Great article about one of the exploited datasets @surreymetascience.bsky.social previously identified (preprint will be linked below). It is due to have a significant and (we think!) quite cool update. It is interesting seeing how these datasets are specifically targeted by different global groups

Retraction Watch@retractionwatch.com · 3mo ago

A medical student in Nepal is at the center of an international research network churning out everything from systematic reviews and meta-analyses to case reports and database studies. Representatives from leading clinical societies, following our inquiry, will be giving them a closer look.

A recent Octopus publication by my colleague Matt Spick tinyurl.com/523n4nam. Possible to generate passable manuscripts in 30 minutes or less, which brings to mind the effort paradox. Is it worth continuing to reward review or secondary analysis publications if they require little effort?

The 30 minute manuscript: an example scientific paper by AI agent -...

BackgroundThe results presented here take the form of a completed scientific manuscript produced entirely by PRISM, the OpenAI agentic artificial intelligence platform. The prompts were documented...

octopus.ac

Great blogpost by Matt on how mills are flooding academic literature #academicsky #metascience #science

Dorothy Bishop@deevybee.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Just as publishers are waking up to the threats from paper mills, they are adopting a new approach to keep one step ahead, as explained in this guest blogpost by Matt Spick. deevybee.blogspot.com/2026/07/how-... #researchintegrity #publishing #papermills

A lot of our work in metascience at Surrey is on the ability of AI and AI-assisted pipelines to mass produce scientific papers on health and biological science. Interesting to see the same problem in another data-rich field. www.psu.edu/news/researc...

AI can mass-produce finance research papers indistinguishable from human work | Penn State University

A new study, co-authored by a Penn State Smeal College of Business professor, demonstrated that AI can mass-produce academic papers that look nearly indistinguishable from human-authored research, rai...

psu.edu

Meeting Open Science requirements can be a pain, and not every researcher wants to expose their data to post-publication scrutiny, creating incentives to cheat. Which is why 11.5% of Dryad DOIs fail to resolve. www.octopus.ac/publications...

Anyone interested in an interdisciplinary, funded PhD in areas of #metascience focusing on social phenomena and the evolution of scientific networks? Do you have expertise in computational tools such as R, Python, or Stata? See this post or contact Abhijit Sengupta (abhijit.sengupta@surrey.ac.uk)

Surrey Business School PhD studentships | Abhijit Sengupta

Are you interested in doing a #PhD in the areas of #metascience, #science #of #science, #innovation, exploring how #GenAI and #Open #Science are shifting the knowledge frontier? Are you interested in ...

linkedin.com

In light of the recent UK Biobank news, I'd like to share our previous work in PLOS Med doi.org/10.1371/jour... where we briefly highlighted some discrepancies in UKBB. I'm not sure we knew for sure the data was compromised to this state though. More evidence of the exploitation of datasets

UK Biobank suspends access after massive data breach - Research Professional News

Flagship research resource promises to “severely” restrict downloads after data found for sale in China

researchprofessionalnews.com

Confused why people argue that agentic AI is good for academia. It seems the arguments revolve around time savings and more papers produced quicker but ignores the impact this will have on peer review and an already overburdened system. Not to mention just more slop #academicsky #metascience

A great read by @aidybarnett.bsky.social and @jabyrnesci.bsky.social!

Accountability in Research: Ethics, Integrity, and Policy@accountabilityair.bsky.social · 9mo ago

📝 Latest Article Commentary Alert! 📝 "Closing the paper mines" @aidybarnett.bsky.social & @jabyrnesci.bsky.social → doi.org/10.1080/0898... #PaperMill #ResearchMisconduct #AI #GenAI #ResearchIntegrity

Our team recently highlighted the abuse of the CDC WONDER dataset, with a significant increase in the number of publications since 2023 (GenAI onset). In the first month of 2026, 276 new papers have been published, ~20% of the output in 2025 and ~79% of 2024 already.

Thoughts on averaging over 10 thousand citations a year in the last 10 years? Is this possible in healthcare research or a sign of unethical behaviour by inflating citations? 🤔 Curious to hear some perspectives! #academicsky #metascience

Very good read from @rossandersen.bsky.social and @theatlantic.com It summarises nicely the downside to AI, and why the abuse of Open Access data is becoming a larger problem. It's also disheartening to see publishers state they will continue to publish some of these works, hand waving away

Science Is Drowning in AI Slop

Peer review has met its match.

theatlantic.com

New preprint out now! This should be interesting particularly for those interested in paper-mills and their abuse of open-access datasets. This one stands to be particularly interesting as its one of the first to implicate actors associated with Western institutions.

