Julia Hirschberg thought she had reason to celebrate. In July, the computer scientist at Columbia University in New York City was elected to the European Academy of Engineering (EAE), an organization that describes itself as the “premier institution representing the highest professional distinction in engineering”. Its website claimed to have more than 400 elected members, including 35 Nobel laureates.

The honour arrived only days after Hirschberg was elected to the Austrian Academy of Engineering. In 2025, she had also been elected to the National Academy of Artificial Intelligence (NAAI).

Three prestigious international honours in quick succession was a rare achievement. Hirschberg was thrilled. Colleagues sent congratulatory messages after Columbia published an announcement about her accomplishments.

“I was really excited,” she says. “I’ve never had anything that quick happen ever.”

Then the good news took an unexpected turn. Within weeks, Michael Chu, who identified himself as the EAE’s secretariat, told Hirschberg that the organization was electing a rotating chairperson. He wanted to nominate her for the paid position, which offered US$2,000 per year.

When Hirschberg checked the EAE’s website, her name was already displayed at the top of its leadership page. But she had never agreed to become chairperson. She had not been asked for references, attended a meeting or even heard of the organization before being elected.

In a written response to Nature, Chu said he had “inferred a preliminary consent” from their correspondence. However, the correspondence reviewed by Nature shows that Hirschberg asked about the position’s responsibilities but never accepted it.

Hirschberg is not alone. After researchers raised concerns about the EAE, the NAAI and related academic societies, Nature began an investigation. The reporting found that Chu is connected to all three organizations and that much of the information published about them online appears to be fabricated or misleading.

These entities form part of a wider international network of suspicious academies and societies. Their websites often feature plagiarized or manipulated content, false claims about institutional histories and locations, and academic honours that can be purchased.

Some of the organizations have misled prominent scientists and universities, including Stanford University in California and the US National Academies of Sciences (NAS) in Washington DC.

Fan Xiudi, an educational-policy specialist at Tongji University in Shanghai, China, says the apparent goal is to create a facade of legitimacy and use it to sell memberships and awards, particularly to early-career researchers in China.

Nature identified dozens of researchers in China and Pakistan who list fellowships and awards from the EAE, NAAI and affiliated societies on their CVs and social-media profiles. The NAAI’s website charges as much as $600 for membership. Posts on Chinese social-media networks advertise consultancy services that offer to broker applications to the academies, although it is unclear whether those services are affiliated with the organizations.

It is also unclear how many researchers have paid for the honours or whether the people who hold them understood the nature of the societies.

“China’s current research evaluation system relies heavily on various honorary titles,” says Fan, who studies academic rigour in China. That system, she says, could create a lucrative market for fraudulent societies.

Chu has defended the integrity of the organizations in responses to Nature. He described his roles as limited and separate, and said the organizations disavow third-party consultancy agencies that claim to sell titles.

How the suspicious academies operate

Henry Dyson has heard of almost every award, prize, fellowship and prestigious society available to researchers. As director of faculty honorifics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, his job includes securing recognition for university staff and protecting them from bad actors.

Like Hirschberg, Dyson first heard of the EAE in July, when a faculty member forwarded him an unsolicited invitation to join. The researcher wanted to know whether the honour was legitimate.

Dyson found a polished EAE website and hundreds of online announcements about its activities. The site claimed that members included prominent figures such as Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Nobel laureates Frances Arnold and Carol Greider.

Dyson also discovered an earlier version of the website that said seven Nobel laureates, all deceased, helped to establish the organization in 1992. That information has since been removed.

Several details troubled Dyson. An organization claiming such stature had no Wikipedia page, and it was not mentioned in the biographies of its famous supposed founders. The EAE’s directory also listed more members from North America than from Europe.

Dyson contacted two University of Michigan scientists listed as rotating section chairpeople. Both said they had never heard of the academy and had not agreed to the positions. Chu told Nature that their names appeared because of “an unauthorized or unverified upload” by administrative personnel during website maintenance.

Dyson warned his colleagues to avoid the organization and sent his initial findings to Nature’s news team. “I would love to know,” he said, “am I just in a rabbit hole on this thing?”

In its investigation of dozens of societies with similar characteristics, Nature found numerous cases in which high-profile scientists were listed as members or leaders without their knowledge or consent.

Many of the societies use names and acronyms resembling established organizations. Some have copied text from legitimate institutions. Their websites contain false claims about partnerships, unverifiable accounts of their origins and misleading descriptions of their locations. Some are registered at postal addresses that obscure where they actually operate, while others use digitally altered photographs.

Nature found more than 30 press releases published by leading universities, including Columbia, celebrating faculty members’ honours from the EAE and NAAI.

The apparent digital deception extends to claims of collaboration. Websites for both organizations say they work with institutions including the NAS, the Royal Academy of Engineering in London and the American Meteorological Society in Boston, Massachusetts. Five of those organizations told Nature they knew nothing about the alleged partnerships. Two others had not responded.

