A reader sent me this “paper” and asked me if I really wrote it. It is not only garbage, but, in parts, complete gibberish.
I’ll use this space to assert that NO, THIS IS A FAKE. The “Journal of Evolutionary Genetics and Adaptation” does not exist. Googling it yields no results, and asking Grok yields this:
No, there is no journal titled Journal of Evolutionary Genetics and Adaptation (or any close variant like Journal of Evolutionary Genetics).
Searches across academic databases, journal lists, and publishers turn up zero results for a journal by that exact (or near-exact) name. No ISSN, publisher page, or official record exists for it.
There is an American Journal of Science, mentioned as the place I published this garbage, but it is an earth sciences journal devoted to geology. I’ve never published in it.
Although the content below is opaque, it may be an attempt to say I’ve worked on the developmental genetics of skin color in some bizarre species, which may be a guilt-by association thing with racism. Who knows?
At any rate, I’m making this post only to assert, for the record, that what is below is a complete fabrication. It appears to be the product of an addled mind.
Click on the picture if you want to see some lunacy:
This is disturbing. Libel of an outrageously sinister variety. An obvious attempt to smear and destroy the reputation of a researcher.
Addled brain. A search for the “Aldaes algahil” species returns either “Barenaked Ladies” and their song “Alcohol,” or various brands of fruity vodka! And the African oright, according to Google’s AI, “most likely refers to the green beauty brand’s South African presence, a popular pan-African music and dance track, or green travel.”
At least “Jerry Coyne” exists! Sorry you have to deal with this nonsense.
This is definitely AI-generated. I ran the image through Claude and it flagged six separate tells — gibberish body text, the “species” name spelled three different ways, meme-style before/after photos posing as a figure, and so on.
Curious where it originated and how the reader came across it.
Sadly, I have seen this before…LONG before AI was capable of doing these things. There was a clever guy back in the 90s that found a way to create “textbooks” with hyperlinks in them that could connect parts within the books as well as locate external resources. It was a wonderful idea, except for the part of the creator’s total ignorance of the academic fields he was “covering”. In addition, he copied huge swaths of text from published sources (a lot more complicated in the early 90s than today) and inserted them in his “books” but also misinterpreted and distorted a lot of the material and context. Furthermore, he listed the authors of these sources as collaborators or co-authors.
I had been tagged as a potential reviewer, and it seemed to me that the presentation of materials and conclusions attributed to “co-authors and collaborators” contradicted what I knew of their work. So, I reached out and they confirmed never having been consulted or agreeing to be a part of these works. In some cases, the material written by the books’ author was so wrong (and inaccurate) that it could risk professional damage to those whose materials he used. Sadly, what could have been a wonderful ground-breaking approach to interactive textbooks floundered under cease-and-desist orders.
In the age of AI, I am seeing similar things more often popping up in student bibliographies and “summaries” of non-existent articles. It is a little better these days, but in the beginning up to 25% of student papers had more than a few “hallucinated” sources.
What you seem to have here appears more intentional; some stuff probably scraped from websites via AI, but then mixed into a whole array of offensive and unscientific offal. What we teach scientific communication students these days is to VERIFY every single source, even if it seems legitimate, and to locate the item on the publisher’s or journal’s website VIA a legitimate bibliographic search utility, and not a non-specific search engine (Bing, Google, DuckDUckGo, etc).
Sue.
Too much trouble!
I am not sure. If you have a friend who is a lawyer who deals with such things, or if UC still gives you access to one, i.e. you can do it without charge, you might want to discuss it with him/her. This sounds malicious, and it might not stop with this. Our reputations are all we have. Take care of yourself.
This is totally not my area of law so herein I’m just a ranting loudmouth (which I do well):
I wouldn’t sue. Its an awful lot of hassle, requires actual malice, damages are hard to prove and ultimately uncollectable in many cases.
The price of fame is sometimes people like PCC(E) have to grin and endure it, even if it is a damn outrage like this case.
He COULD send a letter threatening to sue though – that is the best value for money/time/agita.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
Manipulative and evil fabrication.
There needs to be precise language for this obvious evil that can masquerade as “trolling”.
It is not trolling. It is malicious … character assassination?
Well, as a former boss and close friend told me years ago when I got fired from a very abusive consulting firm (and was devastated): “Congratulations, you haven’t really arrived til you’ve pissed someone off enough to fire you.” Another partner from the same firm, when he found out, said “is this your first time? That’s always the hardest, you’ll be fine.” Both gave me a good laugh when I really needed it. You asked whether anyone’s reading you, I guess the answer is absolutely YES, that you’re making a huge difference in many important stories circulating these days, and you’ve triggered some idiot with too much time on their hands. So congratulations! ;-J
What could even be the point of doing this?
Since this exists, and I guess is online and is now generating some commentary, the result can be that it turns up in Google searches about you. But for what end?
And can an AI even produce gibberish? Maybe if it was told to.
Easily —
Me: If you can stomach it, produce a couple sentences of faux academic postmodern text that is obviously gibberish.
GPT-5 mini (Reasoning mode): The ontological cadence of discursivity fractures the metanarrative into a palimpsest of signifiers, each trembling with performative irony; meaning collapses into an elegy of citations that cite their own absence. In this liminal symposium the subject performs critique on behalf of theory, staging a hermeneutic prank that leaves interpretation breathless and slightly indignant.
AI is extremely good at this sort of word manipulation. I’m sure I could ask for such gibberish in any style (such as KJV) and get similar results. If asked, I’m sure it would produce less obvious gibberish.
I particularly like the meta-ness of the “elegy of citations” bit.
Brilliant! Shouldn’t you (together with GPT-5 mini) receive
an appointment at Berkeley’s program in Critical Theory?
What heinous crimes have I committed to receive such cruel and unusual punishment? This isn’t the Dark Ages (I hope). Regardless, I have a solid affirmative defence — not guilty by reason of sanity.
Totally wacky. It seems to be in faux Latin as well.
“Does simply engaging in the act of thinking actually change genes?”
My theory is that this is a deep psy op by supporters of Chopra & Tanzi (Super Brain) and other Extended Evolutionary Sympathizers.
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2014/05/08/deepak-and-tanzi-at-it-again-change-your-genes-by-changing-your-life/
A travesty that proves that the power of your thinking is triggering the trolls. Little minds who think they are oh so clever … so laugh at their antics and mentally offer to sign them up for brain transplants when those are available.
Very sorry this happened to you. Best news would be if this is a one-off. Good thing you have a group of people with their eyes open noticing this malicious gobbledygook. Probably no need for alarm unless it escalates. Whoever did this has no sophistication, which is a bit of a relief.
Dogs bark, the caravan passes.
I think that’s Truman Capote, but I’m not sure why it’s used here.
Because the paper is not real. It’s not an argument against something you wrote, just incoherent “barking”. So the saying comes to mind.
Yuck! But a good photo of you
You’ll have to start looking for citations to what is written here – e.g., “noted UC scientist, Prof. Jerry Coyne, proved that thoughts change genes.” If the purpose of citing you as the source isn’t to provide faux scientific support for bullshit beliefs, then what is its purpose? Since it looks like it was published in book form – on very cheap paper! – does that mean they’re actually trying to sell it for profit?
I’m also curious how the reader who brought this to your attention found it.
Criminal! Isn’t there someway you can get it off the Internet?
This is bizarre!
What made me laugh was that you actually need a section named ‘lunacy’ to file stuff like this.