How an Undergraduate Student Ended Up Reviewing for a Wiley Journal
An Iraqi university recently celebrated an undergraduate medical student for a "prestigious" peer review
On November 03, 2025 Al-Mustaqbal University in Iraq published a post on its official Facebook page that congratulated Adam Dakhil Nasser, a student in the university’s College of Medicine.
According to the university, “Nasser made a great achievement”, which is reviewing a scientific paper published in a prestigious, globally ranked, peer reviewed scientific journal. This reflects the advanced scientific level of the university’s students.
As a result, the Dean of the College of Medicine presented Nasser with a “letter of thanks and appreciation” for his advanced scientific and research efforts.
This official post by the university is the starting point for this investigation.
The Public Profiles: “Dr. Adam Nasser”
A review of Nasser’s public profiles on platforms like ResearchGate, SciProfiles, Academia.edu, and ORCID reveals a prolific and exceptionally broad academic expertise in a vast and unrelated array of deeply complex fields.
The Expertise: Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Cardiology, Psychology, Photonics, Integration, Immunology, Oncology, Applied Physics, Derivatives, Mathematical Physics, Optics, Surgery, Quantum foundations, Retro causality, Inflammation & inflammatory disease, Analytical chemistry, Medicina, Quantum theories and Quantum Science & Technology and Fundamental physics.
A closer look at this publication record shows that all 16 works were “published” within a four month period, from April 2025 to July 2025. This short time period suggests the possibility of AI generated content. Furthermore, none of his articles are in peer-reviewed journals. They are all self-uploaded documents (preprints or working papers) on repositories like ResearchGate, Preprints.org, and Zenodo, where users can upload content without any formal peer review.
The Story of Mathematical Logic Quarterly
This brings us to the “prestigious” review itself. The context behind this specific journal, at this specific time, is the most important part of the story.
The Collapse (April 7, 2025)
On April 7, 2025, just four months before Nasser was invited to review, MLQ suffered a total collapse. As documented by Ellie Kincaid on Retraction Watch and Marco Tullney on TIB-Blog, the entire 20-person expert editorial board resigned en masse. This board consisted of world leading professors in mathematical logic. In their public open letter, they announced they were resigning to protest the publisher, Wiley, stating they did not believe Wiley’s environment was “free from the negative influence of commercial and profit-oriented interests.”
The Aftermath: A New Crew
To keep the journal operating, Wiley appointed a new, replacement crew. New editorial board on the journal’s website confirm this. The original, prestigious board is gone. The journal’s new “Editor” is Dr. Shikha Binwal, who is listed as working for “John Wiley & Sons, New Delhi, India,” alongside a new board of associate editors.
The Invitation (August 29, 2025)
This is where the two stories collide. The invitation to “Dr. Nasser” was not sent by the journal’s original, prestigious board. It was sent by the publisher’s replacement staff.
Given the demonstrable contradictions in Nasser’s profile, it is highly likely that the journal’s new management (or, more likely, an automated “reviewer finder” system) was fooled by his keyword stuffed profiles. The system saw “Dr. Nasser” and keywords like “Mathematical”, “Quantum” and “Computing” and sent an automated invitation to review a paper called “A DARK POLYNOMIAL TIME COMPUTABLE EQUIVALENCE RELATION FROM LOGIC” in a field he had no qualifications for.
Nasser agreed, reviewed the article, and it was accepted for publication.
The journal’s last public-facing issue is February 2025, published before the resignation.
The paper Nasser reviewed in October 2025 is marked “Published” in the internal system, meaning it is in the queue for the first issue to be released by the new, replacement board.
The screenshot of the review portal confirms the Editor managing the paper was Shikha Binwal, the newly appointed editor.
This incident raises serious questions about Wiley’s quality control and it calls into question the validity of any paper published by MLQ since its expert board resigned.
Summary
An undergraduate student (Adam Nasser) also known as ”Dr. Nasser” on ResearchGate self-uploaded, non-peer-reviewed 16 “publications” in various fields within 4 months. That shows signs of being inauthentic or AI-generated.
A journal (Mathematical Logic Quarterly) suffered a complete collapse when its entire expert editorial board resigned in April 2025 to protest the publisher.
The publisher (Wiley) installed a new replacement crew to continue operating the journal.
This new staff (or its automated system) sent a review invitation to “Dr. Nasser”, which it apparently mistook for a real expert.
Nasser accepted and reviewed it.
Al-Mustaqbal University celebrated it as a “remarkable achievement” and a sign of its “advanced scientific level.”