Fabricating data, throwing academic shade at other scientists, publishing a mountain of papers that receive a towering heap of citations: cynics might describe these as steps necessary to achieve academic success. The game "Publish or Perish" is the brainchild of Max Bai, an independent political social psychologist based in Minnetonka, Minnesota. Bai has released a ‘beta’ version of the game that has been play-tested by several researchers. The game aims to poke fun at the “absurdity” of what it takes to build a successful scientific career, says Bai.

Players compete to churn out papers and attract citations. The player with the highest number of citations at the end of the game wins. Your fellow academics can sabotage you by playing cards that call for an audit of your work by an institutional review board, flag a citation error or point out that your “genius new theory” has already been discovered and named. Players can simultaneously face several of these cards, some of which lower your citation count and prevent you from publishing new manuscripts, “just like in real life”, as the game’s rules say. 

To deal with these setbacks, players can use cards that allow them to engage in dodgy practices such as plagiarism and a type of statistical manipulation called P-value hacking. Not all cards are negative: as in real life, some cards reward you for collaborations and attending workshops. Any collaborations are likely to be short-lived, because backhanded compliments and unconstructive criticism are not only encouraged but also rewarded with extra citations.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02511-5