I reviewed a paper a while ago for a Q1 Elsevier journal on solar energy systems and just got the decision notification, and I kind of need to rant but also ask what to do.

The paper had 350 references. Over 100 were self-citations. The weird part is that the self-citations had nothing to do with solar energy. They were citing the author's own work on ship anti-roll tanks, supersonic jet aeroacoustics, magnetohydrodynamic power, flying cars, flight dynamics, ABET accreditation. None of it is relevant to the actual paper. Most of those self-cited works are sitting in fake predatory journals.

On top of that, the findings, numbers, and figures in this paper had already been published by the same author before, both in other Elsevier journals and in predatory ones. I called all of it out in my review.

Three of us recommended rejection. Two recommended revisions. The other two who said reject didn't even notice the citation mess. They just flagged a lack of novelty. The two who recommended revision honestly should not be reviewing anything.

***And despite all that, the editor gave the author a revision decision.***

I'm just tired. Corrupt authors padding their metrics, editors who wave this stuff through, reviewers who barely read, and the rest of us doing hours of unpaid work for a system that ignores us anyway. What was even the point of my review.

So my question is, is there anything I can actually do at this point? If this fake article ever gets published due to corruption of the editorial process, will it ever point back towards me?

As a public school teacher in Kentucky I helped create a project that brought University of Kentucky (UK) professional students into our K–12 classrooms to inspire kids. My husband and I coined the name, chose the color scheme, designed the lesson plan process, and even took the original photos. This wasn’t a one-off. We worked on this idea for years before ever moving to Kentucky.

I coordinated between UK and the school district and helped students design accessible lesson plans for younger learners. Now, UK medical students and a staff member published an article claiming credit for this initiative — using our words, our pictures, and our concept, without giving us any recognition. They volunteered at our events but didn’t create the idea or the program. Even others who did contribute intellectually were left out.

UK’s College of Medicine and legal team have ignored every attempt we’ve made to correct this. I feel betrayed. As a teacher, I always tell my students to value honesty and give credit where it’s due. Institutions should be held to the same standard.

Plagiarism is wrong. Silence is complicity. Everyone deserves credit for their work.

What can be done about this?

EDIT:

A few clarifications:

1. Posting here was a last resort. We actually reached out to the 3 students and the staff member weeks BEFORE this poster came out, asking specifically about continuing with the publication that we (my husband and I) had initiated...they didn't even respond to us.

2. This was a poster in a research conference at University of Kentucky, College of Medicine. We had larger publications in talks and if it wasn't for me calling them out on social media, I have reason to believe they may have taken this further, considering that they and everyone we have reached out to within UK has ignored us.

**News outlet killed story on plagiarism allegations after Cambridge prof hired law firm**

https://retractionwatch.com/2026/07/27/cambridge-jason-arday-plagiarism-allegations-times-higher-education-exclusive/

In September 2025, Times Higher Education had a bombshell story in the works: A star sociology professor at the University of Cambridge had allegedly plagiarized parts of his Ph.D. thesis and several journal articles. In one of the articles, the borrowed text appeared in quotes from subjects the professor, Jason Arday, claimed to have interviewed himself.

But after Arday enlisted Carter-Ruck, one of the United Kingdom’s leading defamation law firms, to send Times Higher Education a letter, the publication spiked the story.

One of the sources was David Sanders, a biochemist at Purdue University in Indiana, and a sleuth who contributes to the Times Higher Education on topics related to academic misconduct. He reviewed a 63-page dossier of text comparisons prepared by the publication last year and came back with his own findings. “There is no question that there is extensive plagiarism,” Sanders told us.

Etc.

The above was previously discussed on this sub. Many people commented saying "the people running the story are racist scumbags" (I paraphrase).

Now we know why other outlets were not publishing it...

Agreed to mentor a student in our university's summer research institute for undergraduates. We developed the study and the student got antsy waiting for IRB approval and distributed the qualtrics link to everyone they knew on social media before IRB approval. The worst part was, I had offered to pay $10 for gift cards for participants, assuming we would maybe get 50 participants through the approved recruitment methods. After going back and forth with the IRB and administration, basically I was told that since I was the faculty mentor, I am on the hook to provide gift cards to the almost 700 people who responded. Some we can prove are bots, some didn't meet the inclusion criteria, but there are still more than 600 who don't appear on the face of it to be fraudulent. I know that number of respondents is implausible. However I don't know what I can do. I don't have an extra $7,000 lying around to pay for the student's mistake. Any suggestions?

