It's wonderful that Times Higher Ed are covering this (just need to sign up). The spotlight will mean that BERA can't just continue publishing articles with fake references while taking the moral high ground.

BERA have begun retracting AI-authored articles and will need to retract many, many more. But still they publish more. They keep making the story bigger, while taking away their own room for manoeuvre. It increasingly looks like this will not end well.

BERA have begun retracting AI-authored articles and will need to retract many, many more. But still they publish more. They keep making the story bigger, while taking away their own room for manoeuvre. It increasingly looks like this will not end well.

Less than two weeks ago BERA published a retraction notice for 19 articles. They sounded confident and rigorous. But that was a lie. Since then they've published two further articles with fake references. They are in a complete mess, with many retractions ahead. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

BERA's 19 retractions are generating some interest but there's a lot more to the story than people realise. There are many more retractions to come across the four journals, & more papers still will face question marks. Their response so far has merely dug a deeper hole. 🧵👇

Just to underline the points I make in this thread, barely a week after announcing it has tightened its policies, it has published another article containing fake references, this time in the Journal of Curriculum Studies. That takes the number of articles with fake refs to 20...

BERA's 19 retractions are generating some interest but there's a lot more to the story than people realise. There are many more retractions to come across the four journals, & more papers still will face question marks. Their response so far has merely dug a deeper hole. 🧵👇

BERA has no idea of the danger it is in. Wiley has informed me it is still supporting these 10 articles with clear major errors. BERA needs to retract these articles or it will lose all credibility, and fast. This would be a disaster entirely of its own making. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

John Hattie himself has thanked me for finding a non-existent reference in his work. So why is Greg Ashman proclaiming that the case consists solely of unproven 'allegations'? Well, the demands of the attention economy win out over a genuine search for truth. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

Any impression BERA are giving of being on top of things is wrong. They're misrepresenting their role in the retractions (claiming to have 'independently uncovered' what I told them about) and are retracting FAR too few papers (based on a misrepresentation of COPE guidelines)👇

BERA makes two serious, glaring errors about COPE guidelines in retraction statement. This misrepresentation of the guidelines is used to justify its failure to retract dozens more low-quality, AI-authored educational research articles. The scandal is deepening. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

BERA makes two serious, glaring errors about COPE guidelines in retraction statement. This misrepresentation of the guidelines is used to justify its failure to retract dozens more low-quality, AI-authored educational research articles. The scandal is deepening. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

BERA has begun retractions - 19 from the British Educational Research Journal. Hilariously, they are trying to claim that the issues were 'uncovered independently' by them, amongst other delusionally self-serving claims. Sadly, they will learn nothing. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

#SciComment The state of sleuthing, in a nutshell 🥜

British Educational Research Association: - receive complaint from me about a dodgy special issue - investigate, agree it’s dodgy - take all credit, say the problem was ‘uncovered independently’ by them - Call me ‘ethically problematic’ Only academia can be this much of a joke.

BERA has begun retractions - 19 from the British Educational Research Journal. Hilariously, they are trying to claim that the issues were 'uncovered independently' by them, amongst other delusionally self-serving claims. Sadly, they will learn nothing. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

John Hattie has produced fake references in four different publications where he was either sole, lead, or one of two authors. That's not remotely normal. But the University of Melbourne is refusing to investigate any of the four publications. A scandal. stephenvainker.substack.com/p/john-hatti...

John Hattie reportedly being investigated by University of Melbourne for academic misconduct. Every teacher right now 🤣🤣🤣

BERA today published another article (the 19th) with a hallucinated reference. The journal referenced? COVID-19 Vaccine. The Overview, 2, 1–30. Of course, it will continue to claim it has the highest editorial standards...

BERA has a huge role to play to get schools thriving. But in the past few years it has published 48 undeniably AI-authored articles (i.e. they've manifest flaws, inc. fake references, that could only be AI). To become relevant again, it must retract them all ASAP. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

BERA has a huge role to play to get schools thriving. But in the past few years it has published 48 undeniably AI-authored articles (i.e. they've manifest flaws, inc. fake references, that could only be AI). To become relevant again, it must retract them all ASAP. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

John Hattie has produced fake references in four different publications where he was either sole, lead, or one of two authors. That's not remotely normal. But the University of Melbourne is refusing to investigate any of the four publications. A scandal. stephenvainker.substack.com/p/john-hatti...

Given the 'hey fellow educators' tone of the article (written by AI), it should have been acknowledged that Cathie Paine is a DfE advisor. Although she writes as 'we' she is as much 'them'...

