The Scientists That Don't Exist

On Monday, I sent out a long newsletter that was loudly about the pressures facing science journalism and quietly about the fact that I don't know if embargoed science journalism is really sustainable in the age of AI.

I was grateful to hear a lot of opinions on this from "cramp in my neck from nodding in agreement" to "beginning to feel quixotic" to probably a lot of stuff said in group chats that was a bit meaner (I can see the stats!!!) and some great additions to the convo by other great science journalists.

While I was writing that story, I was doing some investigating about where science press releases might end up. And I came across bioengineer.org. Bioengineer is not a "new website" as such – it's been around for more than a decade and has mostly been a copy-paste press release clearing house that whole time. There are spatterings of discussion about it from researchers in the past, mostly complaints about the content that it has produced. The website owners seem to be largely unknown and I can not find any employees on LinkedIn. I reached out to the listed email, it bounced.

It feels like a shadow site, full of ghosts – press releases go there to die and haunt the web and that just might impact science in a real way.

If you visit it (and I advise against it tbh), you will be greeted with a series of horrid AI-generated imagery. The story that leads its POPULAR NEWS section is headlined...

Detection of EDCs in Breast Milk and Infant Urine Up to Six Months Highlights Early Exposure Risks

And its main image is this:

As readers of nobs. are well aware "Infant tures to tex months in Early Expestibusie" like, DUH! I am always going on about my Infant tures!

The story attached to this wonderful, uh, Retlections, is about endocrine-disrupting chemicals. It's about a month old and borne from a presentation (?) at a major endocrine conference, ENDO 2026. The study is not yet released, to my knowledge, but the findings got limited coverage in the press, and the story on bioengineer.org is basically an AI-generated copy of the release by the Endocrine Society.

Which, though it's been shared a measly (supposed) 77 times, is probably not all that damaging to science communication, right? I can't imagine many people frequent bioengineer.org and if they do, and they see the molle, methds and meda graph above, hopefully they will just click away.

What is concerning, and damaging, is the way bioengineer has replaced Actual Real Human Scientists with ghosts.