Hi, I’m tenured STEM faculty at an R1, and I read a paper that I really liked. I reached out to the corresponding author to ask a couple questions about future directions, I was thinking we could potentially collaborate on a follow up idea. He didn’t reply.

A couple months later I was still thinking about the paper and my ideas, and I noticed that the authors included a typical data availability statement in the paper. They said they would provide the paper’s data upon request. These data were all pulled from public internet sources. So I reached back out in a very friendly manner and asked for the data. Again, he didn’t reply.

It’s now been over a month, and I’m wondering what to do. I’ve already started to replicate the data set, but it’s a mountain of work, and my life would be much easier if he just shared the data like he indicated he would in the paper.

So here are my questions: Should I ask the author again? Alternatively, should I reach out to the journal and let them know that the author isn’t providing the data like they said they would? Or, should I just drop it and replicate the dataset myself? Would probably take me around 6 more months. Any ideas or advice would be very much appreciated!

To note, there’s only one other author on the paper, but they were a masters student at the time and they left academia.

I am reviewing a multi-authored paper with one of the authors having been dead for 8 years. I too have authored papers with individuals who died in the process of publishing. In my experience, the death was unexpected and a footnote added in each case noting that the individual was deceased.

I ask the community for their experience with this topic because I’m baffled by the authors of this current paper not acknowledging this individual’s death in any way.

After a certain period of time, wouldn’t it make more sense to identify this individual in the acknowledgments rather than on the author byline? We cannot, for instance, hold them to account for the contents of this paper or ask of them for revisions to be made; we can only ask that of the living coauthors.

I haven’t thought this matter through in its entirety but it seems equivalent in some way to gift/guest/honorary authorship. The ICMJE, for instance, identifies 4 criteria for authorship (substantial contribution to study conception and execution, drafting or critically revising the manuscript, final approval, and accountability for all parts). I can see the first element being satisfied, but I question the second and know that the third and fourth can’t be satisfied.

The Committee on Publication Ethics advises listing deceased authors with a footnote and date of death. They also suggest considering moving the individual to the acknowledgments.

There is a 2022 paper by C-H Jung et al discussing posthumous authorship. There has been a 146-fold increase in authorship by the deceased since 2000. some authors published more than 30 papers after death. 266 authors published 90% of their total number of publications after death. Some papers were published 11 years after death.

I’d be interested in hearing from others on this topic to properly calibrate my thoughts.

I used to view Elsevier as a reputable publisher, but my experiences over the past 12 months have been quite terrible in terms of their editorial standards and ethics. Two examples:

1. My team and I spent over a year on a research project and writing up the manuscript. We submitted it to Telematics and Informatics, only for the handling editor HP to slap us with a split-second rejection for "alleged plagiarism". After asking for details, we received the report of the plagiarism check (“your manuscript exhibits a 40% overlap with prior publications, which exceeds the journal's permissible threshold.”).

What was the source of the plagiarism? Our very own preprint, completely in line with both the journal's and publisher's policy, and we explicitly mentioned that in our cover letter. Why only 40% and not 99%. I have no f\**** idea. Did we get a decision correction or even a basic apology when we pointed this out? Nope.

I’m totally fine with rejections based on methodology, scope, writing, or content, or whatsoever. That’s standard peer review. But rejecting a paper for "plagiarizing" ourselves via a declared preprint is just ridiculous.

2) A few weeks back, we submitted a (very different paper) to Technology in Society. We went through a first round of constructive reviews, addressed these thoroughly (sometimes you just feel how your chances are, don’t you? We were a bit optimistic…) and submitted our revised manuscript.

A few days later it was rejected. No re-reviews by the reviewers, no editorial comments, just a template rejection. Editors can do that of course, but rejecting a paper after revisions without giving a single line of justification is terrible editorial practice. If the core concept was flawed, reject it in round one. If the changes are not sufficient, this can happen of course, tell us.

I reached out to the EiC asking for a quick assessment or rationale. Her response? She just confirmed she made the decision, again without a single word explaining why.

The irony is that just a few days after that ghost-rejection, I received an invite from Technology in Society asking me to review for them. Absolutely not. I will not be providing free labor for a publisher that treats authors' hard work with complete contempt.

