The next bestseller: my autobiography

The genesis of the next bestseller:

Dear Dr. Matthew D Herron,

I am Luis, Editorial assistant from Oasis Publishing Group Ltd. contacting you with the reference from our editorial department. Basing on your outstanding contribution to the scientific community, we would like to write your autobiography.

Researchers like you are adding so much value to the scientific community, yet you are not getting enough exposure. No matter how many papers you publish in famous journals, you will be still unknown to common people. To solve this problem, we came up with this unique solution.

With our autobiography service, we will write your autobiography along with your research contributions in common man’s language. We will also include all your published papers into this book in a way that a common man can understand it. And then, we will publish your book with our publishing group. Before, publication, we will send the draft to you for scientific accuracy, once you approve our draft, we then proceed for publication. You will get all the rights of your book, and all the sales generated from your book, will be credited to you.

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Another ecosystem, another parasite

It seems to be a universal rule: every ecosystem has its parasites. Wherever there is money being spent or media being consumed, people will find a way to exploit it. Thus we have Craigslist scammers, Amazon scammers, spammers on every platform, sellers of social media followers, predatory scientific journals, and sellers of dissertations, among many others. It seems there’s no ecosystem too small; even my academic website, which averages tens of views per week, gets a steady stream of spam comments:

Spam comments

So I shouldn’t have been surprised that there are people exploiting Wikipedia to make a buck:

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I think Tina/Nora has given up on me

I should say Tina/Nora/Victoria, since, as Owlmirror pointed out, she signed her second email to me as Victoria. No problem, Tina/Nora/Victoria, I keep forgetting to sign as Paul myself!

When we last heard from Tina/Nora/Victoria, she was concerned about what happened to the payment I had her FedEx to the Federal Trade Commission, and I told her

You would have to ask A. Robinson. I don’t know who that is, maybe a Harkonnen spy. At any rate, I never got the payment.

Tina/Nora/Victoria is happy to take my word for it. Of course, it’s a fake cashier’s check to begin with, so the only thing she’s really out is the cost of a FedEx overnight shipment.

TinaNora1

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This should be interesting

I’m pretty sure I got a scammer to send a cashier’s check to the Federal Trade Commission. I despise Craigslist scammers (all scammers, really) ever since I moved to Vancouver. My dad had driven up with me, all the way from Tucson with Heidi in his lap, and we were staying in a hotel downtown while I tried to find a place to live.

Dad and Heidi

1600 miles in a Miata with a 35-pound dog in his lap. My dad is a hero.

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