Highlights from Energy Institute’s 2026 Statistical Review of World Energy: U.S. Leads 2025 CO2 Emissions Increase, Accounting for Nearly 30% of Global Increase: 10% Increase in Coal Consumption is a Key Source: 3% Rise in Electricity Demand Contributed

      Some key highlights of the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of World Energy from Reuters are given below. Global CO2 emissions rose by 1.1%, global oil consumption rose by 1.3%, and global electricity demand rose by 3%. This simply shows that the world still needs more energy.

     The key highlights given in the actual report are below:

     The following graphs are all from the report.

     Renewables led energy supply growth by a significant margin. However, growth in total fossil fuels nearly doubled that of renewables.

     North America, especially the U.S., led the increase in CO2 emissions by a wide margin. In fact, it was the only global region to show an increase in emissions.

     Global energy demand growth was dominated by the Asia-Pacific region.

     China continues to lead in electrification, having surpassed the U.S. and the E.U. between 2010 and 2015.

     Total energy supply in the world continues to be dominated by fossil fuels: oil, natural gas, and coal. Europe leads in non-fossil fuel share of total energy, followed closely by Central and South America, and distantly by North America.

     U.S. oil and gas exports continue to grow, both via LNG and pipelines.

     The U.S. dominates in total clean hydrogen production and blue hydrogen production. Asia dominates in green hydrogen production, followed distantly by Europe. Blue hydrogen leads in clean hydrogen production at 70.7% compared to 29.3% for green hydrogen.

     The U.S. dominated increases in coal consumption, followed distantly by China and non-China Asia Pacific.

     Global lithium production is skyrocketing. Rare Earths production is also climbing. Other energy transition minerals, such as cobalt, are climbing at a slower rate.

 

    

References:

 

US leads global CO2 emissions increase in 2025, report finds. Reuters. June 29, 2026. US leads global CO2 emissions increase in 2025, report finds

2026 | 75th edition. Statistical Review of World Energy. Energy Institute. June 2026. Statistical-Review-of-World-Energy-PDF-Report.pdf

 

The Importance of Ethics in Business: There is Too Much Unethical Conduct and Not Enough Fairness

   

     Unethical business behavior can take many forms, from insider trading to the myriad ways facts can be misrepresented. Business corruption is rampant throughout the world, with bribery, kickbacks, unethical deals, and deception of the public.

     There is a Wikipedia entry for ‘Business ethics’ that describes them as:

“…a form of applied ethics or professional ethics that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that can arise in a business environment. It applies to all aspects of business conduct and is relevant to the conduct of individuals and entire organizations. These ethics originate from individuals, organizational statements or the legal system. These norms, values, ethical, and unethical practices are the principles that guide a business.”

“Business ethics refers to contemporary organizational standards, principles, sets of values, and norms that govern the actions and behavior of individuals in a business organization. Business ethics has two dimensions: normative business ethics and descriptive business ethics. As a corporate practice and a career specialization, the field is primarily normative. Academics attempting to understand business behavior employ descriptive methods. The range and quantity of business ethical issues reflect the interaction of profit-maximizing behavior with non-economic concerns.”

Wiki notes that Interest in business ethics accelerated dramatically during the 1980s and 1990s, both within major corporations and within academia. Springer publishes the Journal of Business Ethics, which began publishing in 1982.

     Harvard Business School’s Michael Boyles wrote an apt article about the importance of business ethics. He notes that there are ethical issues and dilemmas with various technologies, including AI. He gives an example of the issue of social media’s impact on children as another ethical issue. Below is an explanation of business ethics and a quote from Harvard Business School Professor Vikram Gandhi.

     I think I disagree with Gandhi that ethics should be associated with positive and negative business externalities. Those externalities are usually considered to be mostly social and environmental impacts. Certainly, ethics should be considered when considering impacts. However, giving negative externalities such as pollution or carbon emissions, or even something like increasing costs to consumers, an unethical slant is dangerous, I believe. Pollution and carbon emissions limits vary, and opinions, even among experts, also vary regarding how much is acceptable or should be mitigated. Cost-benefit analysis (CBA)is an important way such externalities are considered. There is no clear-cut ethical dimension to CBA, and assigning one is not usually helpful.