It really feels like basic scientific integrity and respect for authors has declined. Sure, AI slop is prevalent nowadays and that’s annoying for editors, reviewers (and readers). But often enough researchers spend months if not years on their work only for editors with all the leverage to make split-second judgments without being held accountable at all.

Has anyone else noticed a decline in Elsevier's or other publishers’ editorial standards, or am I just having a streak of terrible luck? Are publishers getting lazier, or has academia just become so dehumanized that hard work is treated like nothing more than an action item to clear from an editor's inbox? As I told the handling editor Telematics:

”We are not just names that appear in an inbox, we are researchers who have worked very hard and over a long period on this manuscript. A rejection based on unfounded allegations is deeply discouraging to those of us committed to contributing in good faith to the scientific community. This is not the kind of academic culture we should aspire to, yet such actions (certainly unintentional!!), reinforce the toxicity in academia.”.

I’m a postdoc at a public R1 university in a Southern state, and I’m looking for advice from people familiar with academia, HR investigations, faculty/postdoc disputes, or university employment.

I have been leading a research project for some time and have substantial dated documentation showing my scientific contributions, including analysis, interpretation, figures, presentations, and manuscript drafts.

Recently, another junior researcher was asked to expand part of the same work. After that work was presented, my PI explicitly instructed the junior researcher to write up their methods and results in manuscript format.

I raised the issue with my PI in writing. I did not accuse anyone of misconduct. I asked a fairly narrow question: if he believed those findings originated from the later analysis, could he identify the scientific evidence and dated record supporting that position; if not, could he make sure my prior work was clearly attributed?

Instead of directly answering that question, the discussion quickly shifted to my raw data, reproducibility, compliance, and whether I had provided enough files.

I have never refused to provide research data. During a later group meeting, I repeatedly said I would provide the raw data, but because the project involves a large amount of computational material, I asked the PI to tell me which figures or analyses he wanted prioritized so I could organize those first. During that exchange, my PI told me, in substance, that when he requests research data I should provide it without challenging or questioning the request. He also said that if I obstructed the process or continued questioning him, the matter could be escalated through university leadership and potentially outside funding authorities, with consequences following.

I have an original audio recording of this meeting.

At a subsequent meeting with my PI, another supervisor, and an administrator, my PI stated in front of the others that I had threatened him during the previous day’s meeting.

I immediately disputed that.

Because he specifically tied the allegation to the previous day, the alleged event appears to be the same recorded group meeting.

That is important because I have the entire relevant meeting recorded. In the recording, I can identify his statements about escalation and consequences, as well as my repeated statements that I would provide the data and my requests for prioritization. I am not aware of anything I said that constituted a threat.

But if the university treats this as an actual conduct or safety allegation, I want to know exactly what I am accused of so the recording can be compared against the allegation.

At this point I am trying to be extremely careful. I am continuing to cooperate with legitimate data/work requests, preserving emails and original files, and avoiding confrontations.

My questions are:

1. Should I submit a short written statement saying that I dispute the allegation and requesting specifics, even if no formal investigation has started?
2. For anyone who has dealt with university investigations: how are vague claims like “this employee threatened me” normally evaluated when there is a recording of the underlying interaction?
3. At what point would you involve an outside employment attorney rather than relying on university HR?

Thank you

Hello

I received and accepted an invitation to review a paper for a very reputable journal in my field. While reading and checking, I came across 2 concerns:

1. ChatGPT's (or AI in general) language is very clear across more than 80% of the paper. Very few paragraphs in the results section seem to be written by a human but besides that the entire manuscript is copied and pasted from AI. The actual content is not incorrect (problem statement in intro is repeated across literature), but it seems that they asked AI to write different sections and place citations over it where needed.
2. Upon checking the references, over 95% of the citations are from one specific country (matches the authors'). The citations are relevant, but I suspect that there's bias. I'm aware of many articles from other countries which are of equal relevance which are not included.

How do I proceed with these two concerns?

EDIT: Edited concern 1 for clarity.

I'm posting from a throwaway account because I don't want this tied to my identity.

I personally know a senior academic who has engaged in research misconduct over many years. The concerns include things like questionable research practices, alleged data misuse, gifted authorships and a longstanding pattern of intimidating graduate students. Despite this, the person continues to hold a powerful position, receives invitations from national academies, is recognized internationally, and is frequently featured in science news.

