An author in China with nearly 500 preprints has continued to add his daughter’s name to papers – despite her insistence she was not involved.
Shifa Liu, whose papers list affiliations with Peking University in China, has posted 499 works (and counting) on topics in physics and mathematics. His daughter, an undergraduate at an American university, is listed as a coauthor on over 100 of those preprints. In some cases, she was even named as the corresponding author. (Retraction Watch is not naming the daughter to respect her privacy and will not be accepting comments that name her.)
The daughter told Retraction Watch she “did not participate in the research, writing, or submission of any of these papers,” adding her father included her name “without my knowledge or consent.”
“I asked him to stop, but he did not,” she said.
She also told us she had reached out to the preprint servers to request the removal of her name.
So far this year, Liu has posted 355 non-peer-reviewed articles on Zenodo and Cambridge Open Engage, among other platforms, according to his ORCID profile. He told us he has “never received systematic, formal education in advanced mathematics, advanced physics, advanced chemistry, advanced biology, or advanced computer science. Nor have I ever worked at any academic research institution.”
Liu says his work is “systematic and original,” and that many of his papers question the traditional methods of mathematics and physics.
“There is no necessary connection between academic research and institutional affiliation, a truth clearly embodied in my own case,” Liu said. He did not respond to our email asking him to clarify what this meant, given his email address indicates an affiliation with Peking University. The university did not respond to our email asking if he has worked at the university.
When asked about the high preprint posting rate, Liu told us “all of the above papers are the fruits of my long-term, deep thinking and diligent writing — working day and night, forgetting food and sleep — and have merely been organized and published recently.” He told us his daughter was “deeply involved in some of them, providing me with tremendous inspiration and help.”
“I support and understand her decision to step aside to avoid unnecessary trouble, and I am willing to face the resulting doubts and challenges alone,” he told us.
We were first alerted to Liu’s prolific publishing in an email from a researcher to us and to the preprint servers. The researcher said they weren’t sure “whether the publications are AI-generated but, clearly, something very strange is going on here.”
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