29 SEP 2026 — Several grand-sounding academies have elected well-known scientists without asking and named some of them as leaders without their consent. Other researchers were offered memberships for a fee. A Nature investigation published on 25 September traced several of these bodies to one man and a set of virtual mailbox addresses.
Leading universities announced the honours in press releases. One of the academies held its 2026 annual meeting in Singapore.
How it looked from the inside
In July, Columbia University computer scientist Julia Hirschberg was told she had been elected to the European Academy of Engineering, days after an election to the Austrian Academy of Engineering. In 2025 she had been elected to the National Academy of Artificial Intelligence. Columbia announced the honours.
Then, Nature reports, she was offered a paid chair's role and found her name already at the top of the academy's leadership page. She had never agreed to the post or attended a single meeting, and nobody had asked her for references.
Nature found more than 30 university press releases, including Columbia's, celebrating faculty honours from two of these bodies, the European Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Artificial Intelligence.
What Nature found
The academies' websites claimed partnerships with bodies such as the US National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the American Meteorological Society. Five of the named organisations told Nature they knew of no such partnership.
The European Academy of Engineering's listed address is a virtual mailbox, and no organisation of that name appears in Sweden's public register. A photograph of its supposed building was a doctored image of the University of Gothenburg. Parts of its website were copied from the US National Academies.
The name that appears most often in connection with these bodies is Michael Chu, also known as Chaoyang Zhu. Public records show the National Academy of Artificial Intelligence and another of his organisations share a virtual mailbox address in Colorado. Chu told Nature his role was limited and that the organisations are legitimate. Nature found his account inconsistent with the communications it reviewed.
The business model
Nature describes the setup as circular. Prominent scientists receive unsolicited free honours, which give the societies credibility. Others are offered paid titles. The AI academy lists fees from US$30 a year for a student affiliate to a US$600 initiation fee for full membership, plus a US$10,000 virtual PhD and a US$2,000 virtual postdoc.
Nature found dozens of researchers in China and Pakistan listing fellowships and awards from these bodies on their CVs. Fan Xiudi, an education-policy specialist at Tongji University in Shanghai, told Nature that research evaluation in China relies heavily on honorary titles, which creates a market for them. Nature did not identify anyone who admitted paying.
Computer scientist Michael Jordan asked to be removed after learning of the fees. "Paying for titles is anathema to me," he told Nature. The academy listed him anyway as a featured speaker at a paid October conference, without his knowledge.
The Singapore meeting
Moshe Vardi of Rice University attended the AI academy's 2026 annual meeting in Singapore online, expecting an international summit. He found about two dozen researchers, meeting mostly in Chinese, organised by Chu and an assistant.
Nature does not say whether the organisations have any registration in Singapore. A Singapore venue gives an academy a regional address, but no evidence about who actually runs it.
How to check an honour
An unsolicited election with no nomination process is the first warning sign in Nature's reporting. The others are easy to test: ask the listed partners whether the partnership exists, and look up whether the address is an office or a mailbox. A real academy's founders and members show up in their own biographies. If a university honours office has never heard of a society, look again before the press release goes out.
Examedia, an Argentine outlet, has since profiled Chu on the back of Nature's findings, and the investigation continues to invite tips from researchers.
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