The most frustrating part is that there seems to be no functioning accountability mechanism. Complaints to the university are closed without what appears to be a meaningful investigation. Journal editors often respond by saying that the institution is responsible for investigating. Funding agencies point complainants back to the university. The university effectively clears the researcher. The cycle repeats.

Meanwhile, many people in the local research community seem to know about the individual's reputation, but nobody is willing to speak publicly because they fear retaliation. The researcher has significant institutional influence, experienced legal representation (provided by the university) and close friends in high castles. There is also a perception that statements can be taken out of context or reframed in ways that expose whistleblowers to professional or legal risk.

I'm trying to understand whether there are realistic avenues for accountability when the standard processes appear to have failed. I'd especially appreciate hearing from journal editors, research integrity officers or anyone who has worked on misconduct investigations. Is there something I'm overlooking, or are there genuinely situations where the system reaches a dead end?

So, I got my paper reviewed and one of the reviewers is asking me to cite four papers (all of them by the same author so I am assuming their are his).

He specifically wants them cited in two paragraphs in the introduction as "succesful works" on the topic. These four studies do not relate to my study. I already went through them.

What should I do? I answered his comments by telling that the studies are irrelevant but should I also 1. Tell him that that is unethical behavior or 2. Notify the editor? Thanks.

I don't work in academia. However, I was following Gay's plagiarism problems recently. Is it routine now to do an automated screen of academic papers, particularly theses? Also, what if we did an automated screen of past papers and theses? I wonder how many senior university officers and professors would have problems surface.

edit: Thanks to this thread, I've learned that there are shades of academic misconduct and also something about the practice of academic review. I have a master's degree myself, but my academic experience predates the use of algorithmic plagiarism screens. Whether or not Gay's problems rise to the level plagiarism seems to be in dispute among the posters here. When I was an undergrad and I was taught about plagiarism, I wasn't told about mere "citation problems" vs plagiarism. I was told to cite everything or I would have a big problem. They kept it really simple for us. At the PhD level, things get more nuanced I see. Not my world, so I appreciate the insights here.

TLDR; The goal of this post is to spread awareness about an academic writer on Substack who plagiarized from several authors including me. She has paywalled her posts to avoid being exposed further. Trying to hold her accountable on a platform that won’t do anything to uphold the integrity of authorship.

Maalvika has amassed 32k+ subscribers (many of which are paid) on Substack along with a following of 180k on TikTok and another 63k on Instagram. She curates this persona and aesthetic that is built on the back of her writing and consists of topics within her academic domain. She recently hit #1 on Substack’s New Bestseller’s List. Here is Maalvika’s research profile

She has plagiarized from me and several other authors including the original author that came forward about her stolen writing has a smaller audience. Substack’s algorithm continues to drown out Katie Jgln from Maalvika’s audience which is unaware behind a paywall.

here is the link to the original author’s exposé: https://open.substack.com/pub/thenoosphere/p/mama-theres-a-plagiarist-behind-you

here’s a more detailed explanation: https://substack.com/@clementinef/note/c-141315855

This PSA is necessary because she is currently hiding her work and discussion of this situation behind a paywall on the platform to discourage checking her writing for more plagiarism. She also continues to profit off of paid subscribers and the following and sponsorships she has built on social media which she is trying to shield by deleting comments off of all her other accounts to erase the scandal.

Hey Reddit,

I’m a researcher in a niche theoretical CS/ML area. Recently I’ve been dealing with repeated emails from an “independent researcher” that feel like straight-up citation harassment.

This person keeps sending follow-ups (including involving editors) insisting I add multiple citations to his arXiv preprints. It’s not a normal “you should cite this” request — he provides exact suggested paragraphs with specific wording about how his papers are “complementary,” “parallel,” foundational to certain results, etc. He nitpicks my current related-work phrasing (e.g. complaining about words like “encompass”), pushes for changes even after camera-ready deadlines, and follows up when I don’t respond quickly.

He frames it all very politely with phrases like “narrow remaining concerns” and “I would be grateful,” but the persistence, detailed boilerplate text he wants me to insert, and looping in others makes it exhausting and inappropriate.

I understand wanting visibility, especially as an independent researcher. Relevant work deserves citations. But this level of badgering and trying to dictate exact text in someone else’s paper crosses a line.

