I am a research ethicist and often get asked by my university to investigate when potential concerns are raised about our staff or students. One example involved the recent case of the alleged paper mill and self-citation activities by Hitler Louis and Innocent Benjamin. The matter raised significant questions about who within the research community has the responsibility to act when concerns like this are raised.
Regular readers of Retraction Watch know that detecting alleged research misconduct is a haphazard affair. Frequently a university will find out about concerns after being notified by research integrity sleuths writing under pseudonyms. In this case, “Cisticola Tinniens” informed us that one of our current MSc students (Benjamin) had an unusually high number of publications for his early career stage, with some highlighted on the PubPeer website as potentially problematic.
The first thing we did was to check to see whether our university was named in any of these papers, as clearly institutions do have a responsibility for research attributed to our researchers or students. We found only one of the suspect papers named us directly, and since the work definitely had not occurred at our institution, it was relatively easy to get this affiliation corrected almost immediately.
But what about all the other problematic papers with no direct link to our university? It was difficult to know what more could be done beyond telling Cisticola Tinniens to contact the journals. Although Benjamin was now one of our students, what right did we have to interfere with supposedly peer-reviewed papers published by an expert academic journal prior to the individual arriving to study with us?
We hoped this would be the end of the case, but were surprised to receive yet more correspondence about a year or so later, well after the end of the student’s course. At this point, many of the problematic papers had been investigated and retracted. Yet Cisticola Tinniens and others on PubPeer seemed to think we should take further action.
We disagreed. Researchers move frequently between institutions, so if work cannot be directly linked back to a specific institution, what right does that institution have to take further action? Realistically there is little more a university can do except maybe revoke degrees, but this would be very difficult to justify if there is no obvious link between retractions and the work required for the degree itself.
Frustratingly, the increasing sophistication of generative AI, pressures created by the academic publish-or-perish culture, and the opportunity for financial profit make it increasingly easy for individuals to undermine the reliability of the research record. This is and should concern all of us but, as in this case, the responsibility for correcting the research record is shared.
If concerns are raised about the content of research papers, the journal editors who approved such papers for publication are the people best placed (and supposedly with the specific subject matter expertise) to investigate concerns. This is especially so due to an increasing trend for legitimate academic disagreements to be turned into research misconduct complaints, especially when there are strong differences of opinion. As an institution, we can pass on concerns as we did here, but the responsibility for making the difficult judgment as to the difference between a legitimate academic disagreement and research misconduct must sit with the relevant expert community represented by the journal editor.
As an academic, I care deeply about the accuracy of the research record and am frustrated by how easily some people are able to take advantage of the system without any apparent consequences. But while universities as employers and awarders of degrees do have a certain amount of power, they cannot be expected to take on the (sometimes legal) risk and burden of sanctioning all failures across the research process.
If journals in particular want to make large profits by representing and controlling the research literature, they also need to take responsibility to stop situations like this from occurring in the first place. If they prove to be ineffective at preventing fraudulent publications or managing effective peer review, it is yet more evidence that the research publication system is broken and needs replacing with alternative ways of judging and communicating research.
Simon Kolstoe is an associate professor of bioethics at the University of Portsmouth, U.K. His research focuses on the role of ethics committees and governance processes in promoting research integrity.
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> The first thing we did was to check to see whether our university was named in any of these papers, as clearly institutions do have a responsibility for research attributed to our researchers or students
I strongly believe this is a far too restrictive view. I have reported a number of cases where researchers with a record of fraud were newly hired. Following the logic above these complaints should go nowhere: work was done elsewhere, so “not our problem”.
These researchers were, however, exactly hired because of their large-but-fraudulent publication record. And it would thus be very unethical towards the rejected candidates for the same position to close one’s eyes and apply a ‘start with a clean sheet’ approach.
I do not know the specifics of your case. Still, I strongly feel that universities and institutions should take a broader responsibility regarding the integrity of the work of their students and researcher..
Similarly, an institution may also be interested in investigating a recent past student as they may have made similar errors, or generated fraudulent work, that led to their degree.
In the case of Innocent Benjamin, his LinkedIn profile suggests he received a Masters in Biotechnology “with Distinction” from the University of Portsmouth. Now employed in the private sector, he is likely to use his prior affiliation with Portsmouth to advance his career. Shouldn’t Portsmouth make some effort to ensure possible bad actors are not enabled merely due to institutional indifference?
Indeed, that’s a clear case of a university trying to kick an unpleasant problem elsewhere. The student very possibly would not have been admitted to the master’s program without his fake research record, and the odds that some of his degree work is similarly shaky (or plain old copied from the student next to him) cry for a close look.
If the works in question informed the decision to accept this person into your institution, then you bear responsibility for providing this person with your accreditation after this has come out. If the person has been involved in academic dishonesty, this also reflects poorly on your institution that you would continue to let them remain at your institution, not to mention subsequently confer a degree upon them, without addressing any of that misconduct.
So, your answer to a member of your own institution committing fraud is, “not my problem”? Truly a spicy take.
