Briefing Chat: Top researchers are being misled by sham academic societies

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1:37Hi, listeners. Benjamin here. Welcome to The Friday Show. Something a bit different this week. We've got a really interesting story that we wanted to get on the show, but because of the no bells and conference attendances, things like that, we couldn't quite get the diaries to line up. But we've got a story by reporter Max Kozlov, who's been doing some investigative work diving into the world of sham academic societies. Now, it turns out there's a network of these organisations that are, in several cases, misleading senior researchers, and they've been looking to swell their ranks through deceptive practices.

2:11Max is here to tell me more about it. Max Kozlov, thank you so much for being on the show. Happy to be here. So before we start on your journey, then, many of our listeners will be members of learned societies, sometimes known as academic societies, of course. Let's define what these organizations actually are. Yeah, so we're talking about organizations like the Royal Society, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. These are organizations that are collections of scientists, usually about a specific topic or field of study. And they can give out awards for their members.

2:49They can support policy based on research in their field. They serve as a networking opportunity for other scientists. And these organizations have been around for decades and centuries. Right. And folk listening to this, whatever field they're in, there is probably an academic society for them. And these organizations organize conferences and stuff like that as well. Right. But your reporting has revealed that there are a large number of these sham academic societies, which is a new one to me, Max, I have to say. Tell me about how this story came about. It all started because I received an email from a researcher at the University of Michigan.

3:28He has this very special job because Michigan is such a big university. He is the director of faculty honorifics. So essentially, it's his job to seek recognition for the achievements and research that the faculty at Michigan are doing. So he's seen many awards, many fellowships, many of these societies. He's very familiar. And he got an email about this society, the European Academy of Engineering, that he was a little suspicious of. I mean, mainly because he had never heard of the organization before. And he went onto the website. It looked like every other society he's heard of. It listed many members, many of whom are Nobel laureates.

4:15and he wanted to provide some advice to his faculty who were getting these invitations. He did some initial digging and some of the claims on their website just didn't hold up for him. You know, this was an organization, for example, that was supposedly founded in 1992 in Sweden and seven Nobel laureates, all now deceased, helped establish it. But all of this information was later removed from the website. But anyway, when he looked on those seven Nobel laureates Wikipedia pages, this organization wasn't on there. And this organization didn't even have a Wikipedia page. So that started to ring some alarm bells for him.

4:56And he went so deep into this rabbit hole of, is this thing real or not? That he sent me an email essentially saying, you know, you're the reporter here. Maybe you look into this. Let me know what you find out. And that's what I did. And how many of these organizations have you subsequently come across then? And what do they all seem to have in common? So my reporting has found dozens of these websites. We only mention a few in the story. And what's common among them? Well, it's this lack of transparency. You know, organizations like the ones I mentioned, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society.

5:32if you wanted to find out who the president is, how they select members, this information is available online, their bylaws, their constitution. Now, these other societies that I've uncovered, they are typically missing this information. Or sometimes when I contacted people who are listed on their website, they tell me that they have never even heard of the organization and they didn't know that their name was listed. When misleading information was pointed out, someone quickly made those changes to the websites of some of these organizations. But in some cases, people did know and just assumed it was harmless because they were told they were elected as members and nobody asked them for money.

6:12So they didn't think it was a big deal. And the way that I found other organizations and I linked them together was oftentimes a person who maybe listed the European Academy of Engineering on their CV, they also had other organizations also listed on their CV that I'd never heard of. And so, well, you know, I would Google every single one of them and try to see if they had these common traits. And I would add them to my list and try to confirm details about them. And what's the aim of these organizations then? What's your reporting told you? Because someone somewhere has clearly gone to the effort of setting them up.

6:49And one has to assume that it's ultimately going to be about money, right? Someone somewhere is making money out of this. Well, one of my sources told me that the goal for these types of organizations seems to be to build a facade of legitimacy, often by featuring the names of senior or famous academics on their websites, and then use that to sell memberships and awards to junior researchers. We've identified dozens of researchers in China and Pakistan who list fellowships and awards from the European Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Artificial Intelligence, and affiliated societies on their CVs and social media profiles.

7:23Now, some of the organizations that we flag, for example, the NAAI, charge membership dues of up to$600. And not only that, but they actually advertise a PhD program conducted online that costs$10 ,000. So that could be one of the ways that these organizations are making money. They also charge registration fees for conferences. And then Post's advertising consultancy services on Chinese social media networks also offer to broker applications to these academies, presumably for a fee, but it's unclear whether these third-party services are affiliated with the academies themselves. It's also unclear how many scholars paid for these honours or whether those who hold them were actively deceived about them.