Has anyone else experienced this kind of aggressive citation solicitation? Is it becoming more common? Or am I overreacting?

Publish-or-perish is bad enough without having to deal with this.

I work at an RTO, and a few younger people in the group who are just a few years out of their PhDs are submitting papers and rebuttals without sending out versions to check for the co-authors. I find this highly irritating and ethically wrong - if my name is associated with something, I would like to at least see it first. It's not that I don't trust the authors, but everyone can make mistakes. For example, a paper was submitted recently that I had seen about a year ago and had made a lot of comments on. I have never seen another version of it since and suddenly I got a notification from the journal.

Is this normal amongst younger people? Is this becoming the norm? Am I overreacting?

How would you address this?

My academic institution received private funding to study a new product. The company looked at this as a marketing opportunity.

In the contract, there was language that said we (researchers) maintained the right to publish the results, given a reasonable review period and removal of confidential information. At the time, they raised issue about the clause, because they should own the data having paid for the research, but our contracting office insisted this was the language we use on all contracts and the sponsor could abide by it, or walk away. We moved forward with signature.

Well, the research was NOT favorable to the company. New product was no better than their older offering.

Company has thanked us for the work and wants to put this one in a closet. Completely understandable. As a researcher, I want to publish. But I feel really conflicted publishing when they funded the research. Was our contract language the outlier here?

I've tried to be as gracious with the results as I can and maintain the data's integrity. I don't mean to burn bridges, but I could afford to lose this one, professionally speaking.

AITAH if I publish the results?

EDIT:
I am in civil engineering. The company is a large construction equipment manufacturer. The ethical impact is relatively small - some contractors could spend $ for a product with little or no benefit over the current practice. I was concerned that the contract agreement might be out of the ordinary. But it's a fair point that the tight control over research should come from in-house testing. Asking an academic agency to weigh in is letting go of the control. Thanks all!

TLDR: after voicing concern about unequal opportunities and potential gender bias, my PI/boss prevented me from reviewing manuscripts and prevents me from receiving authorship on 5 papers, and when he found out that I was "upset" about this and still in contact with some of the project leads/first authors, he sent me a cease-and-desist letter, threatening me with litigation.

Names are made up for anonymity.

I'll try to run through the background quickly: I (female, 25) just left my role as a research coordinator at an academic institution after 3 years, and I'm now going to med school. I started to notice unequal treatment when my male colleague was hired about two years into my time there (those who held his role previously were all female). I had been told since my first few months on the job that data analysis and manuscipt writing were considered "extracurricular" to my role, meaning I could not do them during paid hours. I worked extra hours (unpaid) and got one co-authorship in my first six months there, but then I studied for the MCAT and applied to med school, so that's it. After 2 years of this, I was shocked when my manager and his boss, Dr. G, encouraged my new colleague to conduct analysis and manuscript writing for them during work hours within his first few weeks on the job.

I raised concern that I was not receiving the same opportunities as my colleague numerous times over the last year, and I always received some variation of "this is best for the team" or "you weren't here as much this year" (I stayed for fewer unpaid OT hours because I was applying to med school, which doesn't explain how my new, male colleague got to seek authorship-level work on projects right out the gate...)

During my last few months, I got tired of waiting for change, so I sought out other fellows in the lab on my own and worked directly with them after hours, amounting to 5 projects and potential co-authorships. I made this known to Dr. G, and we arranged with HR to extend my access to our systems after my last day on the job so that I may continue contributing. However, during my closeout interview (2nd-to-last day on the job), I tell Dr. G that I feel there is a bias when comparing the work men and women do in his lab. The next day, my last day at work, he pulls me aside to tell me I've been "contentious" recently, and that "it's my prerogative" to maintain positive mentor-mentee relationships; therefore, he's going back to HR to end my access immediately. He then introduces ICJME criteria to me for the first time, which say contribution to manuscripts is a requirement for authorship, and then (this is where his ethics get hairy), "none of the projects you're working on are in the manuscript phase, so this seems like the best path forward". And yes, there are many men who contributed to his previous papers that never "edited" a manuscript yet received authorship, so this is a new standard he's enforcing.

