List of Predatory Scholars

Following is the list of “scholars” (authors, researchers, scientists) who are allegedly involved in scientific misconduct.

Muhammad Irfan

Muhammad Irfan (“Dr. Irfan Sahar”) is a researcher primarily active in Energy Economics and Environmental Sciences who has become a subject of significant scrutiny for both academic fraud and ethical violations regarding professional titles. He obtained PhD in Management Science and Engineering from the School of Economics and Management, North China Electric Power University, Beijing. He is working in the Business School of the Shandong Management University since 2024-06-07. His own profile at SciProfiles states that “Prof. Muhammad Irfan is currently working in the emerging fields of renewable energy and climate change, including wind energy, solar energy, biomass energy, climate change, energy economics, environmental economics, and economics and pollution.” His ORCID profile states that “According to Elsevier and Stanford University, he has consistently been ranked among the top 2% of scientists worldwide in 2022 and 2023 and is awarded top 1% highly cited researcher across WOS researcher database in 2023. He is among the top 5% of economists in the world, according to the IDEAS/RePEc database. He is the highly cited Researcher of 2023 by Elsevier and Shanghai Ranking database.”

• Numerous Retractions: He has a substantial record of retracted research papers across multiple international journals. These retractions are typically linked to compromised peer-review processes, citation manipulation, and data integrity issues.

• Professional Misrepresentation: Irfan has been flagged for unethical behavior regarding his professional identity. He operates a YouTube channel (Dr. Max English) where he provides healthcare and medical advice while presenting himself as a “physician.”

• Misuse of Doctoral Title: While he holds a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) in Management, he is accused of intentionally misusing the “Dr.” title to mislead the public into believing he is a medical doctor (MD), which constitutes a grave ethical violation in public health communication.

• Network Affiliation: He is identified as a junior member of the “citation ring” involving Muhammad Shahbaz and Charbel Jabbour, frequently co-authoring papers that serve to cross-cite and inflate the metrics of senior members.

• Hyper-Prolific Output: His publication record shows an implausibly high frequency of articles, a pattern often associated with “paper mills” or the purchase of authorship.

• Ongoing Investigations: Due to his deceptive practices on social media and his history of academic retractions, he is a frequent subject of reports by academic integrity watchdogs and medical ethics observers.