8:06And one of the things that learned societies, academic societies do, is organise meetings for like-minded scientists. And you say in your article that the organisations you've been looking into do organise meetings. What are these like? What have people told you about them? Yeah, so I've heard that there have been some meetings and they've taken place in places like China, in Singapore. Now, usually most of the people who attend these meetings are from China and most of the proceedings are in Chinese, which is, again, interesting for an organization that is supposedly based in Europe, like the European Academy of Engineering, or in the United States, like the National Academy of Artificial Intelligence.

8:49There's also fewer people than you might expect. That's something that a few sources told me is they were expecting more of this international summit, and they saw only a couple or a few dozen people there. In one case, one of these organizations is putting on a conference in China in October, and I reached out to one of the members who's listed as a keynote speaker, and he told me that that's kind of strange because he actually requested to remove himself from the academy in July. And not only did they not remove him, they listed him as a keynote speaker. Now he reached out to them immediately and told them to take his name off and they did.

9:26But this just shows that these organizations will often list people on their websites without their knowledge or consent. And that's a problem because they were charging, again, up to$600 for registration to this conference. And, you know, if I were an academic paying that much money and one of the keynote speakers that I signed up for dropped out last second, I might be angry at that. And often with things like this, it's easy to go, well, I'd never be taken in by it. I'd be able to see through it straight away. And yet it seems like many people have, many organizations have, big organizations are there.

9:59One of my sources put it this way, when you're being given an award, you might not be as discerning as you would be if they sent a bill for$500, right? I mean, they know how to play to scientists' egos, is what he told me, in that when he opened up the website, he saw two Nobel laureates on there, and he said, well, I want to be part of this organization. And not only that, but then many of the institutions at which these scientists reside, and I'm talking about prestigious ones, they posted press releases or newsletters that congratulated their faculty members on their achievements. And so it's not just the individuals we're talking about here.

10:40You know, universities are in somewhat of a prestige race themselves. They want to highlight their faculty's achievements, but sometimes at the expense of doing their due diligence to understand if these are legitimate organizations in the first place. And you've obviously been following the various trails where they go across the internet and across the world, it has to be said. And you've identified someone who's potentially an important player in all of this. What have they said? So yes, our reporting has identified one person as being involved with several of these organizations, and he says that these organizations don't engage in the selling of academic credentials, and they disavow third-party consulting agencies claiming to do so.

11:19They also explained that many of the allegations are the result of administrative, clerical, or technical issues, but our reporting has found that some of these explanations don't line up with the evidence. And often with stories like this, there are, of course, people at the centre, right? In this case, individual researchers who may have signed up for one of these societies or even parted with their money. And folk can be embarrassed to admit it. What have people said to you? There's a whole range of responses ranging from complete embarrassment to wanting to speak out on this issue because they want to alert others to stay away from organizations like it and be more vigilant and do their due diligence.

11:58The problem is, again, these organizations know how to talk to academics and they know what they look for and they know how to make a convincing website. So it's difficult to assume that, you know, a busy academic has the time to properly vet every single organization, but that in this era of what some of my sources call deep fake prestige, we need to keep our vigilance up and rely on each other talking to people in your academic network. Is this an organization that you've heard of? Reaching out to some of the people that claim to be in leadership positions. Hey, can you tell me more about this organization?

12:39And beyond individual vigilance, though, some of my sources argue that this needs a systemic response. Things like an international early warning system to track these fraudulent societies and making sure that buying a fake title actually carries some stigma so it stops being worth the money. And what have they said about the damage this can do? Because you can imagine, in some cases, this is relatively innocuous. Someone's name is put on a website for an organization, and then it gets taken off. But I'm sure there's more to it than that. The problem is that it cheapens these kinds of honors and these legitimate societies that are trying to make a difference.

13:14People told me that awards are the main form of recognition in academia. And for these organizations to co-opt that kind of cheapens the whole operation. And finally then, what's happened as a result of your reporting on this issue, Max? Many of the press releases on the websites of these universities celebrating their faculty's achievements have already come down. That's one thing. Another is when I reached out to researchers and told them about these societies and that I was investigating them, I think that sent the alarm bells ringing and many withdrew their participation from these organizations.

13:50And I think that universities are going to be more on the lookout for these types of schemes in the future. That's something that the person who first reached out to me to tip me off to this entire thing told me is that he's going to be even more discerning now of the types of solicitations and invitations that he gets and his advice to his faculty members to protect them in the future. Nature's Max Kozlov there. To read his full investigation, look out for a link in the show notes.