Scientists try to do battle with fake degrees and phony universities but, of course, it is a never-ending fight. Christine Ro reports at Nature:

André Hesselbäck has spent the past 22 years hunting down fraudulent organizations that sell phoney degrees with no academic requirements or proper accreditation. Credential fraud encompasses diplomas, degrees, transcripts, certificates and other documents that are sold by bogus institutions that do not render genuine academic services. The practice, Hesselbäck says, has links to organized crime — and according to one estimate, it generates several billion US dollars each year.

“André Hesselbäck uses his photographic memory and higher-education expertise to sniff out rampant credential fraud and degree mills,” November 4, 2024

Hesselbäck estimates that, in some countries, particularly in economics and engineering, “10–15% of the workforce are graduates of degree mills or unrecognized, substandard schools.” People may pay pay many thousands of dollars for fake PhDs or medical degrees. His photographic memory helps him suss them out in a whirl of documentation.

[Governments] have no idea about the dimension of it all,” Hesselbäck comments. Retired US FBI investigator Allen Ezell estimates that providing bogus degrees is a US$7-billion-per-year business. And this is far from a victimless crime, Hesselbäck stresses. “The main victim is the legitimate higher-education system”, which can lose revenue as well as credibility. There are also individuals who are affected, such as the customers of an engineer, doctor or other professional with fraudulent credentials. Students who have been duped into unwittingly purchasing invalid degrees are also harmed by the practice.

Then, there are the people who work hard for their degrees, only to lose out on opportunities to others who took shortcuts. Hesselbäck knows of at least one lecturer at a US university and two people employed by Swedish universities who obtained degrees through degree mills.

“Credential fraud and degree mills,”

Another interesting recent article in Nature addresses fake AI images used in science. From Diana Kwon,

Already, an arms race is emerging as integrity specialists, publishers and technology companies race to develop AI tools that can assist in rapidly detecting deceptive, AI-generated elements of papers.

“It’s a scary development,” Christopher says. “But there are also clever people and good structural changes that are being suggested.”

“AI-generated images threaten science — here’s how researchers hope to spot them,” November 5, 2024

It sounds like a situation where people who resist messages that we should “trust the science” may be doing so for good and sensible reasons. We should suspect those who insist that we ought to just suppress doubt.