text:
Is it appropriate to award points for this answer? (experimental physics)
The experiment in question asks the student to take several measurements for the period with different pendulum lengths.* Then it asks the student to pick a length, with justification, before proceeding to more complicated experiments.
The intended answer as given by the grading scheme is:

The student should pick the longest length. This is because the longest length has the lowest percentage error.

The answer that a student wrote is:

I pick the shortest length. This is because I only have 15 minutes left to do the rest of the experiment, so I cannot wait a long time between measurements.**

The student's answer is not wrong, in fact it is a very good reason, but it's completely different from the answer in the grading scheme. Is it appropriate to award points? If it is appropriate, is partial or full credit correct?
Related: Is it ethical to award points for hilariously bad answers? This answer is funny in its own way, but it's not hilariously bad.
Edit: since people repeatedly want to see the full question.

Adjust the length of the pendulum, then measure the period.
Estimate the percentage uncertainty in your value of the period.
Repeat the above for at least two more lengths. Tabulate the results.
Comment on the trend in your results.
In the upcoming, choose ONE of the above lengths that you used.
(i) Record your choice of length. (ii) Explain your choice of length.
Vary [a parameter x which I have simplified out of the experiment]. Record the new period. Comment on the effect the parameter has on the period.
Vary [a third parameter y which I have simplified out of the question]. Record the new period. Vary y again. Record the new period.
It is suggested that the period is equal to k/y, where k is a constant. Use your values from (8) to determine k.
Justify the number of significant figures in your value of k.
State whether your results support the assertion that the period is equal to k/y.
[And more stuff that I really don't see how they are relevant to the question].

*The length of a pendulum is related to its period by T = 2pi sqrt(L/g), where L is the length of the pendulum and T is the period. In other words, a longer pendulum takes longer to oscillate.
**The description of the experiment I gave is simplified. In the actual experiment, it takes up to one minute between measurements while using the longer length. With shorter length, it takes ~10 seconds.

The grading scheme is wrong, not the student. Don't ask students to magically grok the mind of the questioner.

Can anybody enlighten me what should be off-topic on this question? It’s about teaching in an academic setting (or at least it might occur within an academic setting).

I understand that you left out some details, but how is the grading scheme's suggested answer "This is because the longest length has the lowest percentage error" a reasonable justification at all? Whether it is a good idea to measure a larger quanity to get a smaller relative error depends on what one intends to do with the measurement.

@JochenGlueck the error analysis method taught in class involves relative errors (https://www.math-mate.com/chapter34_4.shtml, simple relative error method). A lower percentage error in one variable affects the errors in derived variables.

@Allure: But that still assumes that your ultimate goal is the lowest relative error. Neither did you specify this in the task nor is this how one should choose experimental subjects.

"A lower percentage error in one variable affects the errors in derived variables." Yes, sure, but how is this relevant to my comment? The options are not "Measure a quantity A with low or with high accuracy." They are "Measure a quantity A with low accuracy or a quantity B with high accuracy." The higher accuracy of B is of no help at all if you need A rather than B to go on (let alone that there might be a trade-off between higher accuracy and higher need for resources as your student rightly observed).

@Wrzlprmft I don't understand your comment. It should be implicit that lower relative error is desirable. What else can it be?

@JochenGlueck I don't understand your comment either. What are quantities A and B that you're thinking of?

" It should be implicit..."  Exam questions need to be explicit and "should" makes assumptions.

If so, I'm lucky I've never had a student complain that "you need to measure things accurately" was not explicitly stated in the instructions of a practical test.

@Allure: Sure, all other things being equal, a lower relative error is desirable. But here, all other things aren’t equal. Excluding measurement subjects on easiness of measurement can lead to all sorts of biases and should be carefully considered. At worst it can completely miss the point, e.g., if you measure only one length, you have not experimentally verified the length dependency at all. Also see my comment on Cag51’s answer.

@Allure: The quantity A is the period of a pendulum with a certain length. Quantity B is the period of a pendulum with a higher length. Whether you need to know A or B depends on what you want to do with the data - the mere fact that B is more accurate than A doesn't imply that B is useful to you.