     Boyles’ article goes on to emphasize sustainability as an ethical choice, utilizing the idea of the triple bottom line: people, profit, and planet, a popular mantra with sustainability and social responsibility advocates. Again, I would not say these ideas, while desirable to pursue, should necessarily be associated directly with ethics.

     The following section on ethical responsibility to customers is more important, I believe. Limiting deception in promises and advertising is closer to ethical behavior than focusing on negative externalities.

     The article also notes a company’s ethical responsibility to employees. He refers several times to a Harvard Business School Course called ‘Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability.’

“Fairness is not only an ethical response to power asymmetries in the work environment,” Hsieh says in the course. “Fairness—and having a successful organizational culture–can benefit the organization economically and legally.”

     He goes on to say that business ethics are important because not practicing them can result in moral disengagement.

 “Moral disengagement refers to ways in which we convince ourselves that what we’re doing is not wrong,” Hsieh says in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability. “It can upset the balance of judgment—causing us to prioritize our personal commitments over shared beliefs, rules, and principles—or it can skew our logic to make unethical behaviors appear less harmful or not wrong.”

     Moral disengagement can also lead to insider trading, which is widely acknowledged as being unethical. Making ethical decisions requires reflective leadership

“Reflecting on complex, gray-area decisions is a key part of what it means to be human, as well as an effective leader,” Hsieh says. “You have agency. You must choose how to act. And with that agency comes responsibility.”

     I think that companies should have codes of ethics that employees understand and engage with, and should endeavor to keep integrity in all aspects of business. Routinely skirting ethics rules should not be treated lightly, in my opinion.

     The UK-based Institute for Business Ethics describes business ethics as follows:

     They also distinguish business ethics, which applies mainly to companies and the people that make them up, from professional ethics, which refers to ethical codes to be followed by members of a profession as described by professional societies.

 

Employment Scams Are Ubiquitous and Sometimes Involve Businesses Considered to Be Legitimate

     I am quite familiar with employment scams, and unfortunately, they are quite common. Sometimes they are easy to pick out, and other times it takes a while. Many of these involve deception, where there really is no company and no job. In addition, some otherwise reputable companies advertise jobs that they end up not filling, including for things like state employment. These aren’t necessarily unethical, but from the perspective of the prospective employee, they may as well be, since they are indeed being duped into believing they are applying for a job that will actually be filled.

     My personal experiences with employment scams began when I was unemployed for a few months, well over ten years ago, when I answered a job ad in a newspaper. Since then, everything has gone online, where it is even easier to deceive. When applying for a job a few years ago, I actually had a fake interview on Microsoft Teams, though not the video version, on which I had a legitimate interview. The person interviewing me was not who they said they were. I found out later when I looked up the person on LinkedIn and saw that she had complained about people saying they were her, warning not to believe them. I stopped when the unsavory character began asking personal details about my bank account. I was not expecting deception and thus went further than I normally would, probably missing some red flags.

     I have had a very recent experience regarding a job posted on Indeed to which I applied. The job was advertised as writing for a media company in subjects with which I am thoroughly familiar. I looked at the company website and saw that they had many articles that looked to be well-written about various markets. Their content is on over 100 different platforms, and they have branches in several countries. That made them seem legitimate to me at first. Then when I talked to a person from the company on WhatsApp (perhaps that should have been a red flag right there) they told me the details of the so-called job: They would pay me a one time fee of $50 in Australian dollars (about $36 in U.S. dollars) to put my name on articles I did not write, utilizing my expertise and I would also be required to update my LinkedIn profile to reflect that I was a senior content editor for this company. Of course, I said no fricken way. I have yet to report the company to Indeed, but I am guessing it has been done since I have not seen another ad by them. I really should, thought. What they are doing is misrepresenting authorship, which is certainly unethical. I believe that the WhatsApp call with that person caused my cell phone bill to rise by about $6, due to ‘international long-distance charges,’ so I guess they ripped me off, too. There are too many corrupt slimeballs in this world.

