Reese Richardson
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reeserichardson.bsky.social
Reese Richardson
@reeserichardson.bsky.social
510 followers 140 following 380 posts
A newly-minted PhD studying metascience and computational biology.
My blog: https://reeserichardson.blog
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reeserichardson.bsky.social
Paper mills are far more adaptable than the institutions fighting them. Case in point: after journals started using "anti-plagiarism" software, paper mills started selling access to the same software.

See our new letter in PNAS, replying to a letter by Philipp Singer: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
A Telegram advertisement from a paper mill with some information redacted. It reads: Greatings of the day Join in our [whatsapp chat link] We provide: Publication services: SCI/Scopus/UGC Care Publications PhD Assistance (From Research Proposal to Thesis Writing) Textbook Publication with ISBN Scopus indexed Book chapter publication IEEE conference Paper writing Check Plagiarism with Turnitin Software (With AI Report) Plagiarism removal
October 29, 2025 at 3:28 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
Pumpkin carving last night.
A jack-o-lantern glowing in the dark--the outside is carved with a linework image of the 1793 painting The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David. Detail of Marat's head Detail of Marat's hand and letter
October 26, 2025 at 6:26 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
Another live one: UK design #6477896: "LUNG CANCER DETECTION DEVICE USING CNN", granted 16 October 2025.

Come on!
A green uzi submachine gun with a screen affixed to the back and trumpet valves on its grip. A green uzi submachine gun with a screen affixed to the back and trumpet valves on its grip. A green uzi submachine gun with a screen affixed to the back and trumpet valves on its grip.
October 19, 2025 at 11:52 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
The latest AI-generated nonsense to show up in a "peer-reviewed" article, courtesy of @springernature.com.

"lead leercap"
"lascif arrseic"
"Microsologies of the surface area of an environimental Mesopioroious strucctures"
October 17, 2025 at 11:22 AM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
Hope to see you there! ICYMI: thousands of design registrations have been sold as “patents” as an explicit ploy for academics to pad their CVs. This is still happening! For example, here's a design registration filed 20 Sep 2025 for "MACHINE LEARNING BASED SECURITY DEVICE FOR CLOUD COMPUTING":
A green computer monitor mounted to a box. The box features numerous buttons and panels, oversized ethernet ports and a panel of every type of USB recievers. The whole assembly is mounted on four spindly-looking robot legs with wheels.
October 10, 2025 at 4:48 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
There's been a recent explosion in shoddy, cookie-cutter analysis of large, widely-available public health datasets (think NHANES, the UK Biobank, FAERS, etc). Matt Spick and I offer some advice in our new Viewpoint in European Science Editing:

doi.org/10.3897/ese....

More reading material below!
Figure 1 of the commentary with caption: igure 1. Artificial intelligence–assisted workflows enable rapid acceleration in publications. (A) Illustrative workflow schematic. (B) PubMed search using the following search string: “nhanes[tiab] OR uk biobank[tiab] OR finngen[tiab] OR global burden of disease study[tiab] OR faers[tiab].” The estimate for the publication count in the remainder of 2025 is derived by applying the same ratio of H2 2024 / H1 2024 publication count to the H1 2025 publication count and assumes a similar seasonal pattern of higher publication rates in the first 6 months of the year.
September 19, 2025 at 3:38 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
They claim that the preprint is still undergoing peer review at a "reputable" journal.
An excerpt from a blog post by Nicolas Hulscher: When one of the world’s most-read preprints can be erased at the whim of the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, open science is dead. If preprints can be censored, the façade of “scientific debate” has collapsed into a regime of control. The study is not going away. As it undergoes peer-review at a reputable journal, you can still access it on ResearchGate. We will continue to fight for scientific truth, no matter the cost.
September 11, 2025 at 9:09 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
Predictably, the authors are claiming censorship.
A tweet from Nicolas Hulscher: 🚨BREAKING: MDPI Censors One of the World’s Most-Read Preprints Showing mRNA Shots Disrupt Thousands of Genes With over 34,000 views and 8,600 downloads, our study discovered long-lasting genetic disruption from mRNA shots—only to be unethically censored by the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex. Their reasoning?: “This preprint has unresolved ethical issues.” No explanation, no evidence, no transparency. A vague smear meant to bury one of the most widely read preprints in the world — a paper that documented how COVID-19 mRNA injections severely disrupt the expression of thousands of genes, triggering mitochondrial failure, immune reprogramming, and oncogenic activation lasting months to years. A tweet from Kevin McKernan: The PubSmear network are IT illiterate children. While they can get some preprint servers to retract things, they never disappear. Lets see if they can remove this from Nostr, IPFS and other censorship resistant platforms.
September 11, 2025 at 9:09 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
Predictably, the authors are claiming that they have been censored.
A tweet from Nicolas Hulscher: 🚨BREAKING: MDPI Censors One of the World’s Most-Read Preprints Showing mRNA Shots Disrupt Thousands of Genes With over 34,000 views and 8,600 downloads, our study discovered long-lasting genetic disruption from mRNA shots—only to be unethically censored by the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex. Their reasoning?: “This preprint has unresolved ethical issues.” No explanation, no evidence, no transparency. A vague smear meant to bury one of the most widely read preprints in the world — a paper that documented how COVID-19 mRNA injections severely disrupt the expression of thousands of genes, triggering mitochondrial failure, immune reprogramming, and oncogenic activation lasting months to years.
September 11, 2025 at 9:02 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
In 1980, Elsevier CEO Pierre Vinken wrote "Robbers could have chosen a worse name...we may be grateful that he chose the name of Elsevier rather than his own."

