What happened
In June 2026, Science magazine published an article called “Your heartbeat quietly shapes how your brain processes information.” It carried the name of Caroline Williams, a real science writer from the UK.
But she did not write it. Someone had taken her name and her past work, and pitched stories to science magazines by email, using AI to write them. Science paid about $1,000 for the piece.
Over the summer, editors at other magazines started asking the real Caroline Williams about odd emails. She posted a warning on LinkedIn. By mid-September, an editor at Science put it together, and the article was taken down.
Why it went wrong
The editors only ever spoke to “Caroline” by email. Nobody checked by phone or video that she was who she said she was. AI made it easy to write convincing pitches and drafts in her style. Two quotes in the piece had been copied from elsewhere.
Impact
- “We were conned,” said John Travis, Science’s managing news editor. He said the article itself was accurate.
- The real Caroline Williams now worries editors may not trust her work, and the impostor kept pitching other magazines.
The lesson
- Check who you’re working with. A short video call would have caught this.
- AI makes pretending easier. A name and some old articles were enough.
- Speak up. The real writer’s public warning is what stopped it.