Tom StaffordTODAY: Oxford, for @deevybee's workshop on research fraud and malpractice:
Fostering Accountability for the Integrity of Research Studies (FAIRS)
https://www.sjcfairsmeeting.com/
Representing @RoRInstitute
To warm up, here is a 2023 Nature paper on fraud in medical trials
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02299-w
tl;dr "Investigations suggest that, in some fields, at least one-quarter of clinical trials might be problematic or even entirely made up, warn some researchers. They urge stronger scrutiny. "
25%!
Anna Abalkina now speaking on paper mills and "industrialised scientific misconduct", fake reviewers and fake data published by real people in authentic journals (as well as inauthentic ones)
Article from Nature in January
‘Stamp out paper mills’ — science sleuths on how to fight fake research
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00212-1
Identify the paper mill "game" from Anna Abalkina
Now: Guillaume Cabanac on use of paraphasing to avoid automated plagiarism detection, which results in tortured phrases such as "lactose bigotry"
(a paraphrase for "lactose intolerance")
Here's a google scholar search for papers containing this indicator of malpractice
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22lactose%20bigotry%22
Tortured phrases are one of the signals in Cabanac's Problematic Paper Screener
9th World Conference on Research Integrity
May 2026 in Vancouver https://wcri2026.org/
DAY TWO: Fostering Accountability for the Integrity of Research Studies (FAIRS)
First, Patricia Murray on the scandal of fraudulent medical evidence (leading to patient deaths) in trachea translant research
What she has learnt:
My sense is that tortured phrase hunting must appeal to the kind of people who like crosswords. Here's another
"irregular backwoods" is a tortured phrase for a statistical technique. Can you guess?
Appears in *multiple* published papers https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22irregular%20backwoods%22
Dan Goodman@tomstafford random forest? Doesn't feel quite right.
@neuralreckoning that's it. As a prize, you get another: what is "flag to clamor" ?
@tomstafford nah can't get that one.