression is that a similar situation is seen in many other countries: one goal of this meeting is to gather more evidence about how these issues are handled outside the UK, and to see what can be learned from international comparisons.
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It is unfortunate that, just when efforts are being made to make research less of an exclusive "club" for white, Western academics, the activities of bad actors feed prejudices against China, India, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, where paper mills were first identified and continue to flourish. Once research misconduct becomes normative, it becomes impossible for honest researchers to succeed in a country, because research funds and tenure will go to those who have built up a body of publications through dishonest means. Ensuring research misconduct does not pay is thus an issue of equity as well as integrity.
Meeting Format
As well as conventional sessions with presentations by invited speakers, we will allocate time for more unstructured discussion sessions. Participants will have the opportunity to suggest topics and lead small group discussions.
Prior to the meeting, we are running a Delphi survey, which will help identify topics for discussion. This will allow us to achieve some common ground by emphasising points of agreement, while allowing us to devote time to debating issues where views may be more polarized. Round 1 of the survey was completed in late January 2025, and the results indicate points of agreement and disagreement. Round 2 will be run in early February.
​The meeting will be a hybrid format, with online attendees being able to participate in the main sessions in the Auditorium. ​
April 7th, p.m.
Session 1. Methods for detecting different kinds of fraud
Session Chair: Prof Jaideep Pandit
The Chair, Prof Jaideep Pandit, is Editor-in-Chief, Anesthesia & Analgesia, and has a longstanding interest in tackling fraud, as the field of anaesthesia has been afflicted by some serious scandals, leading to numerous retractions by eminent fraudsters. Participants will include Dr John Carlisle and Dr Nick Brown, who have used basic statistical methods to demonstrate where datasets are impossible or "too good to be true" in the fields of medicine and psychology respectively. Dr Elisabeth Bik is an expert in detection of duplicated and manipulated images who won the John Maddox Prize in 2021 and the Einstein Foundation Award for Promoting Quality in Research in 2024. Prof Jennifer Byrne has identified incorrect nucleotide sequences in human gene knockdown experiments. Prof Uri Simonsohn is a member of the Data Colada team who have uncovered a series of high-profile frauds in behavioural sciences. Dr Guillaume Cabanac (attending remotely) has developed the Problematic Paper Screener, which uses bibliographic methods to identify paper mill products on the basis of features such as "tortured phrases" (attempts to avoid plagiarism checks) and inappropriate citations ("feet of clay"). Dr Anna Abalkina is an economist who specialises in methods to identify characteristics of paper mills and hijacked journals. She was identified as one of Nature's Top 10 in December 2024. All of these sleuths have exposed fraudulent researchers through such methods, but all are concerned that the task will get harder with increasing use of AI to generate fraudulent papers. This is one area where sleuths and the establishment can find common ground in developing better methods for detecting and tackling fraud.
April 8th, a.m.
Session 2. The nature and scale of the problem
Session Chair: Prof Csaba Szabo
In this session, we will hear about different types of academic fraud, ranging from individual high-profile fraudsters through to organisations that make money by selling publications - paper mills. The speakers all have a track record of attempting to challenge serious research misconduct, and as well as describing the types of fraud they specialise in, they will discuss the difficulties that exist for whistleblowers who try to get authorities to take action. Speaker Prof Patricia Murray (Professor of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, University of Liverpool), played an influential role in documenting the fraudulent work on stem cell therapy by Paolo Macchiarini. She won the 2024 Healthsense award for her work on the misuse of regenerative therapies. Dr Peter Wilmshurst is a recently retired consultant cardiologist whose powerful testimony to the Select Committee on Research Integrity was influential in leading to recommendations for tackling research misconduct: see here. Prof Nancy Olivieri (Senior Scientist, Toronto General Research Institute) was awarded the 2023 John Maddox Prize for her work challenging the use of drugs that had been shown to cause patient harm, despite institutional pressure to keep quiet.
April 8th, p.m.
Session 3. The role of institutions and funders
Session Chair: Prof Alison Avenell
So-called "research sleuths" have had some effect in pressurizing publishers to take fraud more seriously. Although it is still the case that journals are often very slow to retract fraudulent work, the big publishers have started to realise the need to have staff and procedures for dealing with issues of research integrity. Ultimately, however, responding to accusations of misconduct is the responsibility of universities and research institutions that employ researchers. Funders also have an obvious interest in this topic, as they need to ensure that funds that they award are used for the intended purpose, and not squandered on fraudulent work. Accordingly, this session will focus primarily on institutions and funders, rather than publishers.
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As shown in a recent report by Australian National Health and Medical Research Council there are substantial variations between countries in the systems for addressing research misconduct. After the Macchiarini affair, Sweden set up a National Board for Assessment of Research Misconduct, but most countries rely on institutions to self-regulate, with varying levels of scrutiny or regulation from government.
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Session Chair Prof Alison Avenell (Clinical Chair in Health Service Research, University of Aberdeen) co-authored a recent study of a research group with multiple retractions, noting the poor rate of responses from publishers and institutions when concerns were raised. Ms Louise Dunlop (Head of Research Governance, Ethics and Integrity, Queens University Belfast) will report on an ongoing workstream on barriers to dealing with research misconduct by the Committee on Research Integrity. She is CORI co-lead on this workstream, which is looking at international models as well as practices in the UK. Prof Liz Perkins is Named Person for Research Integrity at the University of Liverpool, and will discuss best practices in tackling research misconduct. Prof Li Tang (Professor of Public Policy at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, Shanghai) will talk about the role of funding agencies in curbing academic fraud, in the context of the Chinese Science Funding System. Prof Raphaël Lévy is a physicist who is one of the leads of the ERC-funded NanoBubbles project, which focuses on "how, when and why science fails to correct itself". He will talk about the need for adequate protection of whistleblowers, based on his own experience in France.
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April 9th, a.m.
Session 4. Unintended consequences
Session Chair: Prof Sir Rory Collins
As well as obvious victims when medical fraud affects patient treatments, others may be impacted. In particular whistleblowers can suffer serious consequences. Furthermore, those who are lured into activities such as creating fake papers for papermills may also be regarded as victims who are exploited by criminal gangs.
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Session Chair Prof Sir Rory Collins is Principal Investigator and Chief Executive of the UK Biobank, which is the largest deeply-characterised prospective epidemiological cohort in the world. Prof Stephan Lewandowsky is a cognitive scientist with a particular interest in cognitive processes that support belief in disinformation, conspiracy theories etc., as well as in ways of counteracting these. In a 2016 paper coauthored with Bishop, he discussed how open science practices could be misused by groups with vested interests to target and harass scientists. Prof Patricia Kingori is a British-Kenyan sociologist who is PI on a Wellcome-funded Senior Investigator award entitled "Fakes, Fabrications and Falsehoods in Global Health". She has documented the industrial scale operations behind Kenyan academic writers for hire. Dr Till Bruckner (remote presentation) did a PhD thesis on transparency, accountability and corruption in international aid to the Republic of Georgia before founding TranspariMed in 2017, an evidence-driven advocacy campaign for clinical trial transparency. In a recent blogpost, he noted how attempts to tackle research misconduct can become politically weaponised.
April 9th, p.m.
Session 5. New ideas for solutions
Session Chair: Prof Dorothy Bishop
Session Chair Prof Dorothy Bishop has helped expose large-scale paper mill operations in Hindawi journals, but has also written about dangers of weaponization of measures to counteract fraud. Dr Ivan Oransky is a US-based journalist who is one of the founders of Retraction Watch, an organisation that has become highly influential in documenting fraudulent research. He recently wrote about the issues facing the US Office of Research Integrity, which was characterised as "underfunded and lacks the resources and authority needed to make a difference". He is interested in the idea that we need to focus on improving institutional environments, challenging those that have a "toxic, unsupportive research environment". Dr Eugenie Reich (Whistleblower Attorney in Cambridge MA, USA) is founder of a law firm with a particular specialisation in science fraud and whistleblowers. Her 2009 book "Plastic Fantastic: How The Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World" covered "how the financial pressure of the dot-com collapse damaged critical thinking and debate in basic research operations at Bell Labs".
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