‘California university’ off by several degrees
Website used U of A landmarks until it was exposed as a fake by real professor
EDMONTON A website for a nonexistent university in California includes an athletic complex called the Butterdome, offers classes in French at the Campus Saint-Jean skyscraper, and might be led by President Justin Trudeau.
Someone who enjoys copying and pasting invented a “California South University,” which boasts an expansive main campus of 150 buildings in 50 city blocks in Irvine, Calif. That description perfectly matches the University of Alberta’s Wikipedia page.
The purported history of California South University is an alternate-universe version of the U of A, including a 1947 boost by the discovery of oil in Leduc, and its first classes held in Queen Alexandra School — a real public school in south Edmonton.
The website, which is no longer active, but viewable on the Wayback Machine, reinvents U of A medical microbiology and immunology Prof. Michael Houghton as “Prof. Dr. Carol Thomson” in its list of notable faculty, and reproduces Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s biography under the name “Annie Danny.”
U of A — er, California South — grads may not recall physical education Prof. Arthur Adams, the supposed NHL referee who oversaw a 2007 game where centre Howie Morenz broke his leg. (The real NHLer Morenz died in 1937.) Maybe he’s better remembered for the controversial call he made in a 1999 game involving “the Los Angeles Maple Leafs.”
The fictional university existed for months in cyberspace until William Grover, a real professor of bioengineering at the real University of California, Riverside, was surprised by an email in his inbox.
It was one of dozens he receives daily asking him to work for predatory, or fake, research journals that will publish nonsense if the author forks over hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Grover thought it was weird he’d never heard of a large university supposedly in his own backyard, so he dived into its website.
His jaw dropped when he saw the purported California Butterdome, he said Friday. His wife is a chemist and U of A graduate. He’s been to the real Butterdome in Edmonton.
Fake journals are old news, but a fake university? That was new, he said. He found the elaborate website appears to be a ruse to prop up the credibility of a researcher named Prof. Alireza Heidari. Heidari — if that’s his real name — has had an industrious few years, publishing dozens of research papers in questionable journals between 2015 and 2017.
Heidari’s mailing address is the same as California South University, which is a split-level house in Irvine.
Although the university website might be an obvious fake to someone from Edmonton or Irvine, researchers from overseas struggling to get their work published may not notice the difference, Grover said.
“If we don’t fight at least one, I worry we’ll lose. The way that we communicate academically in journals, peer review, that’s hundreds of years old ideas, tried and trusted ways that science moves forward. These predatory journals, and now fake universities, are in my mind, endangering that,” he said.
The phone number and emails on the university’s website went unanswered Friday.
Previously, another blogger found the fake university’s previous website was an unabashed diploma mill, selling fake university degrees.
An article on the U of A’s website said administrators requested the web host take down the fake university website.
These predatory journals, and now fake universities, are in my mind, endangering (academic publishing).