Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wanted to have at least 5 Saudi universities among the top 200 in the world by 2030.
So he paid lots of scientists to falsely claim they worked in Saudi Arabia! Some got up to €70,000 a year just for pretending to work there.
Unfortunately they got caught. The newspaper El Pais exposed the scam.
In 2022, Saudi Arabia had 109 professors on the List of Highly Cited Researchers, compiled by Clarivate. After a bunch got caught, the number dropped to 26. 🤣
Someone should carefully check those 26 researchers.
In fact this "List of Highly Cited Researchers" is a fraud magnet. As of 2024, one in three apparently highly cited researchers has been caught engaging in bad practices.
This is a great example of Goodhart's Law: ""When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".
Thanks to @mansr for pointing this out.
english.elpais.com/science-tec…
Dozens of the world’s most cited scientists stop falsely claiming to work in Saudi Arabia
This newspaper unveiled that Saudi universities were paying up to €70,000 a year to prestigious researchers to artificially pump up Arab institutions in international academic rankingsManuel Ansede (Ediciones EL PAÍS S.L.)
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