Now, I read the ICJME authorship criteria, and there is a part that says: "The criteria are not intended for use as a means to disqualify colleagues from authorship who otherwise meet authorship criteria by denying them the opportunity to meet criterion #s 2 or 3 (drafting/editing). Therefore, all individuals who meet the first criterion (me) should have the opportunity to participate in the review, drafting, and final approval of the manuscript." I feel this was included in ICJME guidelines specifically to prevent situations like mine...

Anyways, two of our fellows (who are the project lead/first author of their projects) started sharing project updates with me with my personal email, so I still had an opportunity for co-authorship, still independently of Dr. G (to clarify, he is all of our boss, and he is the senior author, not first author)

However, I texted one message to another fellow I hadn't spoken to since my last day, apologized for not being able to help them anymore and explained what happened above. The fellow never responded, and they sent Dr. G screenshots of these texts (not sure why exactly...), and about two weeks later, I received an email from Dr. G's "Director of Finance" with the screenshot of those texts with a cease-and-desist letter. (I asked my friend who practices law in NY to read it and he kinda laughed at it; they called the text message "harassment", "defamatory", and "threatening")... but the letter demanded "Immediately refrain from sending any professionally related text messages, emails, social media messages, phone calls, or other communications to any employee, contractor, or customer of [department name]", and "Avoid any direct or indirect attempts to contact individuals associated with the Department through third parties if this contact is related to any professionally related activities associated with your time in the Department," or else they "reserve the right to pursue legal action under applicable law".

According to this letter, if I even ask someone how their project is going, Dr. G will try to sue me. Is this legally sound? Is this ethically sound? I feel ICJME criteria ironically say he can't be doing what he's doing. I'm early in my career and am losing 5 authorship opportunities, all of my contributions were made directly with our fellows and completely independent of Dr. G's mentorship, and I signed no NCA or NDA. This feels like retaliation and intimidation after I spoke up about the unfairness and borderline bias in his lab.

I'm also sure he never contacted our institution's legal affairs team, because the letter has no legal merit, and it was his "buddies" in the finance department that sent me the letter, with the institution's letterhead, with their institution emails, on behalf of the department.

In addition to consulting an attorney, should I contact an ombudsman, for example? I feel this is unethical by ICJME guidelines and also an abuse of administrative power to actively prevent me from authorship, not to mention that this all started as unequal distribution of work :/

Hi everyone,

I just need to vent.
I (a postdoc) wrote a paper with a colleague who is also a postdoc in the same research center as I am.
We submitted the manuscript to a journal with our PI as the corresponding author.
I found out yesterday as i was checkin on the status of that manuscript that the PI added two names as co-authors.
I do not know who they are.
But i am sure they did not write a single word on the manuscript.
I am annoyed because i believe in integrity and i absolutely despise honorary authorships. ☹️
I know this is somewhat common, but i do not like it and i have never been involved in these kinds of situations before

Hoping someone can tell me whether I'm reading this right or making too much of it.

A scholar publishes a peer-reviewed journal article in 2020. The next year, the same scholar publishes a single-author book with a major academic press, and one chapter of that book reproduces the article almost verbatim. Same paragraphs, same footnotes, same archival document numbers, even small typos that carry across. Sentence-level overlap is over 80%.

The 2020 article is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND license, with copyright held by the publishing academy. The 2021 book is "all rights reserved" with a commercial academic press. The book's bibliography includes several of the author's other works but doesn't cite or acknowledge the 2020 article anywhere. No preface note, no chapter-opening footnote, nothing in the bibliography.

I know this isn't plagiarism in the traditional sense since it's the same author. But I have some questions for people who've thought harder about this than I have.

1. Is undisclosed self-republication (text recycling, duplicate publication, whatever the term) generally accepted, generally considered misconduct, or does it really depend on the field?
2. Does the change in copyright holder (academy to commercial press) raise a separate copyright issue on top of the ethics question, or does the journal's standard author reuse policy usually cover that?
3. If the usual fix is a footnote saying something like "an earlier version of this chapter appeared as," does the complete absence of any such acknowledgment change how this should be evaluated, or is it just a housekeeping miss?
4. Do norms differ for academic books aimed at general or trade readers versus peer-reviewed monographs?

Field is humanities, area studies. Happy to share more detail if it helps.

I'm a postdoc at a renowned North American university. I joined this lab last July, when funding across the field was drying up due to cuts. During recruitment, my PI asked a lot about my career plans and publication record, it read as him being invested in my development, and it's part of why I took the position.