Also, when you said: “This is especially so due to an increasing trend for legitimate academic disagreements to be turned into research misconduct complaints, especially when there are strong differences of opinion,” I notice that you don’t give any supporting examples? This statement is the sort that needs to be buttressed by at least one citation in order be taken seriously.
What’s about counselling the student in question? They are presumably at the start of an academic career, and some appropriate guidance from the supervisor and others within their department could have a big impact upon whether they continue down the same path.
If these are the views of a professional research ethicist, no wonder standards in research ethics are so low and so poorly enforced.
Indeed. Dr. Kolsteo should hide his head in a bag and resign forthwith for publishing this self-apologetic crap. I also question the judgment of Retraction Watch for giving him a platform.
As concerns the judgment of Retraction Watch, I think there is significant value in advertising that such twisted reasoning exists in someone who is both a university administrator and a self-proclaimed ethics expert.
I agree that it is tricky to link responsibility to work not done at a university. However, I certainly believe that questionable work done by staff before joining the institution does fall within institutional responsibility, given that they were employed based on their previous research record. If the questionable work influenced the admissions of students, then I agree that this would also fall within institutional responsibility.
I looked a bit better at Innocent. According to this hagiography Innocent’s stay at Portsmouth was subsidized by Nigerian oil naira:
Science, Survival, and Innovation: The Rise of Innocent Benjamin from Nguroje to Global Academia
This is bad, but feels better than him getting UK funds. OpenAlex counts 21 retractions, including at least two of which he is first author. This is indeed an achievement that adds distinction to one’s academic career. Innocent also managed to get affiliated with Saveetha Dental College, see e.g. here. Saveetha features a lot on RW. Also that is not a good distinction.
I can somewhat see how a university might still find it a good idea to hand this person a master’s degree. The codified rules likely only have requirements like “pay tuition fee” and “do not cheat on exams”. And the system thus was totally unprepared for a fraudulent master’s student that in the preceding ~3 years already had published >100 papers, 21 of which have been found to be fraudulent.
After having seen this I would expect a university to revise its rules, both for students as well as faculty. Someone who has committed financial fraud can no longer work at a bank (at least in the Dutch system). There are similar rules to exclude certain people from jobs at daycare centers. I can imagine it to be ethical to add some rules for accepting students and faculty:
1. Obligation to uphold and to have upheld (specific) academic integrity standards
2. Obligation to report past and future transgressions of these standards
I’m only going to make one response to the comments here as the aim of this article is to constructively highlight a challenge that the research system faces. It is one thing to make comments on a blog, but another altogether to be in the position of having to deal with situations like this in reality. Pragmatism and legality are both important, and unavoidable, elements of dealing with research integrity.
As correctly and thoughtfully noted in a few of the comments above, there is a difference between the expectations on university staff as compared to students. Indeed, publications are rarely a requirement for masters level students at any institution. This situation therefore highlighted how probably all universities need to update policies now that tools like AI are making scientific fraud easier. As for black-listing researchers, this has long been talked about but is not a straight forward issue. My feeling is that hiring and discipline policies across the sector probably do need to become more explicit when it comes to things like this.
However, I believe journals and publication practices are the biggest problems here – why did these papers even get accepted in the first place, and why is it up to universities to clear up the mess made by poor editorial and peer review practices? As mentioned in the article, the fact that we are having this conversation just proves that we need to come up with better, and more reliable, ways of disseminating research. I do have some ideas, but that probably needs a different article!
> why did these papers even get accepted in the first place
Because papers are not accepted by themselves. They get accepted by actual not-so-qualified or not-so-honest people. Imagine a person who beefed up a CV in a University of Nowhere, moved to a Western country, and now publishes only occasional boring articles as a middle author among new colleagues. Meanwhile, edits and reviews lots of fraudulent papers, because they can and because it is profitable. That’s no one’s problem, says Simon Kolstoe, but…
> we need to come up with better, and more reliable, ways of disseminating research. I do have some ideas,
…he continues. Well, as an initial step, you better show how that will work at the scale of your university, – or we can safely assume that the new system will disseminate research like Benjamin’s. At the end of the day, someone at Uni Portsmouth thought it was great and impressive, right?
“This is especially so due to an increasing trend for legitimate academic disagreements to be turned into research misconduct complaints, especially when there are strong differences of opinion.”
if that’s a difficulty you would be willing and able to navigate in the case of research tied to your institution, then it’s not an insurmountable barrier in the case of research tied to another institution.
sounds more like a weak prayer for absolution – and that conclusion is highlighted by the apparent ease with which you made the decision to have the affiliation changed on a bad paper. you knew it was bad, you just didn’t feel like addressing the issue.
finally, the more promising question here was your own level of responsibility when the potentially guilty party is your student regardless of where the research was produced, but rather than address that question you seemingly just threw your hands up and avoided the question until they were no longer your student?
Wish I had the chops of a professional research ethicist, truly nuanced thinking encapsulated perfectly by the monkey with hands over eyes emoji: 🙈