Guillaume Cabanac
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gcabanac.cpesr.fr
Guillaume Cabanac
@gcabanac.cpesr.fr
2.1K followers 420 following 77 posts
‘Deception Sleuth’ #Nature10 Scientist go.nature.com/3B29NgY • CS Prof. Univ. Toulouse @IUFrance.bsky.social • Metascience + Scientific Text Mining • https://www.irit.fr/~Guillaume.Cabanac

@gcabanac at X
@gcabanac@sciences.re at Mastodon
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
mhmdhsini.bsky.social
Iranians are experiencing a collective trauma. Thousands have been killed/injured in recent events, the economy is crippled & the threat of a wider conflict is real. This is especially difficult for those living in Iran, as many have lost (or fear losing) loved ones. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
February 3, 2026 at 2:11 PM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
jacksonwryan.com
🧪 Here's a science mystery to start the year.

Why are species names for fish and plants appearing in the scientific literature in papers about firefighter injuries, hearing loss and heart attack?

Is it AI? Translation tools? Something else?

nobreakthroughs.substack.com/p/is-this-fi...
Red YT wtf circle around the black and white image of a fish with a big black eye. It's a predaceous chub.
January 11, 2026 at 11:34 PM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
nanobubbles.bsky.social
📣 Interested in 🫧 and AI?

➡️ AISB 2026 Symposium titled Hype, Promise, and Speculation: AI Bubbles and the Replication Crisis in Computer Science will take place on 1-2 July 2026 in Sussex, UK.

🕐 Deadline for submissions is 6 March 2026
🔗 For more information aisb.org.uk/aisb-2026-sy...
AISB 2026 Symposium: Hype, Promise, and Speculation: AI Bubbles and the Replication Crisis in Computer Science - AISB - The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour
AISB convention information 1-2 July 2026 AISB 2026, University of Sussex, UK Keynote Speaker: Anil Seth, Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience, University of Sussex Day of celebration...
aisb.org.uk
January 7, 2026 at 4:06 PM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
nanobubbles.bsky.social
📣 Submit to our track 'Making Science Better?' at the STS NL Conference which will take place in Twente from April 15 to 17, 2026! More details in the link below.

🔗 www.utwente.nl/en/bms/sts-n...
STS NL CONFERENCE 2026 banner with the track proposal titled 'Making Science Better?'
December 5, 2025 at 10:44 AM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
reeserichardson.bsky.social
"It might be easy to dismiss the idea of ISO 9001 as just another tool to encourage best practice among publishers. But journal certification would fill a long-standing gap in the chain of external oversight from conduct to translation of research."

@jabyrnesci.bsky.social writes in @nature.com !
Put pressure on publishers to follow best practice — external regulation is the answer
Journals that work hard to meet the needs of both authors and readers should be acknowledged publicly — encouraging others to follow suit.
doi.org
December 31, 2025 at 8:55 PM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
deevybee.bsky.social
Springer Nature retracting papers based on bonkers dataset
www.thetransmitter.org/retraction/e... Good. #autism
Springer Nature retracts, removes nearly 40 publications
The dataset contains images of children’s faces downloaded from websites about autism, which sparked concerns at Springer Nature about consent and reliability.
www.thetransmitter.org
December 8, 2025 at 5:55 PM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
retractionwatch.com
“I started reading this article and found some interesting references that I decided to read as well,” Moore told Retraction Watch. “To my surprise, those articles didn’t exist.”
The case of the fake references in an ethics journal
Many would-be whistleblowers write to us about papers with nonexistent references, possibly hallucinated by artificial intelligence. One reader recently alerted us to fake references in … an ethics…
retractionwatch.com
December 2, 2025 at 8:20 PM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
abalkina.bsky.social
Happy Advent! !!!🎄✨
Welcome to a new edition of the Research Integrity Advent Calendar.
Each day brings a small challenge: spot the problem, detect inconsistencies, and sharpen your skills.
Enjoy the season and the daily puzzles!
Day 1. papermills.tilda.ws/advent2025
December 1, 2025 at 8:07 PM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
deevybee.bsky.social
i’m going to have to stop scrolling through Scientific Reports contents before I go insane
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
ADHD in dogs? 🙀
Development of a human analogue ADHD diagnostic system for family dogs - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Development of a human analogue ADHD diagnostic system for family dogs
www.nature.com
November 29, 2025 at 7:13 PM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
1000womeninstem.bsky.social
5️⃣4️⃣ Elisabeth Bik (1966- ) 🇳🇱 #womeninSTEM @elisabethbik.bsky.social Microbiologist, she worked on cholera epidemics in India & Bangladesh. Internationally recognised for her work in detecting image manipulation. 2021 Maddox Prize & 2024 Einstein Foundation award.

