Another one, same conference:

Today in beautiful figures appearing in definitely totally scientific papers from entirely legitimate and unproblematic ACM conferences.

Imagine a political party run by tax evaders that has ostensibly moderate positions on most issues, but wants to execute anyone who has ever worked for the tax office. We wouldn't be discussing whether their education or transport policy is slightly better or worse than those of parties Y or Z.

It started so well... www.maptap.gg July 4 100🎯 100🎯 100🎯 87🎉 80✨ Final score: 901

oh christ, one of these in the wild again. 'antisemitic' is a term *invented in the late 19th century by Jew-haters* as a euphemistic way of framing their Jew hating. it has nothing to do with what people or linguistic groups are 'semitic,' it means hatred of Jews.

Reform UK : PM should be stopping the boats in the channel Keir: OK, I've stopped the Russkis ReformUK: No not like that ....

Thanks, but your description contradicts my experience. In practice your system heavily interferes with meaningful editorial control over reviewer invitations, which goes to the core of peer-review integrity. This isn't a 'communication shortfall'—it's a systemic choice you made.

An inevitable development for for-profit Open Access publishers is Fordism: automation & massification. If you earn money piece-rate for each paper you want to increase the flow of papers while minimizing cost. e.g. very low and *uniform* turnaround times at Frontiers and MDPI

I’ve officially resigned as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. It used to be a reputable journal, but became a case study in how forced automation destroys academic integrity. 👇

"Investigating the integrity of published scientific papers is key to the scientific process, but the necessary knowledge is in short supply." Check the COSIG team's new Community Page article in @plosbiology.org ! doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Today, COSIG and Sal Sleuthmander turn 1 year old! 🎂 Contributions to COSIG are the best birthday gifts we can ever receive, many thanks to all of our contributors 🎉

Journalists still writing "Russia says, Ukraine says, who knows what the truth is" articles in 2026 should be shamed out of their profession forever... Who needs propaganda when there are so many useful idiots?

Will Trump doom the Swiss far right's latest initiative? We might have to thank Donald like so many other countries did... ("Isolating ourselves from Europe? Definitely not right now!")

Actual content: Sweden joins the list of countries that revoke citizenship of dual citizens if they lied to obtain it or commit extreme crimes. If you want popular consent for easy naturalization, this is a requirement. Many prefer sticking to principles that empirically lead to far right govts.

Average manager "helping" their team

Ruslana is 52 😳 I guess the "infinite energy" cheat code she clearly must have enabled also makes her immortal?

Love the Eurovision tradition of pretending Verka Serduchka won when doing anything with past winners as guests, instead of whoever it was that actually came first that year with a much more boring song

Interesting to hear Scott Delman equate retraction with misconduct. That just muddies the waters - they should retract papers when editor no longer has confidence in the findings, for whatever reason. Leaving flawed papers in the literature to avoid upsetting authors does a disservice to readers.

In which we learn @acm.org still hasn't retracted a couple of papers they said they'd retract nearly 4 years ago. And apparently evaluate themselves using the number of investigations in their backlog. 🤨 (Also Elsevier doesn't do a good job. Just as shocking.)

I just got spam from a paper mill telling me my "background" in this preprint makes me a good match to buy an authorship position they're selling 🤦🤦🤦🤦

Some personal news...

Sleuths face various legal risks but they can also use the law for their advantage. ⚖️ COSIG's newest guide, number 3️⃣5️⃣, covers legal considerations for taking part in forensic peer review. Read it here: osf.io/q3y7s

Next: Nihar Shah @cmu.edu with "The More You Automate, the Less You See: Hidden Pitfalls of AI Scientist Systems" [The room goes dark, ominous music sounds, and a slide comes up] We find that AI scientist systems exhibit multiple pitfalls violating research integrity. #WCRI2026

Reaction from @reeserichardson.bsky.social, me, and @abalkina.bsky.social to IEEE's handling of conferences. (Pic by @elisabethbik.bsky.social)

Session 6.D of #wcri2026 starts with a talk on paper mills in China. Formal businesses with contracts, clients are often clinicians who must publish but have no realistic way to do this.

