Thanks to a comment on yesterday’s blog post, I was able to read this extraordinary tale, which comes to us courtesy of Prof. William Grover at UC Riverside’s Bioengineering department. Go check it out – you’ll learn of one Alireza Heidari, who is apparently quite the polymath. He is the author of 115 papers, which is not bad when you consider that this is only since 2015 and that he appears to have defended his PhD in 2012. As Grover notes, that publication list includes things like a one-page opinion piece, which has 90 (!) references, every single one of which is to one of his other papers. It’s a breathtaking sight. In fact, a quick glance suggests that every single one of his “publications” cites nothing but his own “work”. And he’s also on the editorial boards of more ridiculous predatory journals than you have patience to count. I mean, the list just goes on and on, and it’s a tour through the dregs of the publishing world. No “journal” who lets an Alireza Heidari on its “editorial board” can possibly be any good whatsoever, and sure enough, it’s one steaming mound of refuse after another. If it turns out that he shares a masthead somewhere with Prof. Hoss Cartwright, my day will be complete.

Ah, but the story doesn’t end there. I don’t know who this Alireza Heidari is, but his name is spelled exactly like that of an Iranian Olympic wrestler, so make of that what you will. This “Heidari’s” biography is a maniacal screed that just gets crazier as you work your way through it, both in its laughable details (attendee of three hundred conferences! recipient of nine hundred awards!) and its otherwordly grammar. Successive sentences start with “Hitherto”, “Syne” (sic), “Heretofore”, and “Hitherward”, that last being the first time I have ever encountered that word in my life. Where, you wonder, does this paragon work his magic? Why, at “California South University“.

Say what? Prof. Grover has quite a time with that one, as well he might. Good ol’ CSU is supposed to be in Irvine, and a professor at Riverside (35 miles away) just might have noticed its 150-building campus occupying 50 city blocks. It turns out that the entire description of CSU on its amazing web site is lifted word-for-word from the Wikipedia article on the University of Alberta – well, with a few words swapped. That leads to brow-furrowing oddities like it being called one of the greatest universities in the province of California and references to the Los Angeles Maple Leafs hockey team.

Every single page of the CSU web site is, on inspection, a jumbled heap of blatant plagiarism. You can find hunks of Wikipedia all over the place, including at one point a flat description of the “lorem ipsum” typographic placeholder, which is at least a 9/10 on style points alone. It keeps looping back to the University of Alberta article, though, faithfully reproducing a discussion of recent scandals involving the faculty. Oh, and that faculty? Brace yourself. The page for “Prof. Arthur Miller” features a photo of the late James van Allen, and text lifted from the Wikipedia article about the office of the Canadian Prime Minister, which leads (inexorably) to a statement that CSU’s current president is Justin Trudeau. Meanwhile, Prof. “Calvin Carter’s” page is illustrated with a still from the 2009 movie “A Serious Man”, while its text is from the Wikipedia article on NASA’s Gene Krantz. And so on, and so on. These names, by the way, are the only co-authors that ever appear on any of Heidari’s “papers”.

Honestly, this site is the predatory publishing equivalent of Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, as if Charles Kinbote had learned about cascading style sheets. Why does such a thing exist? Prof. Grover has done some digging, and finds that from 2010 to 2016 the “Cal South” web site, in various iterations, promoted a good ol’ fashioned diploma mill, with degrees based on “life experiences” mailed to you within ten days of receipt of funds. As that article shows, such operations typically assemble and repurpose photos from all sorts of real universities. But “CSU” doesn’t seem to be doing that now. There are no pages that “enroll” you in anything, nothing about payments, etc. There’s a rather surreal page about visiting the campus, but it provides no directions and no way to schedule a visit. Heidari’s own stated mailing address, which is reproduced in the CSU site’s WHOIS record, is a residential street in Irvine.

Grover’s best guess (and it’s mine, too) is that “Heidari” is collecting a piece of the action every time someone pays for a paper in one of those predatory journals he’s on the editorial board of. The come-on emails inviting you to join such things sometimes explicitly mention deals like this – it’s like a multilevel marketing scheme. He’s cast a huge net to scoop up this sort of money, but interestingly, he doesn’t seem (from what I can see so far) to have set up his own publishing empire. Rather, he’s piggybacking off the OMICs group and other sleazeballs, who seem only too happy in turn to associate with a scholar of such distinction.

As for the actual person behind all this, a quick search of California business records and a little Googling will turn it up. Over the years, plenty of other people have had contacts with this active businessman, and it’s safe to say that “CSU” and “Alireza Heidari” are just parts of his activity. Based on what I’ve seen, I wouldn’t trust the guy to tell me whether it was raining or not, but this is the sort of person who now fills up the junk scientific journals. It’s a farce – the whole predatory publishing business is a ridiculous, moronic farce. California South University is its natural home.