How is the experiment worded? If it tells them to run the experiment for a specific set of lengths and they didn't do them all, then they simply failed to follow the instructions

"Accuracy" is not synonymous with "(absolute) percentage error", and there are actually very good points to be made against the percentage error as an accuracy metric. Most forecasters, for instance, advise against it. See What are the shortcomings of the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE)? I argue (Kolassa, 2020) that it is meaningless to discuss "accuracy" without specifying the error metric to be used, because different metrics elicit very different measurements or forecasts.

Asking the student to "...pick a length, with justification...,' with no other guidance, seems like an example of the classic, "Guess what I'm thinking?" bad practice by educators.  See https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/149/6/e2022057450/186965/Guess-What-I-m-Thinking-Avoiding-the-Game-No

@SyntaxJunkie You cherry-picked from what OP wrote. The experiment involving multiple lengths clearly creates a context where the student will have to somehow incorporate the experiment's results into their justification. Presumably, the students have been taught the material needed to figure out the answer that is expected using the experimental results

Agree with other commentators that the exercise direction seems to have a huge gap in it. It would helpful if OP stated the exact language on the direction of this part of the assignment.

– bad question: Without knowing the context and the details and the precise wording of the question/task for the student, this question cannot be properly answered.

Given the edits of 24 June, I'll stand by earlier comments. The student's answer is perfectly reasonable. Nothing in 6. or 7. imply that optimization is a requirement for a proper answer. The grading rubric is flawed. It is a learning experience for the instructor, actually, about how to phrase questions to get a desired result. Perfectly open questions need to be read for what they are, not for what is hoped for.

If the question just says “pick a length, with justification,” it would be unfair to deduct points. The student’s strategy might not be what you had in mind, but it’s a very valid strategy.  Even the famous scientific collaborations make decisions based on the realities of limited budgets and timelines.
If the question says something like “pick the length that will give the best expected results, with justification,” I would give full credit only for a complete justification, which should mention both the advantages of the student’s selected strategy (can’t get good results if you don’t finish) and the disadvantages (higher expected fractional error).
Neither of these formulations is very clear, however. I would suggest phrasing the question much more precisely for future instances of this class.

give the best expected results – I would consider even this too vague without further context. What is best depends on the scientific question. If the goal is to determine the local gravity (g) and the rule for the pendulum frequency is treated as given, it would indeed be a good choice. However, if the goal is to check the rule for the pendulum frequency, one should test as many combinations of lengths and weights as reasonably possible.

It could be interpreted that the students justification was to maximise the number of trials in finite time, which might result in lower overall error even if error per trial is higher.

@user1937198: Nice point. And it becomes even more poignant if the pendulums have sufficiently low friction. Then you can reduce the inaccuracy of measuring oscillation times by measuring subsequent oscillations: E.g., if it takes roughly one minute for the shorter pendulum needs to take 100 swings and for the longer pendulum to take 10 swings, your expected relative error is exactly the same, as the dominating source of inaccuracy is you starting and stopping the timer.

@user1937198 Maximizing the number of trials does not automatically result in a lower error. If the uncertainty of measuring the period T is constant (reasonable), then it actually most efficient to take the longest pendulum, to obtain the smallest relative error for T and hence absolute error for g.

Different viewpoint here. If the instructions clearly indicate that the student was supposed to do the experiment with multiple lengths, then that clearly creates the context in which the justification must incorporate the data from the experiment to form some explanation of why one length would be better than another. If they only did the experiment for one length, they simply didn't follow the instructions, they don't have data available to compare lengths, and no justification would be valid. Zero points.
If they had done multiple lengths, but not all of them, then I would consider partial points if they had gotten the justification correct because they would have at least some data to incorporate into their justification. But even if the student in the question did do some, but not all, lengths, the student's justification still wouldn't work because it doesn't incorporate any of that experimental work.
Now, for a multi-part question or assignment where future points depend on earlier parts, if a student does something like provide the wrong number, I used to grade the rest as if that number was correct. The idea is that I didn't want to penalize them multiple times for one mistake; I want them to get points for the things they clearly can do correctly.
Some people have mentioned how the question isn't clear or is an example of "Guess what I'm thinking." I'd like to point out that we don't have the assignment in full or any of the other corresponding learning materials that would lend context. Presumably, the rest of the course material has given them the information they need to determine the answer. If it truly is an unclear question, then there would be multiple students having issues with it, and it should be addressed if that's the case. But I see nothing to indicate that from the original question.