     I also had a person contact me a couple of years ago who wanted a geologist to evaluate new Permian Basin acreage they had acquired. They strung me along for a while, seeming maybe legit, but then they seemed to want only to chat about other things, until I was pretty sure they were bogus. In that case, they didn’t ask me for money or anything, but I expected they were working towards that when I cut them off.

 

A Modern Example of a Business Ethics Issue: Trump Family Profiting from Kazakhstan Tungsten Mine Deal: New York Post Condemns Deal and Compares it to Hunter Biden-Burisma Deal

     I was surprised to see the conservative New York Post’s editorial board write an op-ed condemning the Trump family’s involvement in a lucrative multi-billion-dollar Kazakhstan tungsten mining deal. Tungsten is a mineral critical to the U.S. defense industry, and its price has risen dramatically over the past several months. This has triggered a tungsten revival in the U.S., where several new finds and plans to mine have been announced, including in Idaho and Montana.

     The New York Post op-ed enounces the deal as similar to Hunter Biden’s appointment as a paid board member for the Ukrainian Energy company Burisma.

“It was bad when the Bidens did it, and it’s just as bad when the Trumps do it.”

“Insider deals, finders’ fees and backdoor introductions to family members are business-as-usual in Third World banana republics, but these slimy practices have now been normalized in the White House, to the shame of the nation.”

“The Trump sons, meanwhile, are part-owners or investors in companies neck-deep in a key defense contract to mine tungsten reserves in Central Asia.”

“It stinks to high heaven.”

“If a president’s family making bank from obscure resource companies in the former Soviet Union sounds familiar, maybe that’s because Hunter Biden’s lucrative connection to Burisma — a Ukrainian gas company — was a major scandal in the 2020 election and beyond.”

     It has been estimated that Hunter Biden made up to $2.3 million from 2016 to 2019 when he was on Burisma’s board. The Trumps have made hundreds of millions in crypto deals and perhaps much more than that – easily a hundred or hundreds of times what Hunter Biden made. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is involved in the deal as well. The editorial goes on to say that if the Dems win the House and/or Senate in the 2026 midterms, there will likely be investigations. They also say that Trump and company should clean the problem up before then. Since not all approvals have been obtained, there may be some possibility of that, but I’ve got my doubts that it will happen.

     According to David Gilmour of Mediate, reporting on a New York Times article about the deal:

“…investors linked to Dominari Securities, a financial firm partly owned by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, acquired a 20% stake in a corporate entity connected to the Kazakhstan venture.”

“Around the same time, Cantor Fitzgerald, controlled by the Lutnick family and overseen by Howard Lutnick’s sons Brandon and Kyle, helped raise $210 million for a related company involved in the transaction.”

“The agreement was signed on November 6, six days after the investment involving the Trump-linked entity and its partners, according to The Times.”

“The Times reported that at least 14 companies with financial ties to either the Trump family, the Lutnick family or both are actively working with the federal government on critical minerals projects, including the Kazakhstan venture.”

“Collectively, those projects have received or are being considered for more than $8.9 billion in federal support.”

“In a statement to the Times, the White House rejected suggestions of impropriety.”

“The only special interest guiding the Trump administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said. “Securing and reshoring America’s critical supply chains has been a top priority for President Trump, and Secretary Lutnick along with the rest of the administration continue to take historic action to safeguard America’s national and economic security.”

     Allegations of unethical behavior from th Trumps are quite ubiquitous. Just today I read that the president reported $1.4 billion in crypto earnings last year.

"U.S. President Donald Trump reported more than $1.4 billion in income from his family’s crypto ventures last year, showing how he now earns most of his income from digital assets that have benefited from his policies, according to a review of his latest financial disclosures on Tuesday."

"The filings, his annual disclosure for 2025 with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, showed he received more than $500 million from World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture he and his sons co-founded. Trump reported another $635 million from the sale of his $TRUMP meme coins."

"The president also reported over $80 million in income from settlements with various media companies and millions in income from his company licensing his name to overseas property developers."

"The disclosures provide new insights into the scale of the president's profits from his family's foray into cryptocurrencies. Reuters has previously estimated that the Trump family has generated at least $2.3 billion in profit from investors since Trump retook the presidency."

     That $2.3 billion was "earned" in half the time and is 1000 times what Hunter Biden "earned."

