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  • James M.jamesmarshall@sfba.social
    May 20, 2026, 9:58 PM

    @docpop from his profile, Miller has a PhD from U. Chicago, a JD from Stanford, and is a professor at Smith College. :/ I think this reflects badly on every one of those-- what is research from these places actually worth, if fake citations are common there?

    He and his defenders are basically saying "everyone does it, and you're naive to complain." If it's true that everyone does it, that reflects badly on modern academia as a whole.

    Any academic researchers want to chime in here?

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Replies

  • Dr Andrew A. Adams #FBPE 🔶a_cubed@mastodon.social
    May 21, 2026, 12:44 AM

    @jamesmarshall @docpop
    He's wrong. Not everyone does it. He's trying an argumentum ad populum. I'm on the publication ethics committee of a major Comp Sci academic society publisher and we would redact papers with multiple non-existent citations and ban the authors from submitting to our publications for at least a year.
    You submit it as your work, you stand byit as valid. Jointly and severally, although we sometimes go easy on student joint authors with faculty (faculty should know better).

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  • James M.jamesmarshall@sfba.social
    May 21, 2026, 12:59 AM

    @a_cubed @docpop thanks for your comment, very informative. I assume your academic society publisher is international? I'm wondering if this is a US problem.

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  • Jeff Martincuchaz@gladtech.social
    May 21, 2026, 5:33 AM

    @jamesmarshall @docpop no, we don't make up fake citations. But also sadly, not every co-author checks every citation. We rely on trusting our co-authors to not commit academic fraud.

    I'm very in favor of verifiable academic fraud leading to (impermanent) bans from preprint servers. If your co-authors are committing fraud and you find out by getting banned from a preprint server, that sucks, but it's a great signal to stop trusting that co-author. Nature will heal.

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  • MJ Raymjr@masto.bike
    May 21, 2026, 9:10 AM

    @jamesmarshall @docpop long-ago former research student here. Good research happens despite academia, not because of it. It's possible to do good work, but it's also possible to con a lot of people for a long time if you're unscrupulous and charismatic because the checks aren't often thorough enough to catch it. Like a PhD: they rely on one external examiner on the panel checking carefully and being truly independent, which is hard in some fields where most people nearby know each other.

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