It depends what the intention of the measurements really are.
If the intention spelled out in the assignment was to obtain an estimate for g=L(2π/T)² from measuring T and the accuracy δΤ of individual measurements is independent of T (a sensible assumption), then the typical error from each measurement is δg=δΤ(g/T) and after N measurements it is δg=δΤ(g/T)/√N.
Thus, to achieve a certain accuracy δg, one needs to make N=(δΤ/δg)²(g/T)² measurements. Each takes a time proportional to T, so that the total time required is proportional to 1/T.
Hence, taking the pendulum with the longest period is the correct choice if one wants to complete the task in minimum total time. The students answer is wrong (if the intention was to measure g with a specific accuracy).

"Each [measurement] takes a time proportional to T" How do you know that? According to the question, the experimental set-up is such that there is a considerable delay between (!) the measurements, with the longer pendulum causing a longer delay. It is not clear whether the delay is proportional to the period T.

None of that is clear from the question asked. The student shouldn't have to guess what the professor "intended".

@Buffy Did you read my answer? No, this is not clear from the question asked here at SE, but it may be completely clear from the question asked of the student (which we are not told). Moreover, my answer stated If the intention was to obtain an estimate for g, implying that this was the stated in the question asked of the student.

Sorry, but "intention" and "clear statement" are quite different. Nothing in the original question here mentioned any criteria for a choice. Your "implying" is a leap into the void.

Okay, I can make that clearer in my answer


text:
Is it plagiarism to reference a fictitious source?
I'm dealing with a student essay that references three books in support of a claim. None of the books referenced have authors listed, and, based on the contents of the student's essay, I can't find any information on these books online. I'm fairly certain they don't exist, but I'm not sure what to call this beyond academic dishonesty.
I read this from the Nebraska Methodist College:

Other acts of plagiarism are more limited in scope, but are nonetheless cheating. If you decide to make up a quotation or other material and an associated in-text citation, this is plagiarism. If you change or invent the author of a quotation, an idea, or a statistic to make your paper appear to contain more numerous sources, this is plagiarism.

I've run into a few other university plagiarism guides that mention the citing of fictitious sources as plagiarism, but I'd like to know if this is standard, fair, or legitimate to label this practice plagiarism and not just academic dishonesty.
The conflict is this: the student isn't citing these presumably falsified texts directly, but they are referencing finer plot points and characters in them. That is, they are talking about the fictitious dilemmas of the fictitious characters as a way to support their thesis. To me that's dishonest and shows a lack of integrity. I'm grading students on a rubric that awards points for organization, analytical treatment, and language use. If I treat this as academic dishonesty maybe I knock the person's grade down in the rubric criteria related to analysis, but if I treat it as plagiarism I'd give the student a zero.

Have you asked your students to give you the full\proper citation an idea how they accessed the relevant source as you cannot find it?

@Gerhard, I haven't seen the student yet, but I plan to ask to see the sources or at least get the authors.

You could also post a question about whether anyone could identify the books, though perhaps on a different SE.

"I don't think thats plagiarism" -Abraham Lincoln

This is not plagiarism because no content or ideas are being copied from some source without attribution. This is best described as fabrication.

@RobertHarvey Of course I don't know what your instructor had in mind, but there's a reasonable interpretation for this definition.  People accused of plagiarism sometimes try to get out of it by claiming it was unintentional.  For example, "Sure, a big chunk of someone else's text appeared in my paper without attribution, but it was an accident.  I am a terribly disorganized note taker, and I somehow mistook my notes on so-and-so's book for my own writing."

Or "I have a photographic memory that works only intermittently and subconsciously.  I guess I must have reproduced your text verbatim without realizing it."  [This excuse sounds stupid, but I've heard people offer it.]  Or "Yes, I was in the audience when you presented this idea at a conference two years ago, but I completely forgot about your presentation and honestly thought the idea was original to me."

