Expert: Wiley (publisher) and Bhanu Pandey (chapter co-author), Publisher investigation / author response Every citation in a book is a promise: this study exists, and it supports the sentence it is attached to. A 2024 Wiley book, Restoring Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services on Post-Industrial Land, has broken at least eight of those promises. An ecologist reading a chapter on restoring biodiversity on post-industrial land came across a reference to a study on rewilding she wanted to follow up. The citation pointed to a 2020 paper in Ambio by "Knijn et al." She could not find any record of it. She then checked the chapter's other references and found at least eight that do not exist. She asked Retraction Watch to keep her anonymous for fear of retaliation from the chapter's authors. She flagged the problem to Wiley on 7 September 2026 and - apart from an automated response - heard nothing back. Wiley told Retraction Watch that the publisher "takes integrity seriously and investigates all concerns when they are flagged to us" and would "take appropriate measures once the investigation has concluded." It did not answer whether books, including this one, are run through automated reference checking, and it did not say whether it was aware of the problem before being contacted. That question matters, because Wiley owned Edifix, a reference-checking service, from 2019 until the company was acquired by another firm earlier this year. A Wiley spokesperson said the publisher "has published AI use guidelines for book authors and safeguards the integrity and quality of the books we publish through established checks at three stages: book proposal, contracting, and manuscript review and development. Edifix is not one of the tools that we currently use." Of the four authors of the chapter - all researchers at CSIR-Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research in Jharkhand, India at the time of the study - only Bhanu Pandey responded. He said he was not aware of the fake citations before Retraction Watch contacted him, and that first author Sameer Shekhar "took the lead in compiling the chapter materials and coordinating the submission." Pandey said he is looking into the chapter and plans to file a correction request: "Where a citation is inaccurate or the associated statement is unsupported, I will propose the appropriate correction, revision, or removal and submit it to the chapter editor and publisher through their formal editorial process." The other three authors, including Shekhar, did not respond. The book's editor, Vimal Chandra Pandey of CSIR's National Botanical Research Institute, said he would "check in this regard" but did not explain how the fake references were overlooked. Wiley's own policy for editors says they "must refrain from handling manuscripts if they have a COI, like a professional or personal relationship with the authors." This is not an isolated lapse. After Retraction Watch reported on a Springer Nature book on machine learning that was full of made-up citations, the publisher retracted it and, in June 2026, said it would begin issuing expressions of concern for books. Research-integrity specialist Michal Wojcik went further and wrote a Python script to detect fake references across published books. Fabricated references have become a recognised signature of large language model misuse: they are formatted exactly like real citations, because that is the form the model was trained to imitate, and a book's reference list is one of the places they can survive longest, because nothing forces a reader to check them one by one. The test Retraction Watch applies is the test any reader, student or librarian should apply: a reference must resolve to a real publication that supports the claim being made. A citation that cannot be found is not a sourcing slip - it is an assertion with a fake receipt attached. Source: https://retractionwatch.com/2026/09/23/wiley-investigating-book-chapter-on-biodiversity-for-fake-references/