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I had confessed to plagiarism and other academic fraud.

The editor’s response? “OK, no problem.”

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That’s when I knew I had hit the bottom of the barrel in scientific publishing.

This year the Citizen has published a series of stories about “predatory” science journals, which will seemingly print anything for a fee and prey on junior researchers who are desperate to publish.

We even circulated a meaningless fake study — partly on farm soils, partly hematology, partly wine chemistry.

Many accepted it. And one, Science Publishing Group, has now recruited me as a “peer reviewer” of other scientists’ work — an independent expert who checks how well it is done.

It was easy. As I was sending them my manuscript, it took only a moment to click on the button saying yes, I’d like to be an editor as well.

Who knew they would ask me to judge research from Pakistan on chickens? Broilers, to be exact.

Then this popped up in my email: