A further investigation into the Nature journal being run from a strip mall in Syracuse, New York
I still can't make sense of this one.
The other day I reported on an unsolicited email I received, trying to get me to review a a“Concerns regarding the interpretation of “opposing roles” of microglial and macrophagic C3ar1 signaling” for a journal called Molecular Psychiatry. Indeed, not only had I never heard of that journal, I’d never heard of the concept of “molecular psychiatry,” nor had I ever heard about microglial and macrophagic C3ar1 signaling, indeed the expression C3ar1 was entirely mysterious to me.
One of the many weird things about that email was that it included a mailing address, 4465 E Genesee Street # 217, which Google Maps seems to be locating in a strip mall in Syracuse, New York.
That’s strange, no? Usually these email requests don’t come with any address at all. But if they do, it would be some university department, no? I’ve got nothing against strip malls, but these are usually where you’d go for delicious Guatemalan food, not a scientific journal.
On the other hand, the journal is published by Nature, so it’s real, right? At least that’s what I thought, but then when I sent my post to a journalist who writes on scientific misconduct, she replied, “Oh my god, just when I think fake-journal solicitations can’t get any more ridiculous!”
So maybe the journal is actually fake?
During the days that I was chewing on this question, I received two more emails from MolecularPsychiatry@us.nature.com, identical to the original request, including that same mysterious address. OK, fine, I’m being spammed by a robot who lives in a strip mall. That’s what spam filters are for.
But then today this came in the mail:
19th Jul 2026
Dear Dr. Gelman,
Thank you for agreeing to review “Concerns regarding the interpretation of “opposing roles” of microglial and macrophagic C3ar1 signaling” by Zhiqian Yu and Mai Sakai [tracking number 2026MP001421].
Please note that we ask you to complete and return the review by 2nd Aug 2026.
To access the manuscript, instructions and review form, please click on the link below:
https://mts-mp.nature.com/cgi-bin/main.plex?el=A1Bb4DBv5A4BcgY7J4A9ftdb0zxirHcq71n4tDvSWLG3wZ
Reviewers are kindly requested to give a very rigorous review of the manuscript. Acceptance should be considered for only the most meritorious papers. Reviewers are asked to consider the originality of the scientific work and to evaluate the scope of the manuscript with respect to the broad readership of the Journal.
In particular the review form will rapidly allow you to provide feedback in the following areas:
Importance of Findings
Quality of Experiments
Clarity of Presentation
Overall Rating
Points In Favor
Points Detracting
Publication Priority of Contribution
Remarks to the Section Editor
Remarks to the Author
If you are unable to complete the review or expect significant delays, please contact me immediately via reply e-mail, at MolecularPsychiatry@us.nature.com
Sincerely,
Julio Licinio, MD, PhD, MBA, MS, FRANZCP, FAAHMS
Editor-in-Chief, Molecular Psychiatry
4465 E Genesee Street # 217
Syracuse, NY 13214, USA
Molecular Psychiatry is a member of the Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium (NPRC). Upon an author’s request, we will transfer reviewers’ comments to the author to a partner journal. Should this author request review transfer, the editorial office will contact you to ask permission to include your name as well. More information can be found here. Please contact the editorial office if you have any concerns.
This email has been sent through the Springer Nature Manuscript Tracking System NY-610A- Springer Nature&MTS
Confidentiality Statement:
This e-mail is confidential and subject to copyright. Any unauthorised use or disclosure of its contents is prohibited. If you have received this email in error please notify our Manuscript Tracking System Helpdesk team athttp://platformsupport.nature.com
Details of the confidentiality and pre-publicity policy may be found here http://www.nature.com/authors/policies/confidentiality.html
Wow, what an asshole.
Asking me to review a paper, that’s one thing. The original request was ridiculous given that the topic of the paper—indeed, the ambit of the entire journal—is entirely outside my areas of knowledge. It’s scientific malpractice to solicit a review from someone who knows absolutely nothing about the subject of the paper.
But, hey, that’s what happens when you outsource your editorial work to a bot.
But then to follow up with a “Thank you for agreeing to review” . . . that’s a bot that’s out of control.
And this got me wondering about the journal. Is Molecular Psychiatry a real thing?
My first step is google, which leads me to this official-looking page from nature.com. And it says here that the journal has an impact factor of 10, which is pretty good!
But why is a high-impact journal with a top brand spamming me from a strip mall in Syracuse, New York?
Here’s the editorial board:
Editor-in-Chief
Dr Julio Licinio, MD, PhD, MBA, MS, Upstate Medical University, USA
Managing Editor
Dr Ma-Li Wong, MD, PhD, Upstate Medical University, USA
Associate Editors
Revathy Uthaiah Chottekalapanda, PhD, Weill Cornell Medicine of Cornell University, USA
Gail Davies, BSc(Hons), MSc, PhD, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Kim Q. Do, PhD, Faculty of Biology and Medicine, Lausanne University Hospital, Switzerland
Muhammad A. Parvaz, PhD, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, USA
Joao de Quevedo, MD, PhD, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston), USA
Weihua Yue, MD, Institute of Mental Health, Peking University Sixth Hospital, China
OK, that’s an odd collection of affiliations. I guess I should look up editor-in-chief, as he’s the dude whose name is on those spam emails. He has a wikipedia page, which says he’s “published 309 papers indexed in PubMed, as well as 13 books.”
13 books, that’s a lot! I wonder what they are? Licino has a webpage which states:
Julio Licinio is a Physician Leader, Scientist and Editor-in-Chief of world-renowned scientific journal, Molecular Psychiatry.
It continues:
Revered for his research, Julio Licinio has been honored by an abundance of professional recognitions for his work in the field of psychiatry.
OK.
Follow the link and you’ll see this:
As of 2020, Julio is credited with contributing to well over thirty-one thousand published works.
Also:
Celebrated for his innovative contributions to Springer Nature, and credited with catapulting the scientific literature outfit’s Molecular Psychiatry to super stardom in the psychiatry sphere. In his thirteen years as Editor in Chief of the publication, the psychiatry journal has earned the rank of #1 on a worldwide scale.
All right, then.
Also, no joke, Licinio seems like a genuinely nice guy. He worked as a volunteer at a refugee camp! I bet that Dan Ariely, Matthew Walker, and Cass Sunstein never did that.
But then the question is, why is this academic superstar spamming me from a strip mall in Syracuse?
Here’s one clue. According to wikipedia, he’s married to Ma-Li Wong. If her name rings a bell, it’s because she’s the managing editor of the journal listed above.
Why does Licinio give a strip mall rather than his university address? I don’t know. Seems kinda fishy to me. I’d feel better about it if he wasn’t spamming me.
What does it all add up to?
A humanitarian who, along with his wife, is editing what might well be a legitimate journal, but it’s being run from a strip mall and operates by contacting unqualified reviewers and spamming them.
I honestly don’t know what to make of this one.
P.S. Some people have informed me that the above strip mall is the address of a UPS store, which presumably Licinio is using as a mailbox. That makes sense. But I still don’t get (a) why not use his academic affiliation and address, and (b) why give a mailing address in the solicitation at all?
I’ve seen worse scandals (e.g., what sometimes seems like half the faculty at Ohio State). This is just a strange one, which I blogged about it because of the juxtaposition of the weird spammy email and the prestige of Nature. At this point, Nature seems like a franchise that includes various shady operators under its umbrella.
The other discordant thing is that it seems that this guy worked as a volunteer at a refugee camp! But I guess it’s possible for someone to be politically engaged and sleazy at the same time.