Why Fake Data When You Can Fake a Scientist?

[n2doc]

BY ADAM MARCUS & IVAN ORANSKY

Hoss Cartwright, a former editor of the International Journal of Agricultural Innovations and Research, had a good excuse for missing the 5th World Congress on Virology last year: He doesn’t exist. Burkhard Morgenstern, a professor of bioinformatics at the University of Gottingen, dreamt him up, and built a nice little scientific career for him. He wrote Cartwright a Curriculum Vitae, describing his doctorate in Studies of Dunnowhat, his rigorous postdoctoral work at Some Shitty Place in the Middle of Nowhere, and his experience as Senior Cattle Manager at the Ponderosa Institute for Bovine Research. Cartwright never published a single research paper, but he was appointed to the editorial boards of five journals. Apparently, no one involved in the application processes remembered the television show Bonanza, or the giant but amiable cowboy named “Hoss” who was played by actor Dan Blocker. Despite Cartwright’s questionable credentials, he was invited to speak at several meetings such as the 5th World Congress on Virology—typically a mark of recognition as an expert.

Morgenstern was tired of the constant barrage of solicitations from suspect science journals asking him to join their editorial boards—the academic equivalent of the flood of credit card applications that anyone with a mailbox receives. “At some point I was just so fed up with all those spam emails from these junk publishers that I just did this little experiment,” he says. “I contacted them under the fake name Peter Uhnemann and asked to be accepted on the editorial board.” Uhnemann was a name borrowed from a German satirical magazine and Morgenstern’s first alter ego.

Uhnemann immediately joined the masthead of the journal Molecular Biology, which belongs to the publishing house OMICS International—which in August was sued by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for deceptive practices—and is produced “in association” with the Nigerian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Unfortunately, Morgenstern admits, he was a bit too subtle: “Hardly anybody knows the name ‘Peter Uhnemann,’ so I then tried it with a more popular name, and this happened to be Hoss Cartwright.”

more
http://nautil.us/issue/42/fakes/why-fake-data-when-you-can-fake-a-scientist

[greymattermom]

1. I get 4 or 5 of those emails every day

Recently I was invited to write a review for a legitimate journal and had to ask them if they were for real because the fake ones have taken over and are hard to keep up with. I'm invited to give talks at the weirdest meetings too. It's becoming a real mess.

[n2doc]

3. My experience too n/t

[Wounded Bear]

2. It appears the internet attack on intelligence...

is not just limited to "low information" types. The assault is on at all levels.

[drray23]

4. I am getting lots of invitations for plenary talks or chairing sessions

For conferences taking place in China. I did go twice to well known international conferences in China (shanghai) and apparently this puts me on the radar for dubious invitations to obscure conferences...