Drastic changes in collaboration networks and publication patterns in research using the CDC WONDER dataset

The growth of generative AI and easily available Open Access health datasets has transformed researcher productivity, leading to an explosion in publications that has in part been attributed to paper ...

medrxiv.org

New perspective in @plosmedicine.org on safeguarding open access datasets in the post GenAI era. Looking forward to the community's perspectives and insights on this. #openscience #metascience #academicsky

Safeguarding Open Science from exploitative practices

Open research and data transparency are a bulwark against unethical activities, but can also introduce integrity risks. In this Perspective, Danny Maupin, Matt Spick and Nophar Geifman argue that free...

journals.plos.org

Our preprint on rise in redundant publications is now up on BMC Medicine! An early access version before it's officially published @springernature.com @bmc.springernature.com #academicsky #metascience

Dramatic increases in redundant publications in the Generative AI era - BMC Medicine

Background Redundant publication, the practice of submitting the same or substantially overlapping manuscripts multiple times, distorts the scientific record and wastes resources. Since 2022, publicat...

link.springer.com

This was a good read. I believe that regardless of your opinion on AI, replicability, open science etc we can all find common ground on at least some of these points. Change is needed in science particularly in the current publishing model #academicsky #opensci #metascience

Reformation of science publishing: the Stockholm Declaration | Royal Society Open Science

Science relies on integrity and trustworthiness. But scientists under career pressure are lured to purchase fake publications from ‘paper mills’ that use AI-generated data, text and image fabrication. The number of low-quality or fraudulent publications ...

royalsocietypublishing.org

Has anyone published a pre-print to find that a similar article has been published just before or after yours was published in a peer review journal? Please reply or message me with your experience! #academicsky #opensci

arXiv one of the latest to begin blanket rejecting of papers due to AI. This follows Plos and Frontiers approach to papers using NHANES data. I feel a drastic change will eventually come to academia in terms of publication, open data etc. How will we adapt? #metascience #opensci #AcademicSky

New preprint on MedRxiv! In this we looked at how unemployment benefits impact the mental health of underemployed workers. We had relatively small sample sizes so couldn't use causal methods and had to settle for meta-regression, but this piece provides some initial evidence for expanding /1

The Impact of Unemployment Benefits on the Mental Health of Underemployed Workers: Findings from the Understanding America Study

Background: Underemployment, working fewer hours than desired, has a negative impact on mental health. Research suggests that unemployment benefits can support the mental health of unemployed individu...

medrxiv.org

Excited to be a part of this cohort and can't wait to work with fellow colleagues to explore this area further #academicsky #metascience

UK Research and Innovation@ukri.org · last yr.

We're pleased to be funding early career researchers to explore how AI is transforming science. The UK Metascience Unit has announced a cohort of 29 researchers that will receive funding through the AI Metascience Fellowship Programme. Read more: www.ukri.org/news/interna...

I like the idea of a week long process to write a 10 page recommendation letter in Stanford law. Seems like a good way to evaluate someone's contributions though needs to be done well to minimise bias

Research on Research Institute (RoRI)@rorinstitute.bsky.social · last yr.

“Using metrics to assess researchers can be ‘very dodgy terrain,’” says @jameswilsdon.bsky.social. Great overview of how research assessment is changing worldwide in @nature.com , featuring recent work by RoRI with the Global Research Council: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Very good thread transparency research in PT. Unfortunate results but hopefully starts some progress

François Jabouille@francois-jabouille.bsky.social · last yr.

📰 New preprint: Replicability and transparency in physical therapy research: Time to wake up 📰 Where does physical therapy stand on the replication crisis and open-science practices? We have identified significant shortcomings in current physical therapy research practice 👉 doi.org/10.1101/2025...

"Harvard could embed metascience into General Education Courses, ensuring that they reach as many students as possible." Ambika Grover in @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Glad to be getting more attention to our work on redundant publications!! @nature.com #metascience #academicsky

Journals infiltrated with ‘copycat’ papers that can be written by AI

Tools such as ChatGPT can be used to generate almost-identical research papers that pass standard plagiarism checks. Hundreds are thought to have been published.

nature.com

In light of the recent tylenol autism discussion I thought I'd look at the Harvard review paper that is being cited as strong evidence for the link. Note this is not my area of research, I'm just a nerd that enjoys research done well. That said please let me know what strengths and weaknesses I 1/

Excited to see this news piece from Frontiers referencing our recent preprint. Great to see transparency from how publishers are working to solve current issues affecting science www.frontiersin.org/news/2025/09... Look forward to seeing how academics and publishers can improve science together

Cutting through fast-churn science: How Frontiers raised the bar

“Fast-churn” science—manuscripts built from quick queries of public datasets—has become an industry-wide concern. These rapidly executed studies can flood journ

frontiersin.org

A new preprint exploring redundant publications, studies assessing the same exposure and outcome, including one published 6 times in a year! Additionally we look at how GenAI can be used to rewrite these papers while avoiding automated plagriaism detectors www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Dramatic increases in redundant publications in the Generative AI era

Background: Redundant publication, the practice of submitting the same or substantially overlapping manuscripts multiple times, distorts the scientific record and wastes resources. Since 2022, publica...

medrxiv.org

Very grateful to announce that I have been granted a fellowship by the @ukri.org Metascience Unit. I am going to be looking into how GenAI may be used for epistemic trespassing. Beyond excited for this opportunity and can't wait to get started #metasci

A bit more background on our recent publication on environmental antibiotic resistance

The Conversation UK@uk.theconversation.com · last yr.

Most antibiotic resistance research comes from high-income countries but the greatest threats are elsewhere. This inequality is shaping the future of global health.

Another publication! Grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this piece. It is an impressive piece of work with 13,667 records screened looking for occurrence of antibiotic resistance in non-build environments shorturl.at/g7smK #AcademicSky

Mapping the evidence of the effects of environmental factors on the prevalence of antibiotic resistance in the non-built environment

Antibiotic resistance increasingly threatens the interconnected health of humans, animals, and the environment. While misuse of antibiotics is a known…

shorturl.at