     Trump's potential improprieties are everywhere. I just read that he has already issued 1700 pardons during his second term and plans to issue 250 more. This is compared to Biden issuing 80 pardons during his full term. Biden also commuted 4100 sentences. 

"The idea is being referred to as '250 pardons for 250 years,' and there has been a frantic push to clean the records of those accused of crimes, according to multiple current and former Trump officials, lobbyists, attorneys and more in the President's orbit who spoke with The Atlantic."

A defense attorney likened the situation to 'a three-ring circus'; a former Trump official said it was 'bats*** crazy.'

One lobbyist even admitted to turning off his phone after receiving 'aggressive' requests for pardons.

'I'm exhausted,' another attorney told the outlet. 'In 30 years of practicing law, I’ve never seen anything like this.'

Some lawyers familiar with the White House's pardon shop shared that it could cost clients millions to secure a pardon.

'It is general knowledge in our practice that for $2 million, you can have a pardon,' an attorney told The Atlantic.

Criminals sentenced by judges appointed by former Presidents Barack Obama or Joe Biden are expected to fare better in their quests for pardons than those sentenced by judges appointed by Trump, according to sources familiar with the process.

People in Trump's orbit who have no experience with law or pardons have even been approached to use their influence to clean the records of some petitioning for clemency.

These individuals claimed that $1 million to $2 million was the 'going rate,' the Atlantic reported.  

References:

 

What Are Business Ethics & Why Are They Important? Michael Boyles. Harvard Business School. July 27, 2023. What Are Business Ethics & Their Importance? | HBS Online

Business ethics. Wikipedia. Business ethics - Wikipedia

What is business ethics? Institute of Business Ethics. December 16, 2025. What is business ethics? | Institute of Business Ethics

'Shame of the nation!' Don Jr. and Eric Trump torched over ties to $1B mining deal in scathing NY Post op-ed. David Gilmour. Mediate. June 30, 2026. 'Shame of the nation!' Don Jr. and Eric Trump torched over ties to $1B mining deal in scathing NY Post op-ed

Hunter Biden-style sleaze is just as slimy when the Trump boys do it. Post Editorial Board. New York Post. June 29, 2026. Hunter Biden-style sleaze is just as slimy when the Trump boys do it

NY Times Bombshell Details How Trump’s Sons Stand to Gain From $1.6B Kazakhstan Mining Deal. David Gilmour. Mediate. June 29, 2026. NY Times Reveals Trump Sons' Links to $1.6B Kazakhstan Deal

Trump reports more than $1.4 billion in income from crypto ventures. Tom Bergin and Koh Gui Qing. Reuters. June 30, 2026. Trump reports more than $1.4 billion in income from crypto ventures

Trump nears decision on jaw-dropping 250 pardons plan as lobbyists get flooded with requests. Jon Michael Raasch. Dailymail.Com. June 30, 2026. Trump nears decision on jaw-dropping 250 pardons plan as lobbyists get flooded with requests

 

 

Manufactured Subsurface Hydrogen: Inside GeoKiln's Bet on the Induced-Thermal Pathway. Webinar by Enverus. June 30, 2026. Summary & Review

        GeoKiln was founded in late 2024. Two Ph. D.s head the company and conducted the webinar. These are technical leader Alexei Tcherniak and chemical engineer Lorna Ortiz. Tcherniak calls the company’s process to engineer, or manufacture, hydrogen in the subsurface via serpentinization of iron-rich rock with applied heat - affordable, scalable, clean, and net zero positive. They call the process Manufactured Subsurface Hydrogen, or MSSH.

     The heat injected into the surface via electrical resistive heaters serves to accelerate a chemical reaction that is likely already occurring. How much of the iron-rich rock has already been serpentinized is important since it dictates how much is left over and available to be serpentinized via GeoKiln’s process. Thus, Tcherniak says the present goal and concern is de-risking geology.

     Ortiz thinks the economics can work well, with a targeted produced hydrogen price of 1.5 per kg, which would make it cheaper than grey hydrogen and much cheaper than blue and especially green hydrogen. Where it is produced is very important as well. The location of off-takers is important. Early pilots will likely be deployed in places where there is both existing hydrogen infrastructure and available off-takers, in addition to favorable geology. Tcherniak thinks that natural hydrogen exploration can be big, but it is limited to where it can be produced, and the likelihood of finding big accumulations in favorable places is not good. Production near the point of use is important for hydrogen since it is challenging to transport.

     Webinar facilitator, Enverus’s Graham Bain, compares engineered H2 to engineered oil & gas via fracking and engineered geothermal via EGS and AGS.  Tcherniak points out that sedimentary basins are not important for engineered serpentinization, so the areas with the highest potential are in areas with little to no oil & gas production. As far as transferable skills from the oil & gas industry, geochemistry is an important one.

     Some of the challenges of validating before scaling up include the need to get enough flow to evaluate. This is dependent on natural fractures in the rock, which is typically olivine. Once the process is scaled up, there will be a need to evaluate type curves to determine the estimated ultimate recovery (EUR) of the manufactured hydrogen.

     The technology basically involves building a plant, a hydrogen reactor, in the subsurface. There is a need to control the chemical reactions, the applied heat, and ultimately H2 production. The tech involves accelerating reactions that are already happening. The process involves injection wells and producing wells. That will likely increase costs a bit. Subsurface electrical resistive heaters are utilized to provide the heat. There will be a search for the most viable economic way to manufacture the H2. Geology will drive the process. Well spacing needs to be considered. Pressure management is important. Monitoring is needed. No water is injected. Heat is injected surgically. No mass is injected, so new fractures are not propagated. However, I wonder if that could be done in the future to increase flow to the surface if needed.

     Favorable geology is rocks that contain iron for serpentinization, which involves chemically reducing hydrogen from water. The presence and availability of fractures is important. Sulfur-containing minerals such as pyrite are to be avoided for now. If necessary, they can be managed where present in the future, as they are with sour gas and oil. How much iron remains in the rock is an important consideration, or how much has already been serpentinized. Tcherniak notes that 1km to 1.5 km depth is ideal. Shallower is fine since it is cheaper, as is deeper, if the rock is better.

     There was a question about the ownership of subsurface H2. Orti noted that each state has its own regulations, which must be navigated for now. Some terms need to be finalized, such as royalties. It is likely that areas with more favorable regulations will be prioritized for now.   

     Responding to a question about technology readiness, Tcherniak noted that the technology of deploying heat to help recover hydrocarbons is fully derisked in several successful projects around the world, but the heaters have yet to be deployed in the particular geology favorable for hydrogen production via serpentinization.  

     After MSSH is validated, it will be scaled up (drill baby drill). Asked about other possible gases that might be produced and their potential effects on local drinking water, Tcherniak noted that pure olivine produces just H and water vapor. However, if carbonates are present, there could be some CO2 produced, and if pyrite is present, there could be some H2S produced. He also pointed out that the radius of stimulation is very constrained, typically 20-30 or so meters. He reiterated that the process is controllable. He also noted that subsurface heating is also being explored to enhance CCS. Asked about success 5 years out, he said that they hoped to have producing projects making significant quantities of H2, ideally in several countries.

     The webinar/podcast was mainly a discussion, so there were no figures. I got the following graphics from GeoKiln’s website, Geokiln - Unlock the Future, which describe the technology, the challenges, the benefits, and the targeted production costs.  

 

Scientific Fact-Checking and Quality Control: Guidelines and Trends Amid Rampant Fraud

 

  

     As someone who has done science and who writes about science, I know the importance of accuracy in reporting events or results. Sometimes, as a writer, one gets things from sources that may not be reputable or have not done enough due diligence on their own sources. Thus, there is always the risk of that. I don’t always double-check sources and may make mistakes at times. There is always a risk in science itself that results may be misinterpreted, and facts unknowingly conveyed incorrectly. Science is self-correcting by nature, always seeking to refine understanding, typically in light of new data. There is also the possibility of deliberate misrepresentation of science for various reasons.

