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DEF CON 26 - Svea, Suggy, Till - Inside the Fake Science Factory

DEFCONConference · 184K views · 2018-09-18 · 1:56:08

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Overview

A DEF CON 26 talk by investigative journalists and hackers on the fake science industry, with bogus conferences and predatory journals that give studies false credibility. It draws on a large investigation into the money behind them.

On Hacker News

Recommended as a funny but depressing investigation, and the usual link in threads on predatory publishing and fake citations.

Recommended by 5 HN people across 6 months · HN mentions 2018–2025

Topics

Media, journalism & propagandaScientific method & science communicationSecurity & hacking
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fake sciencepredatory journalsdef conacademic fraudinvestigative journalism

What people said

captainkrtek · 2025-08 · Strong recommendation

This presentation from Defcon in 2018 on “Fake Science Factory” was fantastic and pretty funny as well: [VIDEO]

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yesenadam · 2019-02 · Strong recommendation

Inside the Fake Science Factory is an amazing 2hr talk talk from DEFCON 2018 by 2 German journalists and a British science guy about an investigation into the world of predatory fake journals, conferences, websites. 400,000 scientists involved. Unbelievably huge scam. They wrote bogus papers and presented one at a fake conference. It's a funny talk, if depressing. A great investigation. Maybe the worst is that these fake scientific credentials are then used to sell useless products to dying people. [VIDEO]

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yesenadam · 2019-01 · Strong recommendation

Inside the Fake Science Factory (2018) is an amazing DEFCON talk, by 3 people who stumbled on and investigated an unbelievably huge worldwide network (400,000 scientists involved) of fake-scientific conferences, journals, websites raking in money and enabling people to make claims that their products are scientifically proven. The presenters got hackers to track down the people behind one of the largest organizations, and analyze the huge numbers of conferences/papers. They present/publish nonsensical talks on graphs and bees+cancer to see what peer review there is... A must watch. Very funny, if depressing. [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by DEFCONConference, played through YouTube.

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