7 Deadly Sins of Research Grifters, Useful Research Tools & Sunday Quiz.

Every week we read a mountain of papers on this platform. And after a while, the patterns start to show. Here’s a list of the ones to watch out for.

1. Lust – Bragging on Social Media
   Every poster, preprint, or case report instantly screenshotted and blasted on Instagram with hashtags like #blessed #teamwork. Forget peer review — the real validation comes from likes and LinkedIn applause.
2. Gluttony – CV Obesity
   Stuffing résumés with 40+ open-access papers and conference abstracts. Nobody reads them, nobody cites them — but in the pass/fail era, the CV arms race is the only game in town.
3. Greed – Career Development Only
   Research as cold, hard currency. Not for patients. Not for progress. Just for fellowship points and consultant interviews. A loyalty card for academia — publish 10, get one free.
4. Sloth – Ctrl+C Ctrl+V Science
   Why design something new when you can recycle the same dataset? Copy-paste introductions, swap the hospital name, slap on a new DOI. Laziness dressed as “productivity,” while clinical skills quietly rot.
5. Wrath – Reviewer #2
   The eternal tormentor. Rejects your paper for “lack of novelty,” then miraculously publishes the same idea six months later.
6. Envy – Of Prestige, Not Proof
   It’s not the good papers that spark envy — it’s the big names. Watching the same “celebrity academics” rack up citations for mediocre work, while solid studies from others sink without trace.
7. Pride – The Spin Doctors
   Six patients? That’s a “landmark.” A dodgy retrospective? “Paradigm shifting.” Old errors from the 1970s? Still gospel in the textbooks. Pride turns weak evidence into holy scripture.

With love (and Gluttony for good research),
P’Fella ❤️