www.statnews.com/2024/02/28/e...
December 14, 2024 at 4:17 PM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
sophieehill.bsky.social
Good morning!

Today is a day ending in "y", which means I found another mathematically-impossible Table of Summary Statistics in a peer-reviewed "green economics" paper!

What can you see? 🔎

#FablesofFlummeryStatistics
Table
November 24, 2025 at 10:18 AM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
freddie2310.bsky.social
OpenAlex intégré au Web of Science, ou la capture du travail des “commoners” | carnetist.hypotheses.org/2572
OpenAlex intégré au Web of Science, ou la capture du travail des “commoners”
C’est une annonce qui est passée relativement inaperçue, mais qui mérite que l’on s’y arrête un instant. Clarivate a récemment annoncé l’intégration d’OpenAlex comme une nouvelle base de données au se...
carnetist.hypotheses.org
November 25, 2025 at 7:11 AM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
sophieehill.bsky.social
In fact, there are several tortured phrases in this paper.

My favourite:

"Stochastic Effects of Relapse on Popular and Technology (STIRPAT)"

which should be:

"Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology (STIRPAT)"
1. Tortured phrases This paper contains several tortured phrases. Observed phrase Expected phrase population development population growth natural debasement environmental degredation Stochastic Effects of Relapse on Popular and Technology (STIRPAT) Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology (STIRPAT) productive indication useful predictor F-score F-stat t-score t-stat promotion investment best-guess estimates point estimates (?) conversation valuation reports reported summary statistics (?)
November 19, 2025 at 7:31 AM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
ccarolinemuller.bsky.social
Scène de la vie académique ordinaire dans le tgv

Un chercheur voisin (qui n'a pas mis de filtre de confidentialité sur son écran)
Est en train de rédiger un long mail d'explications pour répondre à deux co autrices qui lui reprochent très vivement d'avoir écrit sa section d'article avec une IA
November 19, 2025 at 5:33 PM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
gcabanac.cpesr.fr
Je tiens les maisons d'édition pour responsables. Elles publient et parfois vendent de la pollution : des articles toxiques. LinkedIn me permet d'atteindre les décideurs de ces publishers et les représentants institutionnels. Du délire... 😵‍💫 voici quelques extraits : www.linkedin.com/in/guillaume...
https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumecabanac/recent-activity https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumecabanac/recent-activity https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumecabanac/recent-activity https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumecabanac/recent-activity
November 19, 2025 at 6:27 PM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
retractionwatch.com
An international computing society has begun retracting conference papers for “citation falsification” only months after the sleuth who flagged the suspect articles was convicted for defamation in a lawsuit filed by one of the offending authors.
Computing society pulls works for ‘citation falsification’ months after sleuth is convicted of defamation
Solal Pirelli An international computing society has begun retracting conference papers for “citation falsification” only months after the sleuth who flagged the suspect articles was convicted for …
retractionwatch.com
November 17, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
hansonmark.bsky.social
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
solalpirelli.bsky.social
36 cites to the same author? Retracted.
59 of them? Not retracted!

4 self-cites? Retracted.
21 self-cites? Not retracted!