Nobody really believes these excuses, but there's no way to prove it was intentional plagiarism.  Still, plagiarism through negligence is itself a serious scholarly failing, and it's worth emphasizing that you can get in trouble even without proof of intentional wrongdoing.  At the very least it keeps people from planning to fall back on bad excuses.

I pondered the situation and thought for a bit I could give an answer; I can give no answer here but I have access to some dark sources, and I know there exist sources within my grasp that have had the authors identities stripped to protect the guilty.

Perhaps what the guide means is, "if you make up a quotation or other material and associated citation instead of quoting and citing the proper source, then this is plagiarism". That's not literally what it says, but given the context etc. Compare "Professor Alexander Madeup, in his 1905 paper on Special Relativity..." (plagiarises Einstein) vs "Professor Alexander Madeup, in his 1905 paper on Transdimensional Bogosity..." (fabrication only).

In other words, perhaps they're saying that concealing the true author of an idea is (in their view) to be called "plagiarism", even if you credit the idea to a made up person instead of yourself (as would commonly be the case for simple plagiarism).

@SteveJessop I agree with some of the answers and comments that state that conflating plagiarism (falsely attributing information) with other types of dishonesty muddies the water. However, I think that if there is an original author and the writer attributes that person's work to themself or to a fictional author, then that is closer to plagiarism than fabricating the original author from the start.

I think many of us are still unclear on this: "they are referencing finer plot points and characters". Do you mean that the student, in their paper, was referring to plot points and characters in the made-up works?

@tylerharms: That's helpful.... and incredible. One other minor edit, perhaps instead of "the student isn't citing these" you mean " the student is quoting these..."

I think it is worth having a conversation with the student about the purpose of their work.  They may be under a mistaken impression that the primary purpose of their work is to display the ability to write convincing essays, and that the actual content does not matter that much.  This is the case in the AP test for English, for instance:  you are allowed to make up quotes, because you do not have access to sources, but they want to see you display your skill using these as a tool.

Think positive: this is the perfect student for Creative Writing, communications, the art department, etc.  Recommend them there!

@zyx That's exactly the way I'm dealing with this person because they need a way forward after being told they've committed academic fraud.

I think words like "fraud" are over-the-top here.  This is a busywork assignment imposed by the instructor(s) for purpose of assigning a grade. The student showed some... unusual creativity and a sense of humor in dealing with the assignment, in the process revealing skills that will be useful in most contexts other than professional academia (which isn't their likely direction anyway). The formal, punitive "academic fraud" route (not saying that's what you have in mind) means wrecking their record instead of productively redirecting them after some straight talk.

The possibility should also be considered, given that this happened at all, that the student is a bit "perceptually different" and/or might have actually thought that they were not doing anything specifically forbidden.  Considering the existence of this question, inventing sources and their contents doesn't obviously contravene the phrasing of many university policies on plagiarism.  It's easy to imagine the odder sort of student reading and narrowly interpreting the stated policies of their school and concluding that fictional sources are not covered, hence OK in some sense.

@zyx: Not busy work, but that's beside the point. This is a question of deception and how it should be handled.

First, give them a chance to present the papers they cite. If they can't - it's not plagiarism, as that consists of uncredited citation of another's work. It IS, however, academic dishonesty, as they're making up evidence to support their views. Either way, I'd say it's a zero on the assignment.

@user8762 I was in a class where plagiarism was defined to include technical errors in citation. For example, mistakenly citing page 53 of a book instead of 54 or citing the Harvard Journal of Advanced Physics instead of the Advanced Harvard Journal of Physics supposedly resulted in automatic failure of the entire course for plagiarism. Needless to say, I lost entire nights checking and re-checking page numbers, publication dates, exact spellings of names, etc. so I wouldn't fail.

For example, Merriam–Webster defines plagiarism via to plagiarize, which it defines as:

: to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own
  : use (another's production) without crediting the source
  intransitive verb
: to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source

This does not include inventing a quotation, which is in fact sort-of the opposite of plagiarism: passing off one’s own idea as somebody else’s. Other dictionaries agree on this and so does my understanding of the word plagiarism.
Moreover, defining plagiarism so broad makes the term rather useless and almost equivalent to the umbrella term academic misconduct. The reason why we have a word for plagiarism is to differentiate a specific kind of misconduct, not a specific severity.

