iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac

Laurent Jégou @ljegou.cpesr.fr · 25/09/2026

Hey @gcabanac.cpesr.fr we have tortured illustrations too, now! 😬

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NanoBubbles @nanobubbles.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

📰 Our team member Guillaume Cabanac is in Physics World today! “Cabanac says that the latest misconduct smoking gun can be found in bibliographies and the growing use of hallucinated references…” Read here: physicsworld.com/a/how-scient... @gcabanac.cpesr.fr

physicsworld.com

How scientific publishers are fighting back against fraudulent papermills – Physics World

The growth of AI and papermills has caused publishers countless headaches

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Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 15/08/2026

In which thesaurus Kyrgyzstan is a synonym of Gibbs?! Fortunately AI will help us solve this mystery 🤣 Ahaha ‘The Science of The Total Environment’ by @elsevierconnect.bsky.social is retracting dbrech.irit.fr/pls/apex/f?p... and expressing concerns dbrech.irit.fr/pls/apex/f?p... quite rightfully...

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Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 14/08/2026

If you send me the list of 1 million DOIs of CSDL, I can filter the PPS results for you. (I didn't find how to download the CSDL metadata)

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Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 14/08/2026

Here is the associated PubPeer comment: pubpeer.com/publications...

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Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 14/08/2026

Right. Edit: “check them against the CSDL search engine" like this: www.computer.org/csdl/search/...

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Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 14/08/2026

One can download the CSV dump from the PPS (menu Actions/Download), extract the DOI column, and check them against @ieeexplore.ieee.org.

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Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 14/08/2026

Quite surprising: Some IEEE ‘tortured’ conferences organised several editions, with ‘tortured’ articles accepted each year. See “How a Tortured Conference Becomes a Series: An Analysis of Conference Manipulations” published in ACM/IEEEE JCDL'25 ut3-toulouseinp.hal.science/hal-05497913...

Top 30 IEEE tortured conferences series, as of 19 Feb 2025. Only proceedings with 5 or more tortured articles are presented here. A same acronym
can match several conferences in our dataset, in that case we added a numerical identifier, as illustrated in ‘ICICT (1).’ We encourage readers to consult the
additional data or the PPS to see the full names of the conferences.

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Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac

Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 14/08/2026

The PPS Tortured detector tabulates 8626 IEEE articles with tortured phrases, 62% of which have been posted on @PubPeer.com: dbrech.irit.fr/pls/apex/f?p.... The PPS Annulled detector finds that 46% (3966/8626) of the IEEE articles with tortured phrases are retracted: dbrech.irit.fr/pls/apex/f?p...

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Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 14/08/2026

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Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 14/08/2026

Retraction rate: 36% = 227 of the 634 IEEE articles you reported on PubPeer for tortured phrases identified by the PPS Tortured detector dbrech.irit.fr/pls/apex/f?p...

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Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 14/08/2026

Here are the 634 IEEE articles that the PPS flagged with tortured phrases and that you reported on PubPeer, @lonnibesancon.bsky.social. The last column links to the PubPeer posts. dbrech.irit.fr/pls/apex/f?p...

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Jeffrey Brainard @jeffreybrainard.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Hundreds of ads by #papermills, offering authorship on scientific articles for a fee, wound up published in conference proceedings. Are these venues a back-door route that’s too easy? #scicomm #retractions #peerreview @science.org www.science.org/content/arti...

science.org

Hundreds of paper-mill papers peddled in ads were later published

More than one-fifth of some IEEE conferences’ papers appear linked to authorship for sale

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Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac

Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

A tool used to rephrase plagiarised text changed "final solution" to "mass killing of an ethnic group" in a chemistry paper. Now retracted thanks to a PubPeer user who spotted this. pubpeer.com/publications...

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Thomas Kesteman🦠🧫🔬🌏 @tomk.eurosky.social · 27/07/2026

Sounds like @gcabanac.cpesr.fr 's tortured phrases!

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Peer-Reviewed Slop @peer-reviewed-slop.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Thanks to AI, one can generate SEM images in full color now! Sabet, M. Halogen-free polymer composites: advancing sustainable and high-performance flexible electronics. Iran Polym J 34, 599–624 (2025). doi.org/10.1007/s137...

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Smut Clyde, X-Ray Haruspex @smutclyde.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Today in Serious Scientific Publishing.

