Thread by @SolidEvidence

I knew there were a lot of fake accounts on this platform, but they are usually obvious. I had no idea how intricate and complex the ruse could be.

Get a load of this story.
1/

About a week ago I got a DM from an account asking me a benign but specific question about my research.

This happens to me all the time. I’ve met some interesting people this way.

Sometimes people even look up my number and call my office. It happens.
2/

The account looked legitimate. They are a paying account (I’ve never seen a bot that pays).
They’ve been on the platform for over 2 years.
They have 52 followers, some of whom I recognize, and they compulsively repost interesting science posts (including some of mine).
3/

The person kept trying to chat with me, but it was just a little ‘off’. I figured it was just an awkward scientist (common), or someone had hacked their account and this wasn’t really the account owner messaging me.

This used to happen on FB all the time.
4/

Anyone who follows me know that when something doesn’t seem right, I don’t let it go.
I decided to look the person up, email them, and just ask them if the DMs were ‘real’.
It wasn’t hard to find them at all.

5/

They had a profile on ResearchGate (sort of like linkedin for scientist).
The picture looked similar and the profile identical. Lots of pubs, but no email.
I decided to look up the pubs where the email address of authors is often listed.
6/

The papers were all real and all listed Julia as an author.
7/

However, when I went to the journal itself, the papers were real, but the authors were different.
The ResearchGate profile was all a fake.
They had taken the CV of some Iranian scientist, changed the name on the papers, and created a fake ResearchGate account with them.
8/

Once I knew it was a fake, other mistakes jumped out.

One doesn’t study Organic Chemist, it would be chemistry.

CALS is on the Ithaca campus, not NYC.

Chemistry isn’t even in CALS. (I did my postdoc at Cornell)

What grad student has 63 pubs going back to 2007?
9/

I checked, and there really was a Julia Allen that got her PhD in Chemistry at Cornell, but she graduated in 2011. I tried to reach out to her to let her know about this account.
10/

The pubs she listed were all those of a scientist in Iran.

I also emailed him to let him know about this account.
11/

So it’s all a fake, but why?

This is a paid account. It doesn’t seem to be political, or monetary, or porn. It’s all about science.

What’s the end game? Can someone explain?
12/

Perhaps one of the people that follow ‘her’ has gone further down the rabbit hole and can explain.
Has ‘Julia’ been chatting you up too?

I’m curious where the conversation went.

13/13

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