Boot Camp Promises a Submitted Paper in Just 2 Days

What if writing and submitting an academic paper didn’t take weeks or months, but instead could be done over the course of just one weekend at a premium hotel with plenty of snack breaks?

That’s the promise offered by Research Boot Camp, based in the U.K.

“Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis in 1 Weekend. Not 6 Months,” the website states. “From orientation on Saturday morning to a journal-ready draft by Sunday evening — every hour is choreographed.”

The concept of having a systematic review and meta-analysis written and ready for submission — with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) — in a span of just 2 days has some experts rattled.

“A systematic review is only useful if the work behind it was done rigorously and if it is trustworthy,” Elisabeth Bik, PhD, a science integrity consultant known for detecting fraud in research, told MedPage Today. “Cranking out systematic reviews written by AI with the goal to enhance one’s CV will lead to more pollution of the scientific literature with low-quality slop.”

Indeed, experts have started to raise concerns that the increasing use of AI — and the diminishing ability of publishers to detect its use — is flooding medical journals with “meaningless” research, as MedPage Today previously reported.

Research Boot Camp is structured around the artificial intelligence (AI)-platform Metysis, which the company’s website advertises as being able to compress “the work of an entire research team into a single guided workflow.”

Saturday morning kicks off with participants learning how to use Metysis, refining their research question and protocol, and finding and screening papers for inclusion. Sunday involves extracting the data, performing meta-analysis, writing the paper, and submitting it if there’s time.

Drafting the article doesn’t even begin until 2 p.m. Sunday.

The program boasts “premium” coffee breaks, unlimited specialty drinks, and catered lunch. The next Research Boot Camp is set to be hosted at the Marriott in London in November. Being a project lead and first author costs about $1,320 and being a project member or co-author is about $657.

While the program is marketed as a “masterclass,” experts said this design enables shoddy research.

Matt Spick, PhD, a research integrity expert at the University of Surrey in England, told MedPage Today that there’s been growth in the number of courses like this that charge for training rather than explicit authorship.

“In many ways these courses are part of an arms race,” Spick told MedPage Today. “If paper mills are banned, then training courses are an alternative where it’s harder to prove wrongdoing.”

A weekend boot camp focused on AI-assisted workflows “trivializes the production of meta-analyses” in part because “they don’t include any time for inspection of whether the trials they are analyzing were in turn real, or problematic,” he said. Without adequate checks and balances, bad papers and fake studies can find their way into the literature and get cited.

Bik agreed that high-quality meta-analyses require someone with expertise to sift through and decide which studies make the cut. AI isn’t yet able to reliably generate complete lists of papers nor do this verification, she said.

There’s also the concern that a program like this makes empty promises, experts said.

“Anyone can submit a manuscript to a journal,” Bik said. “That says nothing about its quality or whether it will be accepted.”

Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, PhD, who studies research fraud at the University of Sydney in Australia, agreed: “It’s like me guaranteeing that you’ll be able to apply for American Ninja Warrior after a 2-day fitness camp — I’m not guaranteeing anything of actual value,” he told MedPage Today.

As of press time, Research Boot Camp did not respond to questions from MedPage Today.