More than half a year after EL PAÍS uncovered the Saudi plot to cheat in the ranking of universities, the largest scientific organization in Spain has opened disciplinary proceedings against its five researchers allegedly involved, as confirmed by sources from the Ministry of Science. Several Arab universities pay up to 70,000 euros per year per year to renowned foreign scientists to lie and declare in a database that their main place of work is in Saudi Arabia. Thanks to this deception, Saudi academic institutions artificially climb in the rankings of the best universities in the world, such as the famous ranking from Shanghai.
A spokesperson for the Higher Council of Scientific Research (CSIC) avoids specifying the names of its registered workers, but there were only five members of the organization with the falsified information in that database, a list of the 7,000 most cited scientists in the world, prepared by the specialized company Clarivate. The chemist Damià Barceló declared between 2016 and 2022 that his primary affiliation was the King Saud University, in the Saudi city of Riyadh, despite the fact that he was actually the director of the Catalan Institute for Water Research, in Girona.
The chemistry Mira Petrovic, also a researcher at the same Catalan entity, received an offer from King Saud University in 2019. An Arab professor explained the simple conditions to her. “Your primary affiliation must be King Saud University in the Clarivate Highly Cited Scientists List database [la utilizada por el ranking de Shanghái]”, the teacher informed him. Once he executed the trap, a document would arrive. “After signing the contract and approval by the director of the Scholarship Program for Distinguished Scientists, you will receive 70,000 euros in your bank account.” Petrovic rejected the offer immediately. The Dutch scientist Jan Willem van Groenigen confirms that he received a similar proposal and also rejected it. Damià Barceló, however, assured this newspaper in April that he has not been collecting 70,000 euros annually in his bank account during the seven years in which he has lied in the database.
Chemist Rafael Luque, from the University of Córdoba, did falsely declare between 2019 and 2022 that his main workplace was the Rey Saúd University. The Córdoba institution plummeted about 150 positions in the ranking from Shanghai for that trap hidden from its investigator, according to a calculation by the Barcelona consulting firm SIRIS. Last December, the University of Córdoba suspended Luque’s employment and salary for 13 years. The CSIC spokesperson, however, highlights the “presumption of innocence” of its five files. Damià Barceló himself is being investigated by the Anti-Fraud Office of Cataloniaaccording to sources familiar with his case, but he remains acting director of the Catalan Institute for Water Research, whose board of directors he presides. Joaquim Nadal, advisor of universities of the Generalitat of Catalonia. The 14 main scientists at the Barceló center requested his immediate precautionary suspension in April, without success.
He ranking Shanghai is the most influential university ranking on the planet. Its authors—specialists from Jiao Tong University in that Chinese city—calculate the position of each academic institution based on factors such as the number of Nobel winners and the number of professors included in the Clarivate company’s List of Highly Cited Scientists. Saudi universities contact foreign researchers on that list every year and offer them easy money in exchange for lying and declaring that they work in Saudi Arabia in the first place. The trick is only appreciated in that database.
The investigator Francisco Tomas Barberan, former director of the Segura Center for Soil Science and Applied Biology of the CSIC, also modified his information in 2020 in the database and stated that his main place of work was the University of Taif, near Mecca, instead of his authentic institution. , in Murcia. Tomás Barberán, a food technologist expert in intestinal microbes, he is the president from the area of Agricultural and Agri-Food Sciences of the State Research Agency, dependent on the Ministry of Science.
The CSIC physicist Andres Castellanos He declared between 2020 and 2022 that his primary affiliation was the Rey Saúd University, despite the fact that he works at the Institute of Materials Science of Madrid. In June 2023, when his involvement in the Saudi plot was already known, he was elected number academic of the Young Academy of Spain, an organization dedicated to promoting science.
The CSIC, chaired by political scientist Eloísa del Pino, began an internal investigation on a case-by-case basis in April after receiving a query from this newspaper. The CSIC Ethics Committee, headed by the philosopher Txetxu Ausinspoke with the five workers now on record, but did not contact investigators who rejected the Saudi offer and have evidence of the fraud working, such as Mira Petrovic herself and Mario Estévez, a veterinarian from the University of Extremadura who also appears on the list of most cited scientists in the world.
In addition to the chemist Damià Barceló, the physicist Andrés Castellanos and the food technologist Francisco Tomás Barberán, the other two CSIC researchers linked to the Saudi plot are Pedro Luis Rodríguez Egea, a drought expert from the Valencian Institute of Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology, who declared working at the Rey Saúd University between 2017 and 2020; and Roberto Fernandez Lafuente, from the Madrid Institute of Catalysis and Petroleum Chemistry, which in 2020 and 2021 stated that its primary affiliation was King Abdulaziz University, in the Saudi city of Jeddah. After the opening of the disciplinary files, EL PAÍS has written to the five investigators, without receiving a response from any of them, except for Francisco Tomás Barberán. “As a file is ongoing, I think it is appropriate not to make statements, but in no case has there been any harm to the CSIC,” the scientist who claimed to work near Mecca, instead of in Murcia, has limited himself to pointing out.
A report from the consulting firm SIRIS analyzed in May the dimension of fraud in the world. For about a decade now, 210 highly cited researchers from other countries have declared that their primary workplace is a Saudi university. Most of them are from China (44), Spain (19), the United States (16) and Turkey (14). Spain also occupies the podium in relative terms, as approximately 10% of its highly cited scientists lied in the 2022 database, a percentage only surpassed by Turkey (40%) and India (12%). In Spain, the mathematician Juan Luis García Guiraofrom the Polytechnic University of Cartagena, has acted for years as an intermediary for the King Abdulaziz University, to try to convince Spanish scientists to lie in the database, according to the recordings and documents to which this newspaper has had access.
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