This Week’s Texted Discoveries

Fake Caroline update: The person who was impersonating me managed to get an article published in Science, under my by-line. And they got paid for it! I’ve seen the pitches (bad), and the email chain between editors who weren’t all that impressed, but googled me and decide to take a punt. When the article came in it was dry, clunky and badly written, but after several rounds of editing they managed to get it into a publishable state. It went online in June and was up until yesterday when it became clear they (and I) had been scammed. Link to the retraction / editor’s comment here: https://lnkd.in/eSQ2XEAJ The whole thing makes me feel sick. I know from my work as an editor that the reputational damage is real. Had I pitched a story to them afterwards they would very understandably have said “Hell no!”. Who has the time to do someone else’s job? They tried “me”, “I” didn’t deliver, so no thank you. I have no idea how many more editors out there have me on their ‘do not commission’ list because of this person’s actions. There may also be several scientists who will not want to talk to me because they’ve had a bad experience with the fake one. More broadly, if this is a wider scam (and based on what others have told me, I think it is), it is potentially a serious issue for science journalism and journalism in general. And I’m not sure what we can do about that. On the plus side, I now have some very nice contacts at Science and Nature and plan to write something better for them as soon as possible. And the fact that payment was made opens up the possibility of tracking down who is behind this. Watch this space... Thanks everyone for your comments, suggestions and shares. It’s very much appreciated! And thanks to Brendan Maher and John Travis for taking this seriously, and for entertaining the idea of working with the real me at some point! And now back to what I should have been doing this week... | 123 comments on LinkedIn

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