Misleading locations and manipulated images

Information about the societies’ physical locations is often opaque. Nature found no organization matching the EAE’s name in Sweden’s public database of organizations. The address listed on the EAE website points to a virtual mailbox, which allows businesses to use a registered address without leasing physical premises.

The website also showed a pinned location in Sweden on Google Maps. The accompanying image depicted a grand academic building with large Swedish lettering identifying it as the European Academy of Engineering.

Comparisons with other photographs showed that the image was actually a doctored version of the nearby University of Gothenburg’s main building. Nature found other manipulated images in archived versions of the EAE website.

Chu said he was “completely unaware” of the doctored images and described them as “legacy web assets”.

Parts of the EAE website also appear to have been plagiarized. An archived page about the organization’s support for Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion was copied directly from the website of the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Who is Michael Chu?

Little public information is available about how the organizations select their members or leaders. Several people appear to be involved, but the name most frequently linked to the EAE, NAAI and related societies is Michael Chu, who also uses the Chinese name Chaoyang Zhu.

Chu’s profile on the NAAI website lists him as the organization’s secretariat. It also includes an extensive list in Mandarin of institutional affiliations, awards and books, including appointments at a range of institutions. The profile describes him as a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London, as well as an elected member of academic organizations in Europe and Asia.

Nature contacted the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign and the Royal Society of Arts. Neither institution could find anyone matching his names in its records. Chu maintains that he holds a fellowship with the Royal Society of Arts.

In various manuscripts, Chu listed his research affiliation as the International Institute of Engineering Psychology (IIEP) in Denver, Colorado. Public records show that the IIEP and NAAI use the same virtual mailbox address. The records also show that Chu registered another organization, the US National Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Humanities, at that address.

The latter organization and the IIEP have been marked as “delinquent” by the state of Colorado for failing to submit an annual report.

Several researchers contacted by Nature said they had seen Chu on video calls. Moshe Vardi, a computer scientist at Rice University in Houston, Texas, attended the NAAI’s 2026 annual meeting virtually, expecting an international summit. Instead, he saw a small gathering of about two dozen researchers, conducted mainly in Chinese and organized by Chu and an assistant.

A reverse-image search of Chu’s face connected him to another organization, the International Institute of Film Science & Arts. That group describes itself as the “world’s foremost learned society” in the “cinematic arts” and claims more than 800 members in 48 countries. Chu confirmed to Nature that he helped establish it.

The appearance of Chu’s name across organizations covering such different fields raises questions about how members are selected, says Tsu-Jae Liu, president of the US National Academy of Engineering in Washington DC.

“I would want to make sure that the societies’ leaders are actually respected members of the profession,” Liu says.

Chu told Nature that he has direct operational responsibility only for the IIEP and resigned from an administrative role at the NAAI in May 2026. He said his involvement with the EAE began in June 2026 as “temporary administrative and advisory support” and that he has never been an administrator for the US National Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Humanities.

However, Nature found that Chu continued sending official NAAI communications after the date of his claimed resignation. It also found that he holds the title of secretary general at the EAE, a role that appears inconsistent with a temporary advisory position.

Academic credentials for sale

Nature found dozens of other academic societies that appear to be linked to the organizations associated with Chu. Together, they seem to operate as a circular credentialing network: citing or republishing one another’s announcements, promoting shared events and directing researchers from one society to another.

Researchers who accepted invitations from one society were often elected to sister academies within weeks, according to Nature’s investigation.

The societies appear to use the names and reputations of prominent scientists, including Hirschberg, to project legitimacy. They offer unsolicited, fee-free honours to some researchers while selling memberships and other academic credentials to others.

Nature has not identified anyone who has acknowledged paying for one of the titles. However, the NAAI website lists fees ranging from $30 a year for a “student affiliate” position to a $600 initiation fee for full membership.

The website also advertises a virtual PhD programme costing $10,000 and a virtual postdoctoral programme costing $2,000. Members receive digital materials including a “verifiable digital membership card” and an official certificate intended for sharing on platforms such as LinkedIn.

Those fees prompted Michael Jordan, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, to ask the NAAI to remove his name in July 2026. Jordan had initially agreed to participate in the society and recorded a statement for a 2025 conference.

“Paying for titles is anathema to me — that’s not what a professional society should be about,” he says.

The NAAI did not initially remove Jordan from its membership list. Without his knowledge, it also listed him as a featured speaker at an October conference charging up to $600 for attendance.

Jordan learned about the listing after Nature contacted him to ask about his participation. He subsequently petitioned the NAAI to remove his name, and the organization did so.

China’s research-misconduct rules target ‘paper mills’ that churn out fake studies

The cases raise broader questions about how researchers and universities verify academic honours. A polished website, a prestigious-sounding name and the appearance of well-known scientists can create an impression of legitimacy even when the underlying organization has little verifiable history or institutional support.