I can't be the only one who is done with pseudish insider bloggers in education? open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

Whatever it's doing, BERA is not doing peer review. Summarising the key findings of the field, this review paper published last week put 'showed', 'lack', 'chatbot', and 'high'. This was much better than the 'perceptions & attitudes' section (mostly prepositions). open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

If you're defending the indefensible, you might as well get AI to write it for you. The message of this is that the problem is not the Ofsted framework, but our 'habits'. 4 lots of 'not x but y' and the bizarre caution to not 'romanticise' the inspection framework. Not even Gribbell would do that!

Whatever it's doing, BERA is not doing peer review. Summarising the key findings of the field, this review paper published last week put 'showed', 'lack', 'chatbot', and 'high'. This was much better than the 'perceptions & attitudes' section (mostly prepositions). open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

BERA seems to be having something of a leadership crisis. On 31st March Marlon Moncrieffe announced that from that day he would no longer be president. He was meant to stay until end of year. But BERA haven't announced anything and he's still listed as president on the website?!

I'm delighted that Times Higher Ed have covered the BERA story. Less delighted that in their response BERA demonstrates it doesn't understand the issue (at all) and doesn't take it seriously. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

A number of journalists have contacted me following the recent Retraction Watch article into John Hattie's plagiarism & hallucinated references, but none have yet run a story. Why - I suspect because of his empty legal threats, bolstered by a corrupt university. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

Does the identity construction of 1970s German accountants explain video-based instruction? A new LLM-written BERA article would have you believe it does. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

A profession that fell for the snake oil of Vi$ible £earning will likely fall for that of AI.

How a BERA call for papers is made: get AI to produce a 'gap' in the field. Here, the claim, without support, is that AI literacy research lacks: a) student-centred research ❎ b) post-GenAI studies❎ Neither is close to true. Why are academics happy to be led by AI slop?

As of a couple of weeks ago, it's been 10 years since I published my book The Critical Turn in Education: From Marxist Critique to Poststructuralist Feminism to Critical Theories of Race. www.routledge.com/The-Critical...

Five calls for papers in a BERA journal strongly appear to be AI written. One rests on absurd, unsubstantiated claims. In education academia an LLM leadership class is emerging and no one appears willing to challenge it. stephenvainker.substack.com/p/llm-calls-...

Even the leading figures at the University of Manchester's Institute of Education appear to be publishing AI slop in the British Educational Research Journal. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

Even the leading figures at the University of Manchester's Institute of Education appear to be publishing AI slop in the British Educational Research Journal. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

Forgot to include this astute psychological commentary...

Another university getting rid of things you could only ever do at a university and replacing them with stuff a 13-year-old can do on a phone

Posing as the AI expert when you have four separate publications with hallucinated references is quite something. You have to admire it, in a way...

Why are teachers in Australia so gleeful at the news that John Hattie is being formally investigated by the University of Melbourne? Because they are tired of living under the rule of administrators who have bought a 'scientific' fantasy. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

My first post warning folk about John Hattie was 2013 ... Beware edu-gurus ... they are always selling first and foremost

Reading this I realise how hungry I am for stuff pitched between 'what works' student-directed managerialism and abstruse academic abstractions. Maybe there's lots of it about, but I can't find it...

Another BERA article with a hallucination in a reference today: creating a volume, issue, and year for a non-existent journal. Armstrong, P. (2010). Bloom's taxonomy. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching, 12(5), 2023. See also this repetitive and chaotic paragraph: doi.org/10.1002/curj...

Today's BERJ article is again pure AI garbage. Most tellingly, it can't get its story straight about informed consent: the methods section and the ethical statement completely contradict each other. An entirely false ethics statement isn't human error. doi.org/10.1002/berj...

Today's BERJ article is again pure AI garbage. Most tellingly, it can't get its story straight about informed consent: the methods section and the ethical statement completely contradict each other. An entirely false ethics statement isn't human error. doi.org/10.1002/berj...

A 15th article published by BERA containing a hallucination (in this case misattributing a quote: the wrong article and page number). The writing is also pure AI (see 'not as...but as' etc. in extract)

It is encouraging that people reading this see that John Hattie is being protected. They recognise that it is ludicrous that: Melbourne only looked into 8% of the plagiarism allegations; Elgar somehow explained away a hallucinated reference. Absurd and indefensible.

If in 2026 a hallucinated reference is not treated as indication of AI-authorship then we may as well give up.

"At the time, the university had reviewed 14 of 181 of Vainker’s allegations at random, finding none amounted to misconduct." I have sampling questions.