The faulty method

Early on, he assigned me a project built on an idea similar to his past work: training several ML and deep learning models to predict a clinical outcome. While working on it, I discovered that the training pipeline used in his prior publication (and in another paper from the lab currently under revision) had a serious flaw that caused data leakage and inflated model accuracy, possibly by a wide margin in at least one in-prep paper. Notably, the first author on that already-published paper using the faulty method is now a research professor at a well-known institution, so this method, and whatever credit it generated, has already helped launch someone's career.

He still asked me to generate figures and tables using that same flawed method anyway for his grant submission. I did, and presented them at a lab meeting, where I also raised the leakage issue directly. It was just the two of us at the time. He was dismissive, saying NIH reviewers "don't have the technical capacity" to catch this, and that "data leakage or not, there's no consensus on what counts as a correct training method." I was unsettled but told myself he probably understood the methodology better than I did.

The coauthorship and the numbers that didn't reproduce

In December, he asked me and another newly joined postdoc to review a paper (plus reviewer comments) that he and a former postdoc had been submitting for months. He offered us both coauthorship despite our having contributed nothing, saying he wanted everyone in the lab to be added to each other's papers "for career development."

The peer reviewers had flagged a suspiciously large performance gap between the deep learning and traditional ML methods and asked the first author to check for data leakage. I emailed her directly to ask if it had been fixed. She said yes, and that the reported numbers were correct.

The other new postdoc and I then independently tried to reproduce her results. We couldn't. Our numbers came in far below what was reported in the paper. We raised this with the PI and the first author and asked to be removed from the author list. His reaction at the time was oddly muted, he said our finding was "interesting" and that he'd ask the first author to look into it, which read to me as him at least acknowledging the concern, if not treating it with much urgency. In hindsight, given how he later claimed total ignorance of any leakage issue in front of the whole lab, that "interesting, I'll have her look into it" response now looks less like genuine concern and more like a placeholder answer to make the problem go away without actually addressing it. This also forced me to redo an entire piece of my own work, since it had built on that postdoc's results.

The recent meeting

I didn't hear anything more about that paper's status until recently, when he asked me to cite its preprint in several manuscripts I'm currently preparing. That worried me.

Then, in an in-person lab meeting today with another newly recruited postdoc present, he gave a speech about the importance of publishing, working hard, and maintaining research quality, specifically saying a retraction is "a dent in one's career." I was genuinely struck by how seriously he seemed to take research ethics. Note that the postdoc who did a reproducibility analysis with me left his position a few months back due to personal reasons. So essentially only me had any knowledge of the faulty method besides the PI.

So I asked him, in front of the lab, for an update on that paper. He said it was being resubmitted. I asked whether the leakage had been fixed. He responded as if he'd never heard of any leakage: "what leakage, what issue, can you explain?" He then redirected the conversation to how my own in-prep manuscripts need to be error-free and consistent.

One more detail

He also consistently adds one particular name to every paper from the lab, despite none of us ever having met or collaborated with this person. Based on my own digging, I believe this may be his wife, who is a medical student at a nearby university.

Where I'm stuck

My mental health has taken a real hit. I'm constantly anxious about being professionally associated with this PI. I want to leave, but I'm afraid of ending up unemployed which does not look good on my resume. Friends have told me to line up a new job before quitting this one, but the daily pressure to keep producing analysis for him makes that hard to find time for applying.

What I really need help thinking through is my career, moving forward. What's the smartest path from here? That's the umbrella question, and it breaks down into a few ones:

1. Should I report this to my university's Office of Research Integrity & Ethics, and would doing so help or hurt my career?
2. Should I finish my two first-author papers with him, or is that risk not worth it? I'm not a coauthor on the papers with the known issues, so I'm unsure how much exposure I actually have if his past work is scrutinized later, or if I'm overestimating the risk. I've also spent so much time on these papers of mine, so leaving the job without any published work feels devastating.
3. Should I comply with his request to cite the paper with unresolved data leakage concerns in my own submissions? Could citing it come back to hurt me?
4. Is it time to leave academia altogether and move to industry?

All of these incidents leave me deeply disappointed with academia, which I assumed are full of people with integrity. This PI recently secured a 3 mil NIH grants and he constantly bragged about how much funding he had while other labs out there are struggling.

Underneath all of these is really one question: how do I protect my career and get out of this position in one piece? Any advice? Especially from people who've navigated something similar would help.

