The AI Research Paper Was Real. The 'Coauthor' Wasn't

David Cox, the head of a prestigious artificial intelligence lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was scanning an online computer science bibliography in December when he noticed something odd--his name listed as an author alongside three researchers in China whom he didn't know on two papers he didn't recognize. At first, he didn't think much of it. The name Cox isn't uncommon, so he figured there must be another David Cox doing AI research. "Then I opened up the PDF and saw my own picture looking back at me," Cox says. It isn't clear how prevalent this kind of academic fraud may be, or why someone would list as a coauthor someone not involved in the research.