I'll say.

Development of Science Publishing in Europe, ed. Meadows 1980
the generations of Robbers - grandfather, hree sons, one grandson -directeld C company between 1880 and 1944. Ib believe that Lodewijk Elsevier and he members f his house would not have been ashamed at vhat the new' Elsevier has achieved. Seen u this ight, Robbers could have chosen worse name, for, with the benefit of hindsight and despite the historical misunderstanding that the name sometimes causes, We may grateful that he chose the name of Elsevier rather than own. Working in in this modern publishing rganization, with its seven divisions engaged in a wide variety of activities in the fields of publishing, printing and
August 29, 2025 at 5:05 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
TIL: when the modern Elsevier was founded in 1880 by Jacobus George Robbers, they appropriated the name and emblem from the House of Elzevir (famed Dutch publishing family that left the business in 1712) despite the two having no historical link.

Access to Medical Knowledge, Groen 2006
Today Elsevier Publishing is a model of this growth in the publish- 1ng industry. In 2003, the frm of Reed Elsevier accounted for more than 25 percent S the world market in STM ublishing.,o But although Elsevier iS among the oldest and by far the largest corporation dating from 1880, when the present firm of Elsevier was established in Rotterdam by Jacobus George Robbers, there S no continuity between today's company founded bY Rob- bers and the historic Elzevier House JO the late sixteenth century. Lodewijk Elzevier had moved his publishing business to Leiden where the university had been established in 1575, a and Lodewijk and his descendants found the proximity to the university good for business. The House of Elzevier was very much a university publishing house and continued in business until 1712. When Robbers established his scientific publishing house, he chose to use both the elm tree and hermit logo with the moto "non solus," and the name of the earlier firm, with a slightly modified spelling.7
August 29, 2025 at 5:05 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
August 29, 2025 at 3:02 AM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
Update: ARDA has now removed "Journals" from their website header.

www.ardaconference.com/journals/ is still up (for now).
ARDA's website as of August 28, 2025. The header has five headings: Home, About, Services, Our Associates, and Contact Us.
August 28, 2025 at 7:27 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
In a rare bit of good news: Northwestern University postdocs just won our NLRB union election! ✊️✊️✊️
A graphic reading: WE WON OUR UNION 515 to 13 (97.5% YES) with logos for the Northwestern University Postdoc Union (NUPU) and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). In the center, a photo shows NUPU Members holding up signs and flags.
August 27, 2025 at 7:23 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
Not the first time a paper mill has wigged out after being documented being a paper mill!

"CIBNP’s website, in anticipation of the Science and Retraction Watch investigation, now bears a banner reading 'WE DO NOT OFFER PUBLICATIONS'"

reeserichardson.blog/2024/05/05/a...
August 14, 2025 at 6:20 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
ARDA also recently changed their service for "Thesis/Article Writing" to "Thesis/Article Editing".
ARDA's services tab in May 2025, which lists "Conferences and Meetings", "Journal Publication" and "Thesis/Article Writing". ARDA's services tab in August 2025, which lists "Conferences and Meetings", "Journal Publication" and "Thesis/Article Editing".
August 14, 2025 at 6:20 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
This is rich: following the publication of our study, ARDA has changed its website to include a pop-up disclaimer that they do not guarantee journal publications.
A pop-up banner on ARDA's website: Disclaimer : ARDA supports researchers worldwide with proofreading, language editing, plagiarism checks, and formatting, and hosts global conferences for knowledge exchange. We do not own or operate journals or guarantee acceptance — all decisions rest with the chosen journal’s editorial and peer‑review teams.
August 14, 2025 at 6:20 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
Here's Figure S6 from our article, which shows our analysis for Hindawi's Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (since folded).
Fig. S6. Editors flagged by statistical analysis of all articles published by Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine. a. Number of articles published annually in Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine since its inception (top row) and the annual number of articles retracted (second row), receiving PubPeer comments (third row), or having been accepted 30 or fewer days after submission (bottom row). b. Number of active editors and their tenures at Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine. c. Detection of editors accepting an anomalous number of articles which were later retracted (second row), later commented in PubPeer (third row), or accepted after a short turnaround (bottom row). We used a one-sided Poisson binomial test (33) with Benjamini-Hochberg multiple hypothesis correction over all editors (34) to test whether an editor accepted significantly more flagged articles than expected by chance. We show each editor as a circle with an area proportional to the number of articles they accepted. d. Detection of authors whose accepted articles are assigned at an anomalous rate to flagged editors for retractions (second row), PubPeer comments (third row), and short turnaround (bottom row). We tested each author of articles published in Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine for whom we could obtain ORCiDs for whether they had a significantly higher number of their accepted articles assigned to flagged editors than expected by chance. 66.9% of author positions had no attached ORCiD and 24.3% of articles had no attached ORCiDs.
August 13, 2025 at 10:45 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
Happy #InternationalCatDay from Larry!
Larry, a mackerel tabby with green eyes, stares into the camera bewildered. He wearing a shark costume.
August 8, 2025 at 7:24 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
Some of the numbers are ridiculous; see Chart 9 here:

www.nrmp.org/match-data/2...
Applicants were asked to list the number of abstracts, presentations, and publications they reported in their applications. This information is self-reported and may include peer-reviewed articles, abstracts, poster sessions, and invited national or regional presentations. Some residency programs may independently verify and even review publications for applicants in whom they have an interest, but most probably do not. Many applicants report abstracts, presentations, or publications, sometimes dozens or even hundreds. In the individual specialty sections, we distinguish between no publications, 1 to 5 publications, and more than 5 publications. Chart 9 shows the average number of publications by IMG applicant type, preferred specialty, and Match outcome. 61.7 percent of U.S. IMGs reported at least one publication, compared to 79.8 percent of non-U.S. IMGs. The average number of publications was 4.7 for U.S. IMGs and 7.9 for non-U.S. IMGs. Large numbers of publications can be found in surgical specialties such as Neurological Surgery, Orthopaedic Surgery, Plastic Surgery, and Vascular Surgery. The sample sizes for those specialties are generally small for IMGs. In those specialties, matched IMGs generally had more publications than IMGs who did not match in their preferred specialty. In other specialties, however, there is no distinctive pattern in either applicant group.
August 8, 2025 at 3:43 AM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
The whole story is worth a read. The journal for which they offered guaranteed acceptance (the International Journal of Environmental Science) is presently indexed by Scopus.

@elsevierconnect.bsky.social, what gives?
The listing for the International Journal of Environmental Sciences in Scopus. ISSN: 2229-7359. Coverage 2020 to 2025. The number of publications indexed in Scopus by year in IJES. 2024 saw 12 documents, 2025 saw 579.
August 8, 2025 at 3:18 AM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
Here is some data from NRMP reports, available here:
www.nrmp.org/match-data/

Newly-minted doctors applying for residency in the US now have between 4 and 10 published articles/abstracts by the time they graduate medical school and apply for residency! This environment breeds misconduct.
A chart showing the mean number of abstracts, presentations and publications from medical residents from the time they apply for residency. All groups of applicants have increased substantially in recent years.
August 6, 2025 at 9:12 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
6. The integrity measures used to contain systematic scientific fraud are dwarfed in scale by the problem itself.
(B) Annual global scientific activity as measured by items labeled as “journal article” or “conference proceeding article” in OpenAlex (47), as retracted articles reported by Retraction Watch, as PubPeer-commented articles and as suspected paper mill products. We make use of the linear trends observable in the log–linear plot to extrapolate these observations for the period 2020–2030. We show the 95% CI using shaded bands. The number of suspected paper mill products shows the largest growth rate, with a doubling time of 1.5 y. (C) Annual global scientific activity captured by WoS as measured by the number of actively publishing journals, the number of journals deindexed annually by WoS, the number of journals with retractions, the number of journals with PubPeer comments, and the number of journals with suspected paper mill products. It is visually apparent that deindexing now occurs at a level far below the level of occurrence of journals publishing suspected paper mill products. These patterns hold for Scopus and MEDLINE (SI Appendix, Figs. S21–S23).
August 4, 2025 at 8:47 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
5. Publishers understand that systematic fraud underlies the bulk of their integrity issues.
Articles of fraudulent provenance have an apparent growth rate greater than that of the entire scientific enterprise and already far outpace the scope of science integrity measures currently in use. (A) Retractions are increasingly published in batches. The ∼2010 spike in the number of large-batch retractions is almost entirely attributable to a large swath of conference proceedings articles retracted by IEEE. For the first time since this spike, the majority of 2023 retractions were reported in batches larger than 10 articles.
August 4, 2025 at 8:47 PM
reeserichardson.bsky.social
4. Some fields appear to be more vulnerable to paper mill activity than others.
Closely related subfields of biomedical research display similar rates of errata, but different rates of retractions. We investigated rates of retraction and errata for six subfields within RNA biology, focusing mostly on subfields that had their onset since 2000 and have experienced a dramatic increase in the number of annual publications (Left column). The dotted lines show all publications, including reviews, while the full lines exclude reviews from the count. While annual number of publications or their growth rate can differ significantly, all subfields have similar rates of errata. In contrast, the rate of retractions shows remarkable differences across subfields (Right column). Most rates decrease after 2019, presumably due to time censoring (i.e., not all retractions or errata may have yet occurred or been reported). Studies concerning “lncRNAs” and “miRNAs and cancer” show retraction rates which peak at around 4%, higher than even the rate at which errata are written. These rates are unlikely to be compatible with good-faith mistakes and point toward concerted attempts at scientific fraud.
August 4, 2025 at 8:47 PM