David Furness
School of Life Sciences, Keele University

Carole Hackney
Biomedical Sciences, Western Bank, University of Sheffield

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.87.13

Like us, you have probably received an email invitation to a conference in China. A lot of them seem to originate from a company called BIT Life Sciences, sometimes with a contact email address in a western country, such as Canada. For the most part, we have ignored these invitations, assuming they were spam.

But a particular conference on peptides, to which the organisers invited Carole, did interest us, so we responded to the invitation to speak and asked if David could go as well.

They responded positively and asked us to submit titles and abstracts. We checked out the conference website and it seemed genuine enough – the conference centre in the Olympic village looked inviting and the hotel was right next to it. We wrote back asking what costs would be covered. They were delighted that we wanted to come and they gave us the impression they would probably waive the registration fee – possibly for both of us – and would look into further support.

After some time, we submitted an abstract. They replied to confirm receipt. A few weeks later we looked at the programme online, but our abstract title was not included. By this time, we had booked tickets to fly to Beijing. We wrote back asking about the programme and were told that, as we had not registered (we had assumed we did not need to), it had not been included. Carole then tried to register online, but the cost was around $2500. We contacted them again to ask how to claim their offer of free registration, but they were adamant that we pay the full cost.

On further investigation, we found a number of blogs and an article in The Scientist(*1) magazine indicating that others thought these conferences were a scam.

We decided to go to China anyway, without registering, and booked the hotel online. However, the night before departure, we contacted the hotel and they had no record of our booking. LastMinute.com saved us and we got a room for £60 per night in a centrally located hotel.

On the day of the conference we went out to the Olympic village and were very impressed by the ‘Bird’s Nest’ stadium and other fantastic architecture. From the outside, the conference centre was also impressive. Inside, it was noisy and chaotic. There appeared to be several conferences on different floors with guides dressed in cuddly-toy costumes. Our conference did exist (we were surprised). Though there was a registration desk, a few trade displays, and at least one room filled to overflowing with delegates, the facilities in no way equated to a $2500 registration fee.

We asked about registration and explained our situation. They would not let us in without paying the day rate of about $900 each. We said we would think about it, wandered about for a bit, and then went off to explore Beijing. It just didn’t seem worth going into the conference. Instead we saw the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square and some ancient tombs.

It was a great trip, but the conference – was it a con? Well, you decide…

*1: This article can be accessed at: classic.the-scientist.com/blog/display/56185/