The conflict is this: the student isn't citing these texts directly, but they are referencing finer plot points and characters. To me that's dishonest and shows a lack of integrity. I'm grading students on a rubric that awards points for organization, analytical treatment, and language use. If I treat this as academic dishonesty maybe I knock the person's grade down in the rubric criteria related to analysis, but if I treat it as plagiarism I'd give the student a zero.

I fail to see why you would be more lenient about academic dishonesty than about plagiarism. I don’t fully understand what you mean by “referencing finer plot points and characters”, but I would classify what you are describing as fabricating evidence, which is roughly as grave as plagiarism. I say roughly, because I see no point in ranking the severity of those misconducts in general and the severity distributions of individual instances of those misconducts strongly overlap.
What is important at the end of the day is whether you are reasonably convinced that the student in question did not just work sloppily, but intentionally deceived the reader (i.e., you). The aspect of intention alone suffices for awarding them zero points, in my opinion.

@tylerharms Tell them that they negative plagiarized, but that punishments are based on the square of the amplitude.

Thanks. The focus on intentional deception is helpful in assessing the mark the student will earn.

I'd say this is more serious than plagiarism. If somebody plagiarizes, she is repeating something (presumably) correct. Yes, it damages the science, but more or less only (?!) the reputations of the ones being plagiarized. By fabricating evidence (be it cooking experimental results or fabricating references) the result might be taken as confirmed, and as mathematicians say, "from false you can derive anything".

I don't necessarily think this specific instance is worse than plagiarism, but we have a clearer policy on plagiarism then we do with other types of Academic Dishonesty. Your answer, as I take it, seems to address Deception as--so to speak--the hypernym that includes plagiarism.

@tylerharms However unclear your school's policy is on academic dishonesty, they cannot make it clearer by misusing perfectly standard words. Plagiarism not a synonym for bad, nor for academic misconduct, nor even for dishonesty.

The expansion of terminology is a problem far beyond academia. For example, the expansion of "rape" to include concepts such as visual rape (leering), auditory rape (catcalling), virtual rape (roleplaying a rape against a character controlled by the victim), and financial rape (feigning interest in someone in order to take advantage of their wealth, or possibly just stealing money from your partner). When every possible form of sexual misconduct is "rape", then nothing is - a critical distinction has been lost and we no longer know what we are really talking about.

@ChristopherKing then you are just encouraging them to add a bit of plagiarism to their paper.

I kind of like Teddi Fishman's (Chair of ICAI) definition of plagiarism from her paper “We know it when we see it” is not good enough: toward a standard definition of plagiarism that transcends theft, fraud, and copyright:

Plagiarism occurs when someone

uses words, ideas, or work products
attributable to another identifiable person or source
without attributing the work to the source from which it was obtained
in a situation in which there is a legitimate expectation of original authorship
in order to obtain some benefit, credit, or gain which need not be monetary.

I agree with Wrzlprmft: let's not muddy the water and include all sorts of academic misconduct in a definition of plagiarism. Plagiarism is one form of academic misconduct; all forms of academic misconduct should incur a sanction, which will, of course, differ according to the individual circumstances.

At least in my experience, plagiarism is always the form of misconduct with the clearest guidelines.

@tylerharms I think that's because plagiarism is the form of misconduct that is easiest to clearly define... (which of course this example is trying to muddy)

Plagiarism refers to a specific kind of dishonesty--in a nutshell, pretending to have written something that was actually written by someone else. Fabricating sources doesn't meet that definition, but it isn't necessarily a less serious offense.
Plagiarism in academia is wrong primarily because it is fundamentally an attempt to gain a grade that wasn't earned. Grades are typically given for a student's writing, and if a student tried to deceives you into believing that a paper is the student's work when it really isn't, then that is a serious offense worthy of a zero.
So what was the effect of the deception in this case? If you were giving grades primarily for doing research, and the student tried to deceive you to into believing that research had been done when in fact it hadn't, then the offense has essentially the same effect as plagiarism, and it merits a similar penalty.
If, on the other hand, the research itself was only a minor factor in the grade, then it might be a lesser offense. I believe that the penalty still needs to be sufficient to deter dishonesty in any form, but you might reasonably decide that reducing the grade to zero is harsher than would be necessary in this case.