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Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 30/06/2026

Thanks for pinging me @altmetric.com. I replied to @isaacerbele.bsky.social: bsky.app/profile/gcab...

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Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac

Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 30/06/2026

Use #bibCheck if you are a French academic: it's an online tool that audits bibliographies and reports retracted or inexistent references, developed in collaboration with @cnrs-inist.bsky.social (see slide 25 ut3-toulouseinp.hal.science/hal-05646645...). Otherwise check github.com/gianlucasb/h...

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Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 30/06/2026

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Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac

COSIG @cosig.net · 04/06/2026

Today, COSIG and Sal Sleuthmander turn 1 year old! 🎂 Contributions to COSIG are the best birthday gifts we can ever receive, many thanks to all of our contributors 🎉

Sal Sleuthmander, a Chinese giant salamander, sports a conical birthday hat and gazes appreciatively over his cake with a 1 candle.

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Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 01/06/2026

Autre publisher, autre pratique : SAGE cite 2 de mes articles (tortured phrases et foot of clay) dans une notice de rétractation qui porte sur des centaines d'articles content.iospress.com/download/jou...

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Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 01/06/2026

Il faudrait que les publishers citent d’autres papiers dont je suis auteur : sur les sneaked références, les stealth corrections, les tortured conference series, les feet of clay… Ahah !

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Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 01/06/2026

Et tu as raison : ça fait +1 en nombre de citations à chaque rétractation (dizaines par jour). Pourquoi est-ce indexé différemment sur pour @ioppublishing.bsky.social, mystère ?! Quoi qu’il en soit, ces citations n’augmentent pas mon h-index (métrique bancale, au passage)…

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Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 01/06/2026

@ioppublishing.bsky.social mentionne dans ses notices de rétractation notre preprint qui a introduit les ‘tortured phrases’. Je dis « mentionne » car la réf n’est pas considérée comme étant dans une bibliographie et n’est pas indexée. Le cas que tu commentes : @springernature.com cite le preprint…

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Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac

Sean Carroll @seanmcarroll.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Very interesting. Springer retracted two essays from the early 1940s by Max Planck. Apparently because of "duplicate publication" - similar things (also by Planck) appeared elsewhere. But back in the day, that was common and not thought of as bad! There wasn't an internet to spread papers around.

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Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac

Dorothy Bishop @deevybee.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

C'mon, @mdpiopenaccess.bsky.social - after all the effort sleuths put in to hunt down the papermill products, is this the best you can do? A "correction"? If you want to be taken seriously as a publisher you need to weed out the gobbledegook. pubpeer.com/publications...

pubpeer.com

PubPeer - Plants: A Key Emphasis to Its Pharmacological Potential

There are comments on PubPeer for publication: Plants: A Key Emphasis to Its Pharmacological Potential (2019)

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Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac

Dalmeet Singh Chawla @dalmeet.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Brokers of scientific fraud are constantly innovating and expanding. Companies looking to spot and tackle their activities are doing the same. My latest feature for @cenmag.bsky.social: cen.acs.org/policy/publi... @clearskiesadam.bsky.social, @stmassoc.bsky.social, @gcabanac.cpesr.fr #WCRI2026

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Observatoire des pratiques socio-numériques @opsnum.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

📖 Nouveau rapport de l'OPSN ! Comment la presse française raconte-t-elle les réseaux sociaux depuis vingt ans ? 🔍"Aux origines d'un monde" analyse plus de 150 000 articles et retrace la trajectoire médiatiques des plateformes, de Facebook à TikTok. 📂 opsn.univ-tlse3.fr/rapports-de-...

opsn.univ-tlse3.fr

RAPPORT - AUX ORIGINES D'UN MONDE. Les réseaux socionumériques dans la presse quotidienne française (2003-2024) - Observatoire des pratiques socio-numériques

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Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 30/04/2026

Crossposting here: bsky.app/profile/gcab...

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Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 30/04/2026

Only 18 works indexed by @dimensions.ai, cited 116 times app.dimensions.ai/discover/pub...

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Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac

Reese Richardson @reeserichardson.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

How much does it cost to buy your way onto a scientific paper? To answer this question (and better understand the global market for academic reputation manipulation), we compiled BuyTheBy, a massive dataset of thousands of advertisements from paper mills in seven different countries. Link below!

