Academics linked to a phoney research network have received millions of pounds in taxpayer funding from countries across the world, it has been revealed.
,?the Bangladesh-based Pharmakon Neuroscience Research Network (PNRN) claims to be an “open innovation hub bringing together neuroscientists to advance brain health” – but it was exposed as fictitious in 2022.
?found it was listed on more than 120 papers between 2019 and 2022. These publications involved 331 unique authors and were associated with 232 organisations and institutions across 40 countries.
The PNRN functioned as a loosely organised collaboration of predominantly early career researchers.
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Its?publications included funding acknowledgments with unverifiable organisations, questionable or unverifiable institutional affiliations, and suspiciously large citations in a short timeframe.
Despite clear?concerns about the legitimacy of the PNRN’s work, only three papers have been formally retracted to date.
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Leslie McIntosh, Digital Science’s vice-president of research integrity who led the investigation, said: “This example illustrates how weaknesses in research and publishing systems can be systematically exploited so that researchers can game the system for their own benefit.”
Several of the organisations it was associated with were simply private residences – two suburban houses and one apartment, in three different countries.
“Imagine a paper listing a random flat in Vienna, or a house in the US or Australia as an official research affiliation,”?. “That’s the level of audacity we’re dealing with.”
McIntosh, who presented her analysis at the 10th International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication in Chicago, was able to track the progress of authors connected with the network.
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While not naming the individual researchers involved, she said they have continued to publish and attract significant funding for their work, meaning legitimate taxpayer money is funding “very unethical practices”.
More than 20 currently have funding either as a principal investigator or a co-principal investigator and have collectively been awarded the equivalent of at least $6.5 million (?4.8 million).
Five had never previously been awarded funding for their research but have since received $649,891 from Science Foundation Ireland, $538,904 from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education in Portugal, $206,681 from the Croatian Science Foundation – and other funding from the US, Japan, France and Russia.
One researcher with more than $50 million in funding has authored one of the Pharmakon papers but Digital Science said it is not clear if he knowingly participated in the network.
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“We can presume that their publication portfolio, no matter how it was obtained, helped in securing this funding from legitimate sources,” added McIntosh.
She said more work is needed to examine whether?some of the researchers do not know they were authors on papers within this network.
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The incident, and the limited corrective actions taken,?emphasises the need for stronger verification, monitoring, and cooperation,?she added.
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