The Story of Ike Antkare

The most popular way of measuring the effectiveness of a scientist is by knowing how many other people ‘cite’ their work. If lots of people are referring to your research, then your research must therefore be good. This metric is codified as the H-Index.

But every metric has its own flaws. In 2010, Cyril Labbé (a computer scientist) was able to manipulate the H-Index by publishing 102 computer-generated research articles, many of whom cited each other. Since the papers all cited each other, the “author” of all these fake papers (Ike Antkare) had his H-index score boosted. The fake research papers also cited legitimate research papers to disguise the ruse.

Ike Antkare soon became the 21st highest-cited scientist in the world, even outclassing Albert Einstein.

The computer-generated research articles were created using SCIgen, a program designed to produce “context-free” research papers that seems to be like real scientific papers, but are actually meaningless. If anybody bothered to read them, then the articles would be known to be false. The inventors of SCIgen intended to use this software to expose academic conferences and journals that accepts research papers without bothering to read them.

Once Cyril Labbé exposed the ruse he made, people started reading the papers that Ike Antkare wrote. Ike Antkare lost his prestigious H-index score, as search engines began removing Ike’s papers from their databases.

This incident exposes a very important part about metrics…you cannot rely on only one. If you had just relied on the H-index to tell you how effective a scientist is at research, then Ike Antkare would have been a star. Only by reading Ike’s papers will you be able to know the truth about Ike and avoid being fooled.