Reese Richardson

Results of the replication are in!

Chocolate is more desirable than poop:

Cohen's d_rm = 6.20, 95%CI [5.63, 6.78]

N = 486, two single item 1-7 Likert scales of desirability.

w/
@jamiecummins.bsky.social

(great story @averyorrall.bsky.social !)

oh.

Exploitation of intellectual property systems for the manipulation of academic reputations - International Journal for Educational Integrity Patents are sought by academics and their institutions to protect their inventions. Academics also seek patents to enhance their individual profile and status for the purpose of job and promotion opportunities. Some institutions recognize the awarding of a patent to an individual academic as equivalent to or sometimes greater than publication in an international peer-reviewed journal. This article addresses the concerning development of patent inventorship credit (or credit that might be viewed as inventorship credit) being offered for sale by established education fraud companies alongside offers for authorship on academic papers and thesis writing. This article focuses on design registration in the United Kingdom (UK) but the issues identified are globally applicable. We characterize in detail the footprint of eight firms that are likely involved in the sale of thousands of UK registered designs to Indian academics for the purpose of academic reputation manipulation. Unlike patents, design registration applications are not examined for novelty or individual character (i.e. for whether the designs are actually new or innovative). Due to this limited examination process, these registrations generally issue quite quickly. We argue that exploitation of intellectual property systems should be considered one facet of the global enterprise of education fraud, alongside essay mills, diploma mills and research paper mills.

Our article on the topic:

doi.org/10.1007/s409...

Hope to see you there! ICYMI: thousands of design registrations have been sold as “patents” as an explicit ploy for academics to pad their CVs. This is still happening! For example, here's a design registration filed 20 Sep 2025 for "MACHINE LEARNING BASED SECURITY DEVICE FOR CLOUD COMPUTING":

Something's wrong with THE World University Rankings. IISc should boycott it like IITs did IISc is one of India's best universities for research but was ranked 50th. Makes one wonder who is making these rankings and how someone can get it this wrong.

The THE rankings are a joke. From last year:

theprint.in/opinion/somethings-wrong-with-the-world-university-rankings-iisc-should-boycott-it-like-iits-did/2313847/

Journals and publishers crack down on research from open health data sets PLOS, Frontiers, and others announce policies trying to stem the tide of suspect research

@cathleenogrady.bwww.science covers the rise of shoddy public health papers for @science.org

www.science.org/content/arti...

The Spiritual Sound, by Agriculture 10 track album

Listening: Agriculture - The Spiritual Sound (released today)
agriculturemusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-sp...

My pleasure!

I have just left a lengthy Pubpeer comment on the autism/Tylenol study being cited by the Trump administration. There appear to be a number of fairly straightforward errors in the paper.

pubpeer.com/publications...

If you're interested: we wrote guides on how to get started with post-publication peer review (osf.io/8m2tz) and best practices for PubPeer comments (osf.io/sghaq) for @cosig.net .

PubPeer is a post-publication peer review site where you can leave comments on any scientific article (pseudonymously or under your name)! It gets used quite frequently to flag issues with published articles. PubPeer also has a browser extension that I highly recommend!

Consider leaving a comment on PubPeer! pubpeer.com

Hello! Despite his myriad talents, Larry has not yet learned how to use a keyboard.

Catching up on a summer backlog: congrats to @reeserichardson.bsky.social, winner of the July PubPeer Award for a comment on a 2024 article in @cp-cellmetabolism.bsky.social pubpeer.com/publications...

Reese donated his $1000 prize to @msf.ca and the @elisabethbik.bsky.social Science Integrity Fund

The Con Men of Science: A Conversation with Dr. Reese Richardson Paper mills, scientific fraud, and the decline of public trust in scientific institutions

I spoke recently with @sidsrivatsan.bsky.social about scientific integrity.

Sid did a fantastic job putting these problems in their historical and societal context. I hope you give the podcast episode a listen!

faultlinesessays.substack.com/p/the-con-me...

New PubPeer comment on "Efficacy of oral folinic acid supplementation in children with autism spectrum disorder: a randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled trial" (Panda et al, 2024). Concerns about significant errors. #folinicacid #leucovorin, #autism

pubpeer.com/publications...

COSIG: The Collection of Open Science Integrity Guides Newest version available at cosig.net!

What is a "calculation chain" file? How can I easily identify duplicated values in a table?

COSIG's 31st guide is all about data forensics using Microsoft Excel!

osf.io/bz725

As always, all guides are available at cosig.net.

In this new ESE Viewpoint, @reeserichardson.bsky.social and Matt Spick help editors identify mass-produced research to reject them at the point of submission, reducing the burden on peer review, and the amount of poor-quality noise introduced to the published literature.

doi.org/10.3897/ese....

We are now up to 14 journals! New journals:

BMC Anesthesiology
BMC Genomics
BMC Public Health (30,000+ articles!)

Archives are now up to >600K peer review documents for >85K articles. All are available to download on Zenodo!
reeserichardson.blog/datasets

University email addresses no longer effective bulwark against fake peer review To guard against identity theft, academic publishers have been using institutional email addresses to verify authors and reviewers are who they say they are. Now, however, findings appearing in a p…

If you're a journal or publisher using institutional email addresses to verify the identity of authors or reviewers, you'll want to read this story by @joelving.bsky.social.

In Bad Company “Authors thank the members of NeuroDigitech for their contribution to data generation, and all the animals that contributed to these studies.”

A CRO has been scamming academic and industry labs in the US with fraudulent data that has been published in Nature and other high impact journals. Leonid has written a great piece on my findings: forbetterscience.com/2025/09/22/i...

Channeling @brendannyhan.bsky.social to ask: “what would you say if you saw this in another country?”

Universities. Rural hospitals. Tech companies. Several sectors are going to be profoundly hurt by this. Not to mention the chaos of the moment as current H1-B owners scramble to get back to the U.S., cancel travel, etc. due to the uncertainty. An absolute mess. As intended.

I think it is likely that Dr. Kuperwasser and Dr. El-Deiry will present misinformation about the SV40 promoter-enhancer in COVID19 vaccines tomorrow at ACIP.

I strongly recommend that you read @gorskon.bsky.social’s excellent work on the topic before the fearmongering begins.

This investigation is WILD. Props to @joelving.bsky.social!

The threat of analytic flexibility in using large language models to simulate human data: A call to attention Social scientists are now using large language models to create "silicon samples" - synthetic datasets intended to stand in for human respondents, aimed at revolutionising human subjects research. How...

Can large language models stand in for human participants?
Many social scientists seem to think so, and are already using "silicon samples" in research.

One problem: depending on the analytic decisions made, you can basically get these samples to show any effect you want.

THREAD 🧵

Partisan disparities in the funding of science in the United States Republican lawmakers consistently provided robust federal funding, often exceeding Democrats

Thrilled that my paper "Partisan disparities in the funding of science in the United States" with Nic Fishman, @leahrosenstiel.bsky.social, and @dashunwang.bsky.social was published in @science.org today!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Hope you consider reading! Also, check out the COSIG @cosig.net entry on formulaic research:

osf.io/24dhu

Exclusive: Journal bans drug safety database papers as they flood the literature celafon/iStockPhoto Starting around 2023, a curious trend took hold in papers on drug safety monitoring. The number of articles published on an individual drug and its link to specific adverse even…

Several journals by these and other publishers have also recently changed their policies. Retraction Watch coverage by @katetravis.bsky.social:

retractionwatch.com/2025/09/16/e...