     Freelance science journalist Dalmeet Singh Chawla has written about factchecking scientific journals for Undark Magazine and Chemical & Engineering News. In Undark Magazine, Chawla tells the story of a doctoral student at the Australian National University who found that guidelines and standards for concentrations of lithium, potassium, sodium, calcium, and magnesium in drinking water that were often cited as coming from the WHO and EPA, in fact, did not come from the WHO and EPA since they did not produce those guidelines and standards. This is a case of incorrect information being passed on and repeatedly cited without being true. Chala notes that the researchers found twenty papers that cited the false numbers. The above case precedes the proliferation of generative AI, so that is not a likely culprit. However, in some other cases, AI is a culprit:

“In today’s world, the immediate culprit that comes to mind is generative AI, which is widely known to make up citations when it hallucinates. Some researchers are using AI to draft, edit, or academic papers, which could lead to corruption in the scientific publishing process.”

     Chawla also mentions the messy and shady corruption that is paper mills, which I wrote about last year as fraudulent scientific research. In some cases, the factual errors can be attributed to what I was describing in the first paragraph, such as using values without checking primary sources, a practice that has been referred to as “cold citing.” Chawla argues that scientific journals:

“…should hire dedicated paid fact-checkers whose remit it is to rigorously check all claims — including references — made in academic papers before they go live. That would be an additional round of quality control in addition to peer review.”

     Chawla thinks that many scientific journals are profitable enough to pay factcheckers just as many media sources do:

“In a world marred with disinformation, misinformation, and information overload, science could and should lead the way. Science should pride itself in providing rigorously checked factual information that has been manually scrutinized by a human, who uses automated tools at their disposal. This approach is especially crucial amid fears that fake science could be becoming harder to spot.”

     In C&E News, Chawla writes about Leslie McIntosh, vice president of research integrity and security at the scholarly analytics firm Digital Science. McIntosh believes data-driven approaches are crucial to the scientific sleuthing she does to find fraudulent science, and she hopes to formalize the process to some extent. Chawla calls people like McIntosh ‘research integrity practitioners.’ Some of these practitioners think that standards for sleuthing should be established, while others believe it is the responsibility of the whole scientific establishment to weed out fraud. McIntosh explains why she sleuths in addition to her full-time job:

“Science is a pillar of democracy which needs to be defended and strengthened.”

     McIntosh favors data-driven approaches to spot patterns across a large number of studies and calls the practice ‘forensic scientometrics.’

“McIntosh and colleagues recently reported on a pattern of suspicious activity that implicated hundreds of researchers. In a study published in February on arXiv, where researchers post papers that haven’t been peer-reviewed, the team found that more than 120 papers list the name of a fictitious organization called the Pharmakon Neuroscience Research Network as a funder or affiliation for at least one author. These papers were coauthored by more than 300 authors working at 230 institutions, primarily between 2019 and 2022.”

     Such fakeries should incense all of us. Some of these compromised (fake) researchers are drawing funding from institutions like the NIH and NSF. Some authors are unaware that they may be involved in research that has fraudulent elements. Small groups of research integrity sleuths are meeting up, have some funding, and are working toward developing standards. They are working to combat the paper mills.

     McIntosh notes:

“This is not just for publicity. The declaration highlights forensic scientometrics as a distinct field that could and should attract funding, she says, noting that most sleuths don’t get paid for flagging nefarious activities or faulty papers.”

     Chawla writes in C&E News:

“McIntosh is also in the process of putting together a code of ethics that lays out standards to which sleuths should adhere when digging into papers. She says she’s developing the code in part because she worries that sleuthing is being weaponized to serve political agendas. For instance, a few people deliberately highlight only papers authored by researchers of certain ethnicities, backgrounds, or genders.”

“Another aim of the sleuthing community is to shield the scholarly literature from interference by governments, McIntosh says. “I don’t think that it is beyond certain countries to play a long game in manipulating what goes into the scientific literature,” she says. “I think we underestimate science and the power of it in our society if we think that other people aren’t trying to also control and direct where information is going.”

     Some of these sleuths, like Elizabeth Bik, examine papers one at a time, looking for fraudulent research groups. Bik thinks that there needs to be a society for sleuths and funding for sleuths who can receive legal threats or get sued. The goal, of course, is to expose and filter out fraudulent papers.

     Lawsuits against publishers of fraudulent papers are becoming more common, and a recent one involved the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute agreeing to pay a total of $15 million, most of which will go to the NIH, which funded the research that was compromised. Sleuths can even become whistleblowers and be rewarded through the US False Claims Act. 

     Statistical manipulation and image manipulation are common fraudulent techniques. Sleuths found that a landmark 2006 paper on Alzheimer’s research was fraudulent, a paper later cited by thousands of other papers. More corrections and retractions of such papers are needed.

     A September 2024 article in Undark Magazine by Jessica Wapner gives some modern history of scientific fraud:

“Scientific fraud has existed for as long as people have stood to benefit from it. In the early 1980s, Harvard Medical School heart researcher John Darsee faked data in animal research on heart attack treatments. Beginning in the early 1990s, Japanese researcher Yoshitaka Fujii, an anesthesiologist, fabricated more than 170 papers. And Massachusetts anesthesiologist Scott Reuben fabricated data in at least 21 studies dating back to the 1990s, several of which highlighted the benefits of pain medications made by Pfizer, which had supported much of his research.”

     Again, sleuths note that the journal publishers are very profitable and have little to no incentive to expose their own publications as purveyors of fake research. They say publishing is favored over scrutinizing the data that is published. The sleuths also noted that universities are often reluctant to investigate allegations of misconduct by researchers they employ. There is a disincentive since if they expose false research, they risk having future research defunded. With the possibility of getting sued for defamation, sleuths can be wary at times to call out certain researchers without very strong proof. Of course, whether certain researchers knowingly or unknowingly passed on fraudulent research is a factor as well. It also takes a lot of time and effort to investigate thoroughly.

“Tim Kersjes, who leads the resolutions team within the publisher’s {Springer Nature} research integrity department, acknowledged that investigations can take a long time. “Ideally a concern comes in, we investigate it, and we can retract two weeks later,” he said. “But in practice that’s impossible.” Kersjes said that authors don’t always respond to emails or send explanations that require further review. Marcus noted that the peer review process isn’t geared toward catching images for signs of tampering or other types of misconduct. Jackson, at the Journal of Clinical Investigation, said that the fact that some scientists are willing to fake their data caught publishers off guard.”

     It is also a sticky issue whether a paper that contains some elements of fraud should simply be corrected or retracted. This mainly depends on whether the fraudulent elements lead to a change of conclusions or not.

“In an email that Michael Stacey, head of communications for journals with Springer Nature Group asked to be attributed to a spokesperson, he wrote: “Our investigations follow an established process, which involves consultation with the authors and, where appropriate, seeking independent advice from peer reviewers and other external experts. Other factors, such as awaiting the outcome of institutional investigations, where appropriate, can also impact the length of time an investigation takes.”

     Juraj Vladika and Florian Matthes of the Department of Computer Science, Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany, published a paper in the Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL in 2023 that sought to better define scientific factchecking and its challenges. The abstract and figure below are from that paper, followed by an explanation of some specific challenges of scientific factchecking vs. general factchecking.

     They noted that challenges of scientific factchecking include evidence quality, reasoning and explainability, dataset size, external knowledge, multimodality and multilinguality, and human-centered factchecking. For evidence quality, scrutinizing the evidence in detail and with the most recent findings in the field of concern is needed. Sleuths need to analyze the reasoning utilized to arrive at conclusions and whether it is really explainable. Small datasets can be difficult to analyze and should ideally be combined with larger existing datasets. The complexity of scientific knowledge makes it “suitable for representation with structures like Knowledge Graphs (KGs) that model world knowledge in the form of entities and relations between them.” Images and fake videos are a common means of spreading misinformation. Scientific factchecking needs to occur in multiple languages as well. Regarding human-centered factchecking, they note:

“Making the process of NLP-based fact-checking more human-centered is a promising future direction that will make it more reliable, trustworthy, and easier for wide-scale adoption.”

 

Factchecking in Scientific Reporting

     Knight Science Journalism at MIT runs the KSJ Fact-Checking Project. They give ten common ways in which mistakes are made in scientific reporting. 1) Correlation ≠ Causation – this is common and needs to be called out when it happens. 2) Numbers and Units – these simply need to be double-checked for accuracy, since they can be misleading at times and be entered incorrectly. 3) Absolute Risk ≠ Relative Risk – they explain this as follows, using a study that coffee increases cancer risk by 25%, but that 25% is relative, and the absolute risk increase is very small and likely negligible:

“Risk communicates how likely it is that a certain harmful event will happen. For instance, an epidemiological study, also called an observational study, may show the likelihood that a particular material causes cancer, while a medical study on a new drug may show how often the drug reduces the risk of a disease.”

“But studies often report these likelihoods in terms of relative risk, which compares two test groups. A reporter may confuse the relative risk as absolute, or the likelihood of that event happening in any scenario.”

4) Single Study Syndrome – if reporting cites a single study, especially when there are many other study conclusions that refute the conclusions in the single study. I have noticed this used by environmentalists, overly citing a single study, or more often, a single or small group of researchers who share their own biases. 5) Statistical Significance and P-values – these are based on probabilities. Statistics need to be significant to be important and real, not just possible. Data is often manipulated to look as if it is statistically significant when it is probably not. 6) Size Matters – they explain this as follows:

“If a sample size is too small, for example, it won’t reflect the larger population. If a story cites a study with a small sample size, the story should give context: What the sample size actually was and why it may not mean much more broadly.”

7) False Balance – journalists often seek to be balanced in their reporting, by giving both sides of debates a voice. However, when one party’s view is much more plausible than the other party’s view, it conveys a false sense that it is difficult to determine who is winning the debate when in reality the likely winner is quite clear. We see this a lot, unfortunately. 8) Mice Aren’t Humans – this is simply the caveat that studies with mice or other animals do not necessarily mean that similar studies with humans would give the same result, as we know from several situations where results differ for humans. 9) Consider the Source – the reputation or legitimacy of sources needs to be considered in factchecking determinations. Scientific journals are best peer-reviewed. 10) Don’t Believe the Hype – claims need to be contextualized, especially claims that are bold and go against previous established understanding. As the following graphic shows, skepticism should be the default when investigating claims.

Factchecking Scientific Claims by Political Partisans     

     Factcheck.org, a project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center, has a subsection called SciCheck that focuses exclusively on false and misleading scientific claims that are made by partisans to influence public policy. It was launched in January 2015. This site is now dominated by spurious claims made by Trump. Consider his claims about the reflecting pool, among many others. One cannot deny that he is often quite loose with the truth. Remember the “alternative facts” idea during his first term. Trump’s cabinet members, several of whom have little qualifications for the positions they hold, are also often fodder for factcheckers. RFK Jr., in particular, is associated with wild claims about vaccines, pesticides, and genetic engineering dangers, and several other topics. Of course, other politicians of both parties should be scrutinized as well for scientific claims that may not be true. We need to hold all politicians to the fire for any claims they make. Trump, in particular, has made some very wild claims, many of which have been proven to be untrue. Thus, most people take his claims with a grain of salt and ignore them as hubris. He has certainly gotten away with a lot. Other people would have been annihilated for saying some of the things he has said.

  

 

References:

 

Scientific sleuths come in from the cold: Research integrity investigators are starting to organize, but the field, and the people, remain idiosyncratic. Dalmeet Singh Chawla. Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN). March 11, 2026. Scientific sleuths come in from the cold

Opinion: Scientific Journals Need Dedicated Fact-Checkers: An additional layer of quality control could help academic publishers weed out problematic content before it propagates. Dalmeet Singh Chawla. Undark Magazine. April 9, 2026.  Scientific Journals Need Dedicated Fact-Checkers

The Rise of the Science Sleuths: When an Alzheimer’s paper came under scrutiny, correcting the scientific record meant battling much bigger problems. Jessica Wapner. Undark Magazine. September 11, 2024. The Rise of the Science Sleuths

Fact-Checking in Science Reporting. In Fact-Checking 101.KSJ Fact-Checking Project. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Fact-Checking in Science Reporting - KSJ Fact Checking Project

Scientific Fact-Checking: A Survey of Resources and Approaches. Juraj Vladika and Florian Matthes. Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL. July, 2023. [2305.16859] Scientific Fact-Checking: A Survey of Resources and Approaches

SciCheck. FactCheck.org. SciCheck Archives - FactCheck.org