Conversation

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 magazine El Pais exposed the scam.

In 2022, Saudi Arabia had 109 professors on the List of Highly Cited Researchers, compiled by Clarivate. After they got caught, the number dropped to 26. 🤣

In fact this list 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.

https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-12-05/dozens-of-the-worlds-most-cited-scientists-stop-falsely-claiming-to-work-in-saudi-arabia.html