Robertson Centre for Biostatistics' Prof Peter Macfarlane tells a cautionary tale of sham conferences and the warning sign of excessively pushy conference organisers...

Photo of microphone on table

Some time ago, I was invited to give a couple of talks at the 2023 International Society of Electrocardiology meeting being held in Sapporo, Honshu, Japan in early July. I have been linked with this Society since its inception and happily agreed to take part despite the journey involved. I bought tickets around January this year to ensure a seat on six flights!

In April 2023, I was invited to give a talk at an international meeting on nursing being held in Frankfurt in mid-July. I indicated that I could not travel to Frankfurt but would be prepared to send a recorded talk on electrocardiography. The organisers agreed and promptly sent conference registration forms. About one day later, I received a reminder that my registration fee had not been paid. I immediately replied saying that, as an invited speaker who was not attending, I was not prepared to pay such a fee. The organisers agreed!

A few weeks later I was contacted by someone not known to me who wanted to know if I definitely was speaking at the Frankfurt conference, as he felt that the organisers had a suspicious track record. I advised that everything seemed to be in order at my end. In early June, before I had started to make the recording, a junior doctor from an English hospital also contacted me to ask if I was attending the Frankfurt meeting. He had been invited to give a talk based on a recent publication but was concerned at pushy organisers looking for registration fees. He provided a weblink where I found my talk now entitled: "Patients’ perceptions of importance for self-administered correct site surgery checklist: A multi-site study". Whatever that means, it does not clearly relate to electrocardiography! So, indeed the whole conference was a sham set up solely with the intention of collecting registration fees from potential speakers and attendees!!

The meeting in Japan did take place. I found Sapporo a very unexciting city though there was no time for sightseeing. I travelled out to Sapporo via Tokyo, arrived on a Wednesday and started back on the following Saturday evening. That was too short a stay to handle with a +8 and –8 hour time difference inside 5 days and a 15.5 hour flight from Tokyo to London on account of the situation in Ukraine.

As for Frankfurt, all I can say from past experience is that the airport is very large....

In summary, anyone who receives an invitation to a one-off meeting, as opposed to an annual meeting of an established Society, should check it out very carefully – and not be bullied into paying a registration fee too quickly.

Peter Macfarlane
Electrocardiology Group/Robertson Centre for Biostatistics
School of Health and Wellbeing

First published: 23 October 2023

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