He has been called “White Knight of the Academic Community”, “turbulence in favor of truth” and “persistent judge”. THE Loni Beeson He is an Assistant Professor of Data Visualization at Linschoping University in Sweden, but he is best known for his research efforts to reveal frauds in scientific articles.

Just last month in a study prepared by the International Mathematical Union (IMU) and the German Mathematical Union (DMV), an international team of writers revealed systematic fraud in research work in the field of mathematics. The study mentions some glaring examples, such as that in 2019 the university with most world -class researchers in mathematics did not even have mathematics as the subject of study. The above is not the only example of fraud that has been noted in recent years. Scientific articles are published with falsified or non -existent data, companies offer cittings and others known as “paper mills”, they write on custom -based scientific research.

We met Loni Besansson at the 12th Heidelberg Laureate Forum, where he participated in a panel for scientific integrity. In the halls and corridors of the forum, the issue of scientific fraud was a frequent topic of discussion and the panel has aroused a number of questions from the public.

At a time when the scientific community is shocked by scandals, Loni Beszon is considered one of the most active … scientific detective, as he decided to take advantage of his experience in research methodology and statistics to find scams, defending the transparency.

“The problem of the integrity of the research is huge and I think it has a great impact on society in ways that we do not always imagine”he says in an interview with RES-EIA.

As he describes, it is not only the waste of millions of funding for research, but also the risks to public health, from the loss of opportunity for more efficient treatments for patients or the promotion of drugs as safe, while in fact they can cause significant health damage.

Scams during pandemic

The latter happened during the Covid-19 pandemic period when Loni Bezeson, along with other researchers and journalists, revealed serious methodological problems in the much-discussed research of the Marseilles Institute of Mediterranean infections (IHU) and its then Director of the Court of Affairs. Hydroxychloroquine. The relevant scientific article published in March 2020, supporting the efficacy of hydroxychlorocyst, had a huge appeal, resulting in government officials in France, and even US President Donald Trump in his first term, to support this medicine for treatment. However, the study was based on a very small sample of just 26 people, six of whom left the study and were not taken into account in the analysis. Of these six, one died and three were transferred to the intensive care unit. Eventually, the article was withdrawn in December 2024, and further investigating other articles by the same author revealed extensive violations of research ethics.

The case of Didier Raul, however, was not the only one, as Loni identified during the pandemic and other scientific research, evaluated by judges in a single day or where the authors were publishers of the magazine in which they were published. It was these events that led him to the decision to actively pursue his spare time with the systematic investigation of scientific deceit.

“Scams happened before Covid-19. However, false articles were published during the pandemic in large magazines, so they had a greater impact. Suddenly there were fewer controls and everything was more hurried. And this is understandable why we tried to respond to the pandemic and wanted ways to get away from it. The result was some of the safety valves that were then broken and more false articles were published and this had a huge impact on public health. Were approved or promoted drugs that should not have been promoted »he points out in RES-EIA.

The warning signs of fraud

There are some warning signs that mobilize Mr Bezeson and the other detectives to further explore a scientific publication: Tortured phrases, texts written by artificial intelligence, images that have been copied, highly copied Only in tasks that have been revoked.

In a recent study, Loni Beszon and Guillaume Kampanak, Siril Lampe and Alexander Magazinov discovered yet another fraud in specific scientific journals: a method of falsifying the number of hetero -references. In particular, hetero -reports that did not exist in the article were added to the metadata later, during the registration of the unique digital identifier of the articles (DOI). In this way, the false heterogeneous reports were not visible to the reader, but were normally calculated on the databases for heterogeneous reports by altering the measurements. Characteristic is the example that through this practice a researcher received an additional 3,100 heterosexuality!

Shortly before the publication, the authors of the study received an email with threats from the magazine publisher. But they didn’t fall. Last August, a study published in the Union of Information Science and Technology (JASIST) received the Best Work Award for 2025, which will be awarded next November at the Union’s annual meeting in the US.

“The prize shows that we did the job in the right way. It’s not just that we found something wrong and mentioned it. It’s a real research. People are constantly finding new ways to cheat and reveal it has a lot of work. You have to apply innovative methods to try to understand what’s going on »emphasizes Mr. Beszon.

The scientific detectives, however, do not only accept threats. They are also criticized by other scientists that such research reduces people’s confidence in science. Even anti -vaccines have used Loni’s work to show that science is not reliable. “I have never said that, but this is clear.” “What I said is that some scientists are screaming. But overall the scientific method is the tool we need to get data properly and observe things in the least subjective way, “he says. As he adds, “the fact that the reproductivity crisis of science (replication crisis) has highlighted scientists and what is happening with false articles is again highlighted by scientists, in fact shows that they are interested in the field and are not sitting. Overall, scientists have the interest of society and the interests of promoting knowledge in their hearts and therefore prefer to speak publicly when they see something happening. “.

“Change how academic space works”

Loni Bezeson estimates that the system created in the academia with the obligation of scientists to have many published work and heterogeneous reports “is not viable”. “People are pressured to scam and we really have to think about why we have a system that created this from the beginning.”

He proposes that ‘In order to have more integrity in science we need to stop counting, this daily madness with the number of hetero -references, the number of published work, the magazine’s appeal ratio ». And ends, saying: “When I started my doctorate, I thought science was the collaborative efforts of all researchers in the world. Now I realize that I compete with my friends to find money to do my job. Maybe, we shouldn’t compete. We need to change the way the academic space works. ”