JAKARTA — The almost cartoonish antics of an Indonesian researcher at an international scientific conference has opened a Pandora’s box of alleged academic misconduct, putting Indonesian academia under the spotlight.

The scandal first came to light after UK-based Indonesian medical researcher Wa Ode Dwi Daningrat posted a series of Instagram stories on May 22 about another Indonesian researcher at the 2026 International Society of Pneumonia and Pneumococcal Diseases conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

At the conference held from May 17 to 21, Dwi observed the researcher, later identified as Prihantini, changing her hijab and switching name tags in an apparent attempt to pose as other members of her team.

“I found it so bizarre. Usually if someone presents on behalf of a colleague or teammate, they just say so. They don’t have to change name tags,” Dwi, 35, told The Straits Times.

When confronted, Dwi said that Prihantini struggled to answer basic questions about her own research, which claimed to involve locations as far-flung as the Peruvian Andes, Lebanon or South Sudan, while involving only Indonesian researchers.

Dwi also learned that Prihantini and three supposed teammates had all been awarded travel grants to attend the conference, but only Prihantini attended - aoparently intending to present all 15 of the team’s submitted abstracts herself.

On May 29, Prihantini messaged Dwi from her Instagram account @pryhantkielh to apologise for her actions. But that account, along with her other social media profiles, has since been deleted. ST has not been able to contact Prihantini, who has no apparent affiliation to any university or institution.

Dwi’s fellow UK-based researcher Ida Bagus Mandhara Brasika summarised the incident in a May 25 Instagram post titled “Damaging Indonesia’s Reputation on the World Stage: Fraud Scandal at an International Conference”. It quickly went viral and has since garnered over 236,000 likes and 97,000 shares.

The post triggered internet sleu...