In direct answer to the question, as it addresses the definition of plagiarism and consequent marking decisions...
NO, this is definitely not literally plagiarism, because that necessarily involves the non-attribution of real work by others.  What you describe is a smokescreen of nonexistent work that a student is using in order to give the impression of having consulted sources.  That is certainly academically inappropriate, but it is not plagiarism.  It is intellectual fraud.  This might constitute an indication that the student concerned in some sense really does understand the idea of analytical practice and structure, but thinks that a cosmetic short-cut is just as good as doing any actual work.
That might in fact mean that the student is essentially promising, but has misunderstood the game.  He or she might benefit enormously from discussion as to how one legitimately gains academic credit, and how to direct energies more effectively than inventing sources.  In any case, this particular assignment sounds like a Fail.
Your documentation from Nebraska Methodist College uses the term 'plagiarism' with unhelpfully unprofessional latitude.  Plagiarism is the act of taking someone else's work and pretending that it is one's own.  The etymology derives from the idea of kidnapping.  This privileges the idea of theft and subsequent misidentification of intellectual effort, with the underlying concept of credit properly belonging elsewhere.  That is not what you are describing here.
What you describe is certainly against the spirit and practice of scholarship, however.  In a legal context (in UK terminology; I don't know about Nebraska courts) it would be called 'fabricating evidence', and would lead to a jail term.
This behaviour should be specifically marked-down, and the student should be told why.  You say that your criteria include 'organization, analytical treatment, and language use'.  If the student's essay is more or less argument-shaped and comprehensible then it should probably score on the first and third of these.  Academically, however, the second factor by far is the most important.
Inventing an intellectual landscape is certainly creative (Stanislaw Lem and others have written impressive collections of reviews of nonexistent books, for example, and JRR Tolkien invented an entire world to play-out the development of his invented languages), but it is not scholarship of the sort that your student is being asked to display.
To put it another way...  Given the marking criteria that I have used most recently, this essay sounds as if it boils down to personal opinion with no core of analytical substance and no suitable bibliography, with the added pretence of scholarly effort.  That might be wonderful fun for a chat over a drink, but it does not attract academic credit.
If the essay is generally well-written, I would give it a high-ish Fail on grounds of technical competence, because a pass of any kind is impossible without real academic engagement and substance.  I would point the student towards whatever resources your institution has concerning the construction of valid intellectual material, and make myself available for discussion of effective scholarly practice.  I would be very pleased if the student turned up for that, but would also be braced for disappointment:  it sounds as if he or she knows exactly what is required, tried to blag it, and will know that he or she has simply been caught out.

I like the comparison to fabrication of evidence and the jail sentence. By comparison, regular plagiarism is merely a copyright violation.

Thanks for the advice regarding how to go forward with this. I think my student will probably know that they've erred, but I could understand them having little awareness of the gravity of the error.

plagiarism.org says that "giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation" is plagiarism.  Claiming that something was written by Einstein when you wrote it yourself is giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation but, to me, it's not helpful to use the term "plagiarism" for this kind of academic dishonesty.  Plagiarism, to me and the dictionaries, means specifically passing somebody else's work off as your own, and things get muddy if we start using the same word to mean "all kinds of bad behaviour when writing."
Having said that (and this is why I originally posted a comment rather than an answer), we should be careful to allow the language to evolve. If a large number of people call making up fake quotes plagiarism, then we kind of have to go along with that.
This also leaves the practical problem of what to do about this behaviour, regardless of what we call it. The question specifically mentions grading and the fact that "plagiarism" means the mark must be zero, whereas "academic dishonesty" has more leeway. Now, there are two options. One is to say, "I don't care whether this is technically 'plagiarism' or 'academic dishonesty'.  It's so bad that I'm awarding a grade of zero." The second option is to say that it's not so bad that it deserves an automatic zero. However, if you do want to go down that path, you need to find out exactly what your institution's policy is. As we've seen, some institutions do think that faking quotes is plagiarism and, if your institution is one of them, you need to be awarding some zeroes.

