Smut Clyde, X-Ray Haruspex
@smutclyde.bsky.social
📤 1449
📥 44
📝 1168
Hyperbolic Tangent Distributed Observer. Snark is my first language.
Having successfully field-stripped and reassembled a Dyson vacuum cleaner, my pride is immeasurable.
3 days ago
1
3
0
Papermillers: Whoops, we forgot to copy-paste into all the columns of the spreadsheet when inserting the paid-for, irrelevant citations into the manuscript. Scientific Reports editors: Do we look like we care?
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
6 days ago
1
6
2
The original was great (in a dystopian way). We don't need a remake.
add a skeleton here at some point
12 days ago
2
3
0
Crivens! Deepak Chopra was involved in the rise of this bumptious shitweasel!
add a skeleton here at some point
15 days ago
0
3
2
The good news: this was just retracted. The bad news: it was published in the first place.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
15 days ago
3
24
6
Please admire these remarkably bimodal distributions of hemocrit, red-corpuscle count, & hemoglobin level. It appears that half of the 5066 subjects were already dead from anemia and half had such extreme polycytemia that blood couldn't flow in their veins.
pubpeer.com/publications...
16 days ago
4
10
4
Nice incompetence. Abject?
add a skeleton here at some point
19 days ago
0
0
1
'Scientific Reports' is inordinately fond of papermill products in a 'retinopathy diagnosis through AI' style - I guess the mill installed editors in the system, to ensure that they're reviewed by other mill sockpuppets. Even so, this was more annoying than most.
pubpeer.com/publications...
loading . . .
PubPeer - Deep learning-based joint analysis of diabetic retinopathy a...
There are comments on PubPeer for publication: Deep learning-based joint analysis of diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma in retinal fundus images (2025)
https://pubpeer.com/publications/8BA22442499E9B2F2B0C71062B9ED4#
19 days ago
1
11
6
So we stole someone's identity to be Corresponding Author, and plagiarised the figures and images, but "the conclusions of the article are otherwise unaffected."
doi.org/10.1002/prp2...
Publisher: We see you're reading this Retraction Note. Allow us to recommend the paper that it retracted.
19 days ago
1
29
21
Nice nonsense. Arrant?
add a skeleton here at some point
20 days ago
0
1
0
My "Euthanasia doesn't count as Murder" t-shirt is raising many questions that my t-shirt refuses to answer, instead choosing to plead the 5th Amendment.
21 days ago
0
4
1
"mRNA" in the NBC headline is unnecessary. They could just have written "Under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Food and Drug Administration has taken an aggressive stance against technology".
add a skeleton here at some point
23 days ago
0
2
0
I was inspired to check Google Street Maps for Down House (Darwin's old abode) and yes, these sinister red blobs continue to hover above the kitchen garden.
www.google.com/maps/@51.330...
24 days ago
1
5
0
reposted by
Smut Clyde, X-Ray Haruspex
Leonid Schneider
24 days ago
Crunchy Frog and Cockroach Cluster
forbetterscience.com/2026/02/10/c...
loading . . .
Crunchy Frog and Cockroach Cluster
“On one side: late-career scientists resorting to purchased promotion of their early-career papers. On the other side: whole new genres of paper-shaped artifacts that are little more than pac…
http://forbetterscience.com/2026/02/10/crunchy-frog-and-cockroach-cluster/
0
7
5
Heat transmission in hamburgers. From "Cattaneo-Christov heat transfer method on free convective three-dimensional flow with periodic permeability" (Arshad &c 2025).
pubpeer.com/publications...
Now retracted: not because it was garbage, but the papermill stole someone's identity to use as coauthor.
24 days ago
0
4
1
I want to be author of a paper about cancer biomarkers. You're in luck! We're running a 1/2-price special on processed-alloy papers! What good is that! I'm an oncologist, not a metallurgist. We'll tie a sign to it that says 'cancer'. Do you want the text or not? OK then.
pubpeer.com/publications...
25 days ago
3
14
4
JanciToxDoc seems very well-informed.
add a skeleton here at some point
25 days ago
0
4
1
One seldom sees such commitment to holothurian cosplay.
add a skeleton here at some point
30 days ago
0
1
0
Please admire what 'Viola sheltonii' found in Discover Oncology, in "Engineering CAR T NK and NKT cell therapies to target cancer stem cells and overcome stem like resistance".
pubpeer.com/publications...
about 1 month ago
1
5
3
reposted by
Smut Clyde, X-Ray Haruspex
Dorothy Bishop
about 1 month ago
I reckon it would be a good move for cinemas in the US to be showing the original Downfall film now. Magnificent film with huge relevance for today
add a skeleton here at some point
3
34
9
At the sauna this morning, recovering from the plunge pool.
about 1 month ago
0
5
0
The publishers of Frontiers are very proud of their fraud-detection software and have appointed themselves as "Guardians of Research Integrity". Also, they publish stuff like this.
about 2 months ago
7
100
36
reposted by
Smut Clyde, X-Ray Haruspex
Carl T. Bergstrom
about 2 months ago
1. Aotearoa New Zealand friends and colleagues 🇳🇿, Logistics for my February trip are coming together. I'd love to meet more of you and/or talk with groups of interested colleagues about AI course and teaching in a ChatGPT world (
thebullshitmachines.com
). Right now, my schedule is as follows:
9
44
15
Pompous idiots are *always* a joking matter!
add a skeleton here at some point
about 2 months ago
1
6
2
reposted by
Smut Clyde, X-Ray Haruspex
Cheshire
about 2 months ago
And here are both David (Smut Clyde on X/Hoya campingear on PubPeer) and Kevin (Cheshire on X/Actinosome thing-or-other on PubPeer) sharing a 🍻; we will again. Together we’ve posted comments on ~40,000 papers, including retraction notices to make the database more useful. Re:
x.com/SciGuardians...