Last day of #wcri2026 starts with a plenary on research security.

René Aquarius on what sleuths do, meme edition.

Plenary #wcri2026 session on people who actually know what they're doing.

Svetlana Kleiner at #wcri2026: are edited volumes the new special issues? Sharp increase in book-related investigations at Springer. Might be due to better reporting, but also more awareness internally, people know more and flag more. Bad actors also know more and try to use books!

#wcri2026 starts with a plenary session on "GenAI and Research Integrity: Global Ethics, African Wisdom, Shared Responsibility" (We are told there's a content warning for discussion of genocide. Let's see how that fits with research integrity.)

Session 3.D chaired by the one and only @elisabethbik.bsky.social ! Starting with integrity at IOP Publishing

Session 2.D of #wcri2026, starting with Lithuanian academia!

This reminds me of this gem: ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/106.... Full of tortured phrases & veers crazily from topic to topic. Reported to IEEE Head of Research Integrity, Luigi Longobardi, in Nov 2025 & was told their committee wld look at it in New Year. Pure gobbledegook: still not retracted

Next up: @abalkina.bsky.social with "Opening Pandora’s Box: Paper Mills in Conference Proceedings" Paper mills have also infiltrated conference proceedings. We focused on IEEE, where abstracts should "not so poorly written that it is unreadable". Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2604.22458 #WCRI2026

Now in Session 1.D of #wcri2026, where @abalkina.bsky.social will present our preprint w/ @mkunesova.bsky.social and @yaamurozturk.bsky.social about sold IEEE conference papers. But first, Daniel Acuna on estimating the predictability of questionable journals.

#wcri2026 day starting with @jabyrnesci.bsky.social introducing the session "Misuse of AI by Paper Mills". (As opposed to the correct use of AI by paper mills, presumably 😜)

WCRI 2026 is starting!

Did you know there's a barely hidden market for authorship of fake scientific papers in conferences? New preprint w/ @abalkina.bsky.social, @mkunesova.bsky.social, and @yaamurozturk.bsky.social : arxiv.org/abs/2604.22458 We found 4,000+ ads & matched them to 1,720 IEEE conf. papers! ...🧵

Did you know there's a barely hidden market for authorship of fake scientific papers in conferences? New preprint w/ @abalkina.bsky.social, @mkunesova.bsky.social, and @yaamurozturk.bsky.social : arxiv.org/abs/2604.22458 We found 4,000+ ads & matched them to 1,720 IEEE conf. papers! ...🧵

russia brings only death, destruction and decay. It erases entire blocks of residential buildings with families sleeping inside yet gets the invite to G20 meeting next morning. Six people were murdered and tens of injured in the russian attack last night. Something is really wrong in this world.

"Why is Péter Magyar, who has a majority large enough to rewrite the Hungarian constitution, so much better at this than a US president with a hostile judiciary and thin legislative majority?"

Based on my limited knowledge of Eastern Europe, this is what happened from the Ukrainian perspective this week

Poland was replaced by Slovakia, now Hungary by Bulgaria... why do we have to play whack-a-mole with Putin stooges?

Turns out it's possible to go below zero and have a negative numbers of fucks to give.

Not literally (I don't think) but...

It's been turning me crazy seeing how far the data center heat island paper, which hasn't been peer reviewed, has made it in the media, with every headline implying it's the air that's warming. A stupid lie spreading fast in real time. blog.andymasley.com/p/data-cente...

This is what a maternity hospital in Odesa looks like after a Russian attack. Russia has attacked countless maternity homes and hospitals in Ukraine. This is pure genocide.

Lionel Jospin's ghost has decided to haunt California, apparently.

Did a double take when I saw the list at 8.21%... Imagine running for mayor and getting fewer votes than Rémi Gaillard. youtu.be/pIrvpn3k9A4

"Please fake more convincing data"