A boxplot with authorship slot (1st author through 5th author) on the x axis and price in USD on the y axis. Prices are split by paper mill of origin.

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Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac

Elisabeth Bik @elisabethbik.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Retraction at a Spandidos journal 👏 I posted it on PubPeer in 2020, but did not get around to sending it to the publisher until March 2025. Then, @gcabanac.cpesr.fr found more problems. It's a beauty. #FlawCytometry HT: @smutclyde.bsky.social pubpeer.com/publications...

A figure with 6 Flow Cytometry panels. Red dots in 'clouds', and each panel has a cross dividing the dots into the 4 quadrants. I have added rounded boxes in a variety of colors to highlight areas that appear to be shared between the panels.

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Reposted by Guillaume Cabanac

Miryam Naddaf @miryamnaddaf.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

My colleague & I teamed up w/ Grounded AI to look for fake/hallucinated references. Our analysis suggests that at least tens of thousands of publications from 2025 likely contain such references. More detz at @nature.com, w/ input from @gcabanac.cpesr.fr, @mhmdhsini.bsky.social & @kowb.bsky.social.

nature.com

Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done?

Tens of thousands of publications from 2025 might include invalid references generated by AI, a Nature analysis suggests.

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Guillaume Cabanac @gcabanac.cpesr.fr · 14/03/2026

Merci à www.when2meet.com?About pour les services rendus !

when2meet.com

When2meet

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Elisabeth Bik @elisabethbik.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

New blog post: The Camel's Camel. Today, I found a beautiful example of synonymized plagiarism involving the microbiome of a camel’s udder. #TorturedPhrases #ScienceIntegrity #ResearchIntegrity scienceintegritydigest.com/2026/03/12/t...

A cartoon drawing of a light brown camel with one hump. At the position where one might find an udder, we see a baby camel hanging. It is to illustrate the absurdity of the sentence "The definition and definition of microbes on the camel’s camel is very important ", found in the abstract of a paper about the camel udder microbiome.

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Retraction Watch @retractionwatch.com · 10/03/2026

We're thrilled to announce the Ctrl-Z Award, a US$2,500 prize for researchers “who discover substantial errors in their published work and take meaningful steps to correct the scientific record." Covered by @nature.com today; read more here: centerforscientificintegrity.org/2026/03/10/a...

nature.com

Keep calm and be transparent: advice from scientists who retracted their papers

Retractions correct the scientific record, but they have stigma attached to them. Some in the research community want that to change.

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Graham Kendall @grahamkendall.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

Stealth corrections are still a threat to scientific integrity. If you are not familiar with stealth corrections, please read this. This guest post is on @deevybee.bsky.social's blog and is authored by from René Aquarius, Floris Schoeters, Alex Glynn and @gcabanac.cpesr.fr buff.ly/t8fWFZq

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Grand Labo @grandlabo.com · 20/02/2026

NOUVEL EP - Comment devient-on un "détective" de la #science ? Avec @gcabanac.cpesr.fr, prof. à l'Université de Toulouse et concepteur du "Problematic Paper Screener". youtu.be/pNdLmsXDVn0

youtu.be

Qui sont les "détectives de la science" ?

YouTube video by Grand Labo

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Dead Neanderthals @deadneanderthals.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

We wrote a 1-year update post on stealth corrections. Thank you @deevybee.bsky.social for hosting it. We also wrote a @cosig.net guide to make reporting stealth corrections more streamlined cc: @gcabanac.cpesr.fr

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NanoBubbles @nanobubbles.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

📰 David Adam reports for Nature News on our Replication Initiative "A European project calls for help to verify whether carbon quantum dots are really able to sense chemicals in cells." 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/d41... @nature.com

nature.com

Nanoscience is latest discipline to embrace large-scale replication efforts

A European project calls for help to verify whether carbon quantum dots are really able to sense chemicals in cells.

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Mohammad Hosseini @mhmdhsini.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

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...

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Jack Ryan 🙏🧪 @jacksonwryan.com · 11/01/2026

🧪 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.

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NanoBubbles @nanobubbles.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

📣 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.org.uk

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...

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NanoBubbles @nanobubbles.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

📣 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?'

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Reese Richardson @reeserichardson.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

"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 !

doi.org

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.

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