My supervisor stole my research

The story started like this:

“My PhD supervisor hasn’t emailed me back in 10 weeks…. Now I find out he’s stolen my paper. He published my work in his name, and I don’t know what to do. My email from 10 weeks ago was my draft. I needed feedback for it. Now I find out he’s taken it and published it. I’ve heard of being scooped by other academics, but not outright stealing. But I literally have proof that it’s mine. So joke’s on him.”

The comments section?

“You need to report to the university president, the dean, and school/department.”

“This needs to go viral. Lawyer up and write to the journal with proof.”

“Sue him in court for intellectual property theft. Easy win if you have the receipts.”

“Contact the publisher and inform them it’s stolen - they have a process to remove his credit and put yours on… and to have all his other work questioned.”

The problem:

Nobody stole shit. The story continued as follows:

“All my lit review papers are here in this massive library, and they’re all organized into folders where, by the way, I read them all side by side. All my papers. I literally didn’t know when he’d get back to me, so I asked the chat for feedback. I even wrote my paper in the same website [shown in the video], and look here, are my citations…”

After the first version of this story popped up on my TikTok ‘for you’ page, I started seeing more. At least 10 of them. Then, another creator’s video popped up where she’d collected even more, all beginning with the exact same line. These grad student creators were following a script. They had all been paid to share this story to promote a website.

That website? Anara, which I’ve written about before in the context of how this AI company’s marketing approaches promote bad research practices.

Promoting false allegations as a marketing tactic is worse.

Many of Anara’s social media partners are not real grad students, even though they pretend to be in their videos. However, there are several who are, and as one commenter mentioned on my video on this topic, they were able to find the person’s research page with their supervisor’s name on it in under 10 minutes. Given the outrage in the comments of the ‘stolen paper’ videos, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that someone might do a little digging, find the student’s university, and report the supervisor for ‘stealing research’.

The first university misconduct case I helped someone with was a malicious complaint. Resolving it took almost a year and cost thousands in legal fees. It likely wouldn’t take a professor that long to prove that they hadn’t stolen their student’s research, but being on the receiving end of false accusations does carry a risk of reputational damage. Perception can trump reality in the court of public opinion, and the digital footprint of these allegations could linger long after the university clears the supervisor’s name.

But it’s not really the supervisor’s reputation that’s on the line here.

It’s the student’s.

Here’s a snippet of the University of Nottingham’s code of conduct:

If an investigation under this code concludes that an individual has made false allegations which are frivolous, vexatious or malicious and not in the public interest, the individual concerned may be subject to disciplinary action/s.

This is pretty standard language in a university code of conduct, and “I was paid by a company to say these things to promote a product” isn’t a great defense. It’s certainly not in the public interest to make false allegations on a public platform, especially when your institution can easily be found and linked to what you’re saying.

Trust me when I say you don’t want to get a reputation for being untrustworthy in grad school. Not only are the Anara ads these creators post unethical in terms of false allegations, they are also undisclosed as ads. They’re posted as regular content, and if someone doesn’t visit the creator’s profile and notice that every single video is an undisclosed Anara ad, it’s not obvious that the story isn’t genuine. That’s two actions that show a person can’t be trusted.

The last time I posted about Anara, a creator (who shall remain nameless) reached out to me to share what Anara is offering grad students to create a new page filled with undisclosed, unethical ads: $25 per video, up to 10 videos per week. Up to $13,000/year in additional income is going to be attractive to almost any grad student…

But it’s not going to be enough to live on if you get removed from your program for participating in unethical practices. It’s definitely not enough to compensate for a destroyed reputation. It might sound unfair, but if you’re seen making these videos, a future employer might wonder what else you’re willing to do for some extra cash. They might question your judgement. If it’s between you and another candidate who is just as good as you but hasn’t been posting questionable ads all over the socials…guess who will get the position?

I’m saying all that as though I blame these grad students entirely for taking money from Anara to make these ads. I don’t. I get it. Grad students aren’t often allowed to have second jobs, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of time to film 10 scripted videos a week. I can see how the money is a motivator. I’m mainly sharing this in the hopes that grad students tempted by the offer might think twice and consider whether it’s worth it to them to trade their trustworthiness for that extra cash. Because Anara is the real issue here.

Anara is paying students to compromise their reputations online, exploiting the fact that they need money, all while promoting bad research practices and unethical behavior. This should not be legal! In fact, undisclosed advertising is illegal, at least in the US and the UK.

If you’re creating content for an online audience, whenever you’ve been incentivised to post, it must be clearly labelled as an advert or ad, and be based on your genuine experience.

It’s also getting Anara a pretty bad reputation online. One I wouldn’t want to have it were my startup.

If I were advising Anara’s team (feel free to reach out to me, Anara, if you’d like to explore how to advertise your product without destroying your own reputation), I’d suggest stopping all of the undisclosed ads and throwing every single existing script on the nearest fire… and then publicly acknowledging the unethical nature of the recent marketing tactics with a sincere apology to the academic community, including the students and supervisors who were potentially harmed, misinformed, and exploited. I’d suggest developing high-quality content instead of relying on viral outrage marketing and establishing fully transparent collaborations with clear, upfront disclosure of the partnership. I’d help Anara develop and publicly share a comprehensive set of ethical marketing guidelines and a plan to support the students who participated in the previous campaigns, including resources to help them navigate potential disciplinary action from their universities and mitigate damage to their academic reputations. That might help rebuild some of the trust and make the company viable in the future.

Your move, Anara…