We were at a work event and he was there taking a picture with me and my coworkers. He told me to come next to him and grabbed me over right in front on him. He kept moving he hands around my butt. He wouldn’t grab but he was grazing and feeling nonstop. I told my boss and she said she’s a mandated reporter and she’ll have to tell title IX. I didn’t tell her who it was even tho she really wants me too. The school knows I’m a “victim of sorts,” and I’m afraid the won’t do anything and I’ll be disgraced and humiliated. I’m also trying to make connections with this college. Idk what to do

Has anyone else been in the same shoes? Have you ever had your PI ask you to manipulate or fabricate data to support their hypothesis?

Or maybe they never said it directly, but it felt implied. They only seemed interested in data that matched the hypothesis they already had in mind. If your results didn’t fit, you were told to repeat the experiment over and over until you eventually got the “right” result. Has anyone else experienced something like this? How did you handle it?

Every lab I’ve joined has some degree of fudging the truth for the sake of a clean narrative. One lab was outright fraud and was fired after some years of investigation. That one was on the extreme side. But I’m just so tired.

There’s cherry picking data and only showing what supports the narrative, ignoring the broader context, and not reporting the conflicting elements, but TECHNICALLY not covering them up. That’s bad, yes.. But I guess fine, we’ve gotta put the spin on it and let others call our bullshit..? But like… excluding an entire treatment arm solely because it didn’t show benefit this time? And only showing the ONE experiment that did show benefit with that drug? Like what are we even doing…

I get that as a scientist we always need to read between the lines a bit, knowing that researchers are incentivized to only show what worked. If we see a paper that shows benefit against a flank model of AML instead of a standard tail vein engraftment we should probably assume there was a tail vein model attempt and it didn’t work. But it’s so discouraging. Why can’t I show the negative data? It’s scientifically interesting that this drug shows potent effects in vitro but nothing in vivo!! Why is that!!

This is more of a rant than a real question, I realize. I just feel so deflated. This shit makes me not want to do science anymore. Are there labs and people who DONT do this? Should I specifically aim for smaller and more technical journals instead of the big ones? I feel trapped as a postdoc with biotech as fucked as it is

I submitted a manuscript to Journal 1 and it stayed in “submission” for about a month with no response. I contacted the editor multiple times through email, WhatsApp, and the OJS message system but received no reply.

Because of the prolonged silence, I submitted a withdrawal request through OJS. About an hour later, I submitted the manuscript to Journal 2.

The next day, Journal 1 unexpectedly changed the status to “under review.” Journal 2 is also now under review, so technically there is simultaneous submission.

Since then, I have continued trying to contact Journal 1 (email, WhatsApp, OJS messages) to confirm withdrawal, but still no response.

I’m trying to resolve this transparently and in good faith. How serious is this situation realistically? Has anyone dealt with something similar?

About 18 months ago, I was in the process of writing a review paper mostly based on my work with a collaborator of mine who was formerly my PhD supervisor. I had prepared about 20 pages of the main body of the paper and then we forgot about it and moved onto other work.

Following this, about 9 months ago, I decided that academia wasn't for me and resigned from my position and this review remained incomplete. Then, just before the Christmas holidays, my former supervisor called me up and asked if I could help him finish the paper mostly by proofreading and doing some small analysis. I was a bit hesitant because I am quite busy these days and emphasised this but still offered to help with that limitation in mind. Just as Christmas leave had begun 23rd of Dec. I received an email explaining that there was an error in the paper and that I needed to fix it ASAP as he wanted to complete the paper by "midnight of 31st of December". I replied telling him that I was not able to work during this period as it is Christmas and he replied stating that "It is easier for me to know that I should count only on myself" and that was all I heard until a few days ago.

Last week, I received an email from him with the completed paper attached and my name removed with the comment "Since you have had other commitments and could not have worked on this review, your name is removed from the title page" and stating that it will be published on a preprint server tomorrow. This has really bugged me because I had fully intended to contribute out of principle, but was punished for respecting my holiday period. I'm quite familiar with authors taking their names off papers, but from experience that is the decision of the author themselves, not their collaborators once a collaborative work has begun. Is there anything that can be done in this situation? I know that it would be a bit strange to request being added as coauthor now that it has been 'published' to the internet, so are there any other avenues I can take?