[…] we should be careful to allow the language to evolve. If a large number of people call making up fake quotes plagiarism, then we kind of have to go along with that. – On the other hand, it is also our responsibility as users of a language to not participate in language changes that impede effective communicaton …

What's wrong with calling this fabrication of evidence or just fabrication? The problem is that it presents external evidence to seemingly support the authors' point which doesn't exist. Imagine someone planting a faked manuscript in a library and then "discovering" it. It's misleading to call this plagiarism, and it is not even close. It is much closer to falsification of data, so if it is at all lumped together with existing academic offences, why not pick one that's more similar?

@CaptainEmacs I completely agree. But the question isn't asking for alternative terms for this behaviour.

@DavidRicherby The OP did not formulate a precise question, but a conflict, as far as I see, so I interpreted it as "how to classify this behaviour" and I made a point of it being not "plagiarism", and a very specific type of "academic dishonesty", namely "fabrication". I had the belief that this would address the OPs conflict, but I am happy to find myself corrected.

@Wrzlprmft Not only does such language impede effective communication, it forces us to re-examine every prior use of the word in all published works, to determine if it's accurate given the new definition. In technical writing, we can't allow a word, once it's been well defined, to be re-defined, because of that overhead.  Instead, we should find a new term that does not carry any such prior expectation.
Any code of conduct that punishes plagiarism ought to briefly define the term, so that there be no confusion.

I’m posting an answer to my own question just to describe how we handled this at my school. The situation transpired in a mostly positive way, excepting a few tears. I’ll just describe the steps in brief. Hopefully, this helps someone in a similar pinch.

Before speaking with the student regarding the validity of the sources, I asked my initial question (the question of this post) to my supervisor. They directed me to our department head.
I arranged a meeting with my head to first address our school’s academic-honesty policy. As I expected, our school’s plagiarism policy is fairly detailed and traditional (based on a dictionary definition – Merriam–Webster). It mentioned nothing about fabrication of data as a form of plagiarism. The closest form of plagiarism to our situation was the following:

The rewriting or re-wording of text or information from documents not originally written by you and turning it in as your own work without proper citation

We decided that this definition did not fit our needs because there was no “document” that had been re-worded. Our campus also has guidelines on “cheating”, but nothing dealt explicitly with fabrication of data.
Plagiarism and cheating merit a zero on our campus (as I mentioned in the question), but other types of academic dishonesty referred to in our campus's honor code have no explicit punishment tied to them. They have only the stipulations that students will have their assignment confiscated and be required to meet with a dean or director. Therefore, my director decided that, in the event that the student had fabricated sources, we could not give a zero. Instead, I would give the student a zero in the rubric criterion related to analysis. We decided that this was appropriate because it would guarantee a fail for the assignment, and it would target the specific infraction for what it was: an attempt to dishonestly show analytical skills, as the assignment described them. The decision was also reached that our academic-honesty policy is woefully inadequate as regards fraud and fabrication of information and will need to be revamped.
I met with the student at this point. I asked them to provide a full citation for the sources, at least an author so I could verify the texts. The student, at this point, came clean and explained that they used these fictitious sources knowing they were “not correct” (student’s words). The student did not have a sense of the gravity of the infraction. Without interpreting too much, I would say that the student saw the falsified sources as textual support in the way of saying: “We can see this is valid because, hypothetically speaking, if a person were to...” I explained the importance of an academic reputation – that, at the university level, a person could get themselves black-balled for such behavior. I explained the concept of data falsification and explained the consequences of it in a few different disciplines: science, history, journalism. The student accepted that this was a grave problem in this situation. I took pains to reminded them, though, that in other instances, this type of creativity could be rewarded and celebrated. I then explained how I would demote the student’s grade. While this conversation happened, I had another teacher present, quietly working in the back of the room, as a witness, just in case.
The student had a meeting with their dean after their meeting with me. The dean explained that the incident would go on the student’s record, and it would be considered if further academic infractions were made.
My next step will be to work with this student, encourage their creativity, which they obviously rely on, and help them put this experience behind them.

Ultimately, I learned that most students have a vague notion of the boundaries of academic honesty, and this is something that should be taught to incoming students. Moreover, academic honesty policies must evolve as technology evolves.

Therefore