70 unused cites to the same author? Retracted.
77 of them? Not retracted!

Plagiarism? Cites authors didn't add? 113 cites to the TPC chair in a 0.5-page paper? Not retracted!
solalpirelli.bsky.social Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · Oct 22
Good news: ACM retracted some problematic papers.

Bad news: Only some, without apparent logic, as you can tell by following the links of my old blog post.

Doesn't look like they understand the concept of trust in an organizing/reviewing committee.

solalpirelli.github.io/2023/01/25/t...
Troubling ACM Venues | Solal Pirelli
solalpirelli.github.io
October 22, 2025 at 7:56 PM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
themeta.news
🟢 Vos revues profanées

Des revues de référence qui se mettent à publier en masse des articles louches et à augmenter leur frais de publication ? Au moins sept revues françaises seraient passées aux mains d’obscurs éditeurs. On vous explique 👇

themeta.news/linvasion-de...

#VeilleESR
October 3, 2025 at 12:20 PM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
raphavisses.mastodon.top.ap.brid.gy
!!! 6 octobre 2025 - Amphi Weiss - 45 rue des Saint Pères - Paris !!!
15h Conférence d'Irène Frachon, lanceuse d'alerte du #mediator

suivie à 16h d'une table ronde sur la manipulation de l'information scientifique et la protection des lanceurs d'alerte (détails ci-dessous).
Photo d'Irène Frachon, credit @Maxppp - Olivier Arandel
September 4, 2025 at 7:21 AM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
s2rvnl.bsky.social
<Déroulez !>Au cœur de l’été, une alerte très relayée est arrivée des Etats-Unis. Une de plus, sur la croissance trop rapide de la fraude scientifique. Les publications vérolées augmentent « à un rythme bien supérieur à celui des publications légitimes », prévient l’Académie des sciences (PNAS).
September 9, 2025 at 12:01 PM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
retractionwatch.com
Grateful that @lonnibesancon.bsky.social‬, @gcabanac.cpesr.fr, Cyril Labbe and Alexander Magazinov chose to donate the proceeds of their ASIS&T Best Paper Award for 2025 to the @elisabethbik.bsky.social Fund to support the work of sleuths.

More here: centerforscientificintegrity.org/our-projects...
“Sneaked references: Fabricated reference metadata distort citation counts” Chosen for 2025 Best JASIST Paper Award
The Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is delighted to announce that “Sneaked references: Fabricated reference metadata distort citation counts,” written by Lonni Besançon, Guil...
www.asist.org
August 25, 2025 at 8:14 PM
gcabanac.cpesr.fr
🤯 Tortured phrases in ‘ACM Computing Surveys’ a top journal in my field (JIF 28 and SJR Q1, FWIW). @acm.org tell us it's a bug in the editorial system. Did any of the reviewers recommended acceptance? Please make their reports public with the upcoming retraction notice. pubpeer.com/publications...
Tortured phrases in the article https://pubpeer.com/publications/1497EA7D4D157F282F3910AB471A1B
August 9, 2025 at 3:29 PM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
retractionwatch.com
Once upon a time, two science journalists had an idea for a blog about retractions. And on Aug. 3, 2010, Retraction Watch launched.

And now, 15 years and 6,700 posts later, that work seems more important than ever.

Happy 15th anniversary, Retraction Watch.
Happy 15th anniversary, Retraction Watch
Once upon a time, a long time ago, two science journalists had an idea for a blog about retractions. And on Aug. 3, 2010, Retraction Watch launched, detailing in the first post why retractions matt…
retractionwatch.com
August 1, 2025 at 8:38 PM
Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac
factpostnews.bsky.social
Reporter: The FDA has a new AI tool that's intended to speed up drug approvals. But several FDA employees say the new AI helper is making up studies that do not exist. One FDA employee telling us, 'Anything that you don't have time to double check is unreliable. It hallucinates confidently'
July 23, 2025 at 5:24 PM