4
40
4
Imagine my delight to discover that one of the artists who designs cans for Garage Project beers is a fan of Musrum (Earnshaw & Thacker 1968).
2 months ago
0
3
0
The References had a seizure and started speaking Qwghlmian.
2 months ago
3
53
11
@spottingthespot.bsky.social
Merry $mas!
pubpeer.com/publications...
2 months ago
0
14
2
reposted by
Smut Clyde, X-Ray Haruspex
Catbus
3 months ago
I am brimming with holiday spirit
37
8346
3133
reposted by
Smut Clyde, X-Ray Haruspex
Dr Ella Hawkins
9 months ago
One more bookish set for good measure. These biscuits are inspired by the weird and wonderful world of medieval illustration.
20
1653
255
reposted by
Smut Clyde, X-Ray Haruspex
polecopub
3 months ago
I have much better than yours
1
4
2
reposted by
Smut Clyde, X-Ray Haruspex
Anna Abalkina
3 months ago
We see a new phenomenon. Fake authors in papers with hundreds of citations. Papers are easy to produce by ChatGPT. Even if a paper is retracted, no punishment to the real authors, but citations still count. Today's puzzle is about a similar case
papermills.tilda.ws/2025advent4
loading . . .
Advent2025 4
https://papermills.tilda.ws/2025advent4
1
21
18
These are not references. These are what happens when the cat hoiks up a hairball while you are dictating into voice-recognition software.
3 months ago
3
64
19
PRO-TIP: When you ask Chat-GPT to write your paper, *read* the responses before copy-pasting them into the document.
pubpeer.com/publications...
3 months ago
1
6
1
Ah, passive voice... is there anything that can't be done by it?
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
3 months ago
2
12
3
Rate your score on Factor Fexcectorn. Well done, Scientific Reports.
pubpeer.com/publications...
3 months ago
18
165
96
@deevybee.bsky.social
@rosewind.bsky.social
I finally finished writing a thing.
forbetterscience.com/2025/11/25/a...
loading . . .
A bit of Frye and Rossignol
“Trapped inside every autist, a normal child with normal cognition is struggling to get out – only needing the right drug or therapy to be released”, – Smut Clyde
https://forbetterscience.com/2025/11/25/a-bit-of-frye-and-rossignol/
3 months ago
5
10
8
So red wine does *not* cure erectile dysfunction after all. I am disappoint.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
4 months ago
0
6
0
The authors failed to cite Judge Dredd. Unacceptable.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
4 months ago
0
5
1
reposted by
Smut Clyde, X-Ray Haruspex
Leonid Schneider
4 months ago
The Fribourg Declaration
forbetterscience.com/2025/11/17/t...
loading . . .
The Fribourg Declaration
“The papermill crisis is not an external attack on science but a mirror held up to its dysfunctional ecosystem. The for-profit publishing industry, posing as a newly found saviour of research…
https://forbetterscience.com/2025/11/17/the-fribourg-declaration/
0
21
16
@retractionwatch.com
One for your Confabulated References archives.
add a skeleton here at some point
4 months ago
0
9
3
I did enjoy
@scalzi.com
's cheerful disinclination to identify his narrator / protagonist as male or female. "Does it matter? You choose! Which do you prefer?" To the annoyance, I am sure, of readers who think that clearly gendering the characters is part of an author's job description.
add a skeleton here at some point
4 months ago
2
5
1
This is *not* how to plagiarise text by asking Chat-GPT to paraphrase it.
4 months ago
2
12
4
One of the first papermills was 'MedChina' - a Dr Jia-Li Liu - following a template to churn out fake meta-analysis papers.
forbetterscience.com/2022/06/07/t...
12 years too late, the editors of Gene finally got around to checking the .doc metadata of the manuscript.
pubpeer.com/publications...
4 months ago
1
10
9
So I thought that Elsevier was already as enshittified as possible. I was wrong.
4 months ago
1
14
3
Starting a petition to replace the word 'palindrome' with 'palinilap'.
4 months ago
3
3
0
"Additionally, the author stated that they have used AI tools for generating some images, including Fig. 1." Reviewers and editors could not work that out for themselves.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
4 months ago
3
15
10
Happy Birthday!
add a skeleton here at some point
4 months ago
0
1
1
Today I realised that the 'Madonna in the Dry Tree' was a stock image, and the original owner of the version in the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum didn't want to pay Petrus Christus to paint a legitimate copy, which is why it's adorned with the little 'A's of the Alamy watermark.
4 months ago
0
3
0
The editors of ACS Omega cheerfully accepted the authors' excuses and replacement image for this weird shit.
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
H/t Leonid
@forbetterscience.bsky.social
4 months ago
3
14
4
Load more
feeds!
log in