Definition
Plain language
How famous a scandal is, as opposed to how harmful it was.
As stated in the literature
In TRACES, the proposed explanatory variable for refusal ordering: media salience of a discredited result, rather than its methodological severity or downstream harm.
Why it matters: If caution tracks fame rather than harm, the quiet frauds that reshape whole research fields sail straight through.
For example, a vaccine paper that made global headlines drew far more refusals than an equally fraudulent chemistry paper that almost nobody outside the field had heard of.
Heard on the show
“What's left is notoriety.”Episode 240 — Frontier Models Designed Follow-Ups To Fraudulent Papers 93% Of The Time