BERA's delusional, self-serving retraction statement

Claims to have 'uncovered independently' what I had already suggested to them

I knew that BERA was reluctant to accept that it had spent the last few years churning out from its journals AI-authored garbage. If it actually wanted to fix the problem, it would not have taken nine months to retract a paper with 21 fake references. However, when it was finally time to retract the articles, I did not think that it would have the temerity to position itself as the highly-capable hero of the story, blameless except for trusting others too much, while I would be positioned as a sort of semi-competent villain. But, I have underestimated the shamelessness of academic institutions before.

BERA has, finally, begun work to clean up its journals, announcing that 19 articles from its flagship journal, the British Educational Research Journal, have been retracted. I’ll write (responsibilities permitting) more about the retraction statement over the coming weeks, but I thought it was urgent to address three very strange assertions it makes in the process to denigrate me while promoting itself:

1. BERA ‘uncovered independently’ that a special issue was dodgy nine months after I told them

BERA claims that the 19 retractions it announced result from what they have ‘uncovered independently’:

During the course of the investigation, we uncovered independently that the peer review process for a limited number of articles in the British Educational Research Journal (BERJ) had been manipulated by parties that are not affiliated with the journal, Wiley or BERA. As a result of these findings, a total of 19 articles published in BERJ have been or are in the process of being retracted. The vast majority (17) of these articles were submitted as part of a guest-edited special section, which has now been cancelled.

This is quite the claim, given that in August 2025 I wrote a blog on how that very special issue was dodgy: that the guest editors publishing AI-authored work in the special issue and elsewhere, and most importantly that one of the guest editors had a suspiciously prolific record as a peer-reviewer:

A further interesting aspect is the sheer productivity of Namaziandost [a guest editor]. According to apparently confirmed data on his Orcid ID, he has peer reviewed 1,788 articles since 2020 (roughly 2,000 days). He has also already published 11 articles in 2025, having published 14 in 2024, and 12 in 2023. How, and perhaps more importantly, why, does he do it? Is there a good reason to peer review an article every single working day? I may be misinformed here but I don’t think that’s normal.

I also shared with BERA that many of the articles from the special issue appeared to be AI-authored.

So, the timeline is as follows:

• August 2025: I claim in a blog seen by BERA and Wiley that guest editors are publishing their own AI-authored work in the special issue and that one of the guest editors appears to be involved in nefarious peer review activities.

• Summer 2025: I provide BERA and Wiley with evidence that many of the articles in the special issue are likely AI-authored.

• April 2026: BERA and Wiley claim to have ‘uncovered independently’ that the special issue involved compromised peer review (see italics above).

However much BERA and Wiley find me and my criticisms distasteful, it cannot be denied that I alleged that the special issue was dodgy, and implied that there were reasons to suspect that one of the guest editors could not apparently be trusted to oversee a proper peer-review process. Whatever BERA and Wiley did with the evidence they found, they cannot claim to have ‘uncovered’ anything (I had already shone a light on it) or to have acted ‘independently’ (their investigation proceeded from my allegation). In reality-based language, with their greater access to evidence, they were able to confirm what I had alleged.

2. BERA taking action on around 40 papers I flagged, but claim that is ‘a small number’

Even more ridiculously, they claim that only ‘a small number of cases’ that I flagged warranted ‘formal editorial follow-up’. Well, I can reveal from personal correspondence that in total BERA has retracted, or is in the course of taking editorial action, on around 40 articles (that does not even include this one, which it appears to have missed). In what planet is 40 retractions (or perhaps in a small number of cases, corrections) a small number for four journals? Even if you take away the number that it is claiming sole credit for (see above) that still leaves around 25 retractions. That is not in any conceivable way a small number. Again, a self-serving, reality-denying assertion.

3. My approach is ‘ethically problematic’

Here’s the kicker. BERA did not merely claim, after I informed them about it, that they themselves ‘uncovered independently’ that the special issue was dodgy (giving me little or no credit). It then proceeded to call my approach to uncovering AI-authorship through detecting the use of stock phrases that came into (common) use post-2023 ‘ethically problematic’ on grounds anyone but a certain type of academic would find completely absurd: ‘[i]nterpreting features common in global academic writing as evidence of misconduct or AI generation risks implying that any deviation from Anglophone academic norms is inherently suspect.’ ‘Risks implying’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, as in ‘a sensible approach “risks implying” something distasteful and completely unconnected’.

BERA - failing to live up to its responsibilities.

This is not just a petty argument over who gets credit. It is an argument over the seriousness of education academia in the UK (BERA is after all the association of UK education academics). I’m a strong supporter of the idea that academia is the best steward of the future of education, but that is a role carrying a huge responsibility. BERA’s recent output, and its delusionally self-serving account of its retractions, unfortunately suggest that currently-existing education academia is no fit steward at all, and what’s more has no serious interest in becoming one. That’s a great shame, because less friendly critics than me are plotting its demise. It needs to sort itself out, and soon.