Taylor & Francis has threatened legal action against an online group that has made allegations, based largely on vague insinuations rather than evidence, about the publisher and a member of its research integrity team.
The group, ScienceGuardians, is an anonymous organization whose website serves as what they call an online “journal club.” On X, it has been posting so-called “investigations” of several sleuths, publishers and organizations, what it calls “perpetrators of the PubPeer Network Mob.” Its targets have included sleuths Kevin Patrick and Reese Richardson, and others such as Science editor-in-chief Holden Thorp, and its posts are often amplified by those whose work has been questioned on PubPeer or retracted.
On September 7, the group published a string of claims on X about Nick Wise, a sleuth who joined Taylor & Francis in January as a research integrity manager. The ScienceGuardians post characterized the move as Wise “infiltrated” the publisher’s research integrity office. The post states he is responsible for 1,300 posts on PubPeer (which we have noted he does under his real name), and, ScienceGuardians claims, more than 100 others under the name “Simnia avena.”
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