Eleven studies by Spanish scientist Rafael Luque withdrawn due to fraudulent practices

The Spanish chemist Rafael Luque walked briskly onto the stage of the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow three months ago. The official video shows him in a frenzy . He was about to receive an honor, for being one of the most cited scientists in the world and having contributed, through his collaborations, to the meteoric rise of the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia in the rankings of the world's best academic institutions. The gala, a show with dancers and even a military choir, was reminiscent of his heyday, when he received applause in the Spanish press and won international awards . Back then, he seemed a world eminence, but he was simply flouting the rules of the system, with the same crude strategy being implemented at the same time by thousands of other researchers around the world. On December 1, 2022, Luque was expelled from his university, Córdoba, with a historic sanction. A new tool now makes it possible to analyze how he rose to the top and how he plummeted from it, until he was honored in the Kremlin as a "pro-Russian." It has already withdrawn 11 studies due to fraudulent practices.

Luque, born in Córdoba 46 years ago, is suspiciously prolific . He published a study every two working days in 2022. He even accelerated his pace in December of that year, when the artificial intelligence language generation program ChatGPT was released. “These months have been quite productive, because the truth is that articles that used to take me two or three days to complete now take me one day,” he acknowledged in a video call with EL PAÍS in March 2023, from a kitsch- decorated hotel in Dhahran, the headquarters of the Saudi oil industry. This newspaper has tried to speak with him again over the last month, without receiving a response. Luque is dedicated to so-called green chemistry, which attempts to synthesize products, such as pharmaceuticals and fuels, while generating less waste.

Publishing insubstantial studies like churros is one of the tricks to climb the academic rankings . An analysis by American statistician John Ioannidis a year ago found some 3,200 scientists —23 of them in Spain, including Luque—who publish more than 60 papers annually: at least one every five days. These hyperprolific researchers increased especially in three countries: Thailand (multiplied by 19 in seven years), Saudi Arabia (by 11), and Spain (by 11). They also increased in India (by 10), Russia (by 6), and Pakistan (by 6). Precisely in these countries, Luque wove a gigantic network of hundreds of collaborators, which facilitated his publication of ever more studies, which in turn were highly cited by those same colleagues. Thus, in 2018, he entered the prestigious List of Highly Cited Scientists , compiled by the multinational Clarivate.

The Spaniard is on his way to becoming one of the researchers worldwide with the most studies retracted for fraudulent practices, according to data from Argos , a new tool for monitoring scientific integrity. His first work to be removed was an article on the synthesis of chemical compounds with supposed medical applications, which he co-authored with three co-authors from Pakistan, two from China, and three from Saudi Arabia. Wiley, after noting the " systematic manipulation " of the results, withdrew it on July 19, 2023. Last October, Elsevier retracted four studies in one fell swoop after discovering "suspicious changes" in the authors' names, which suddenly included the addition of Chinese , Korean , Pakistani, and Taiwanese scientists—a common practice when authorship is sold to the highest bidder for a few hundred dollars , to pad their resume without doing anything. His eleventh retracted study arrived three months ago, days before his tribute at the Kremlin. It was a paper on chemical reaction catalysts, led by an Iranian. Elsevier removed it after detecting " data manipulation ."

The Argos tool analyzes 57 million scientific studies every day in search of evidence of fraudulent practices. It is a product designed by Scitility , a public-benefit company created a year ago by Spanish computer scientist Antonio José Molina , his Dutch colleague Jan-Erik de Boer , and American mathematician Gary Cornell . Massive data analysis uncovers suspicious patterns. In the case of Rafael Luque, they are completely abnormal. They even suggest the existence of an international network of scientists dedicated to inflating their own prestige through cheating and thus falsifying the rankings of the world's top universities.

Molina, a 40-year-old from Seville, presents the chemist's striking figures at the request of EL PAÍS. Having a study retracted, he emphasizes, is unusual. Of the more than 100 million scientists analyzed worldwide, 99.8% have not had a single work retracted. Rafael Luque has published at least 744 articles in just over a decade. With his 11 studies eliminated by publishers, he is already "in the top 0.1% of the most retracted authors of all time," according to Molina. The computer scientist highlights Luque's unusual associations. It's difficult to find a retracted scientist, but the Spanish chemist has collaborated with 198 of them.

