[thomasz]

It sounds like they grilled him until they got co-authorship for a paper with a with an uber high impact factor.

[mattmanser]

I suspect that without their co-authorship people wouldn't have read it. I'm not in the academic field but isn't it a signal that they back his work enough to put their name (and reputation) to it?

[fyi80]

Is it good for your career to get high impact factor for a paper that admits that your most famous work was a fraud that destroyed the economy of several nations?

[thomasz]

His co-authors are not those who fucked up the original study.