Some cases are scandalous. He has signed eight studies with Ashok Pandey , an Indian chemist who has already had 43 papers withdrawn. He has also been a co-author with the Indian engineer Pravin P. Patil (23 retractions), the Iraqi Mohammad Sajadi (20), the Pakistani Shafaqat Ali (11), the Iranian Pouya Ghamari Kargar (9), the Russian Dmitry Olegovich Bokov (9), the Finnish Mika Sillanpää (6), the Chinese Wanxi Peng (5) and the Vietnamese Anh Tuan Hoang (5). “Rafael Luque has signed studies with 12 scientists who are in the top 1% of the most retracted authors of all time,” warns Molina. These toxic collaborations lead the Argos tool to calculate that the chemist from Córdoba has another 96 studies at high risk of being withdrawn and 335 at medium risk. These figures rival those of the rector of the University of Salamanca, Juan Manuel Corchado, and his colleagues, who eliminated 75 studies due to fraudulent practices.

The driving force behind cheating is money. Some academic institutions compete to recruit the most highly cited scientists, because having them on their staff adds many points to the rankings of the world's top universities. An investigation by EL PAÍS two years ago revealed that Saudi universities offered bribes of up to €70,000 annually in personal bank accounts to these professors to lie about their place of work—in Clarivate's internal database of the Highly Cited Scientists List—and falsely appear as Saudis. Two dozen Spanish researchers participated in this scheme.

Rafael Luque was one of them, although he claims he never took the €70,000 annual salary. Starting in 2019, he changed his information, first listing himself as a researcher at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, behind the back of the public institution that paid his civil servant's salary, the University of Córdoba, which without him plummeted some 150 places in the Shanghai ranking . In the only conversation he had with this newspaper, the chemist did admit that they paid for his luxury hotels and first-class travel. The University of Córdoba, after discovering its professor's activities and not believing his explanations, expelled Luque on December 1, 2022, with a 13-year suspension from employment and pay.

Analysis by the Argos tool reveals that the Spanish chemist's signature has been highly valued on the international market. In 342 of his studies, he appears as a researcher at the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia. In 113, he appears at the ECOTEC University in the Ecuadorian city of Samborondón. In 18, he appears at the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry in China. In 11, he appears at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest in Romania. In 10, he appears at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. And in a multitude of other studies, his signature appears in 16 different countries.

At the Kremlin gala, the master of ceremonies announced the Spanish chemist as a researcher at Ecuador's ECOTEC. The Peoples' Friendship University of Russia published a press release about the tribute on February 12, presenting Luque as the victim of a dismissal because he "openly disseminates a pro-Russian stance." The statement highlighted that the Cordoban's collaboration had led the Russian institution to reach 23rd place in the QS world ranking, another of the regular rankings. The tribute went unnoticed until journalist Dalmeet Singh Chawla published the news in the journal of the American Chemical Society a couple of weeks ago. That same society awarded Luque a distinction in 2018.

Argos's Spanish founder, Antonio José Molina, acknowledges his frustration with the impunity enjoyed by scientists caught engaging in fraudulent practices. His tool now offers a dashboard that allows interested institutions to track their researchers' "risky activities," such as establishing new collaborations with scientists with a shady track record.

The Argos analysis shows that Luque reduced his suspicious studies when EL PAÍS exposed his case in March 2023. It was the newspaper's most-read story of the year, and the scandal led to the exclusion of 2,000 researchers from the List of Highly Cited Scientists for malpractice. Luque defended another version. "In this world, if you stand out, you're always going to have haters , envious people, who are mediocre," he said during the video call from a luxury hotel in Saudi Arabia. "A friend and professor of mine from India told me a story that I like to paraphrase because it speaks to me quite a bit. When an elephant walks through the jungle, there are many dangers: tigers, lions, wild dogs. These types of animals try to bite the elephant's legs to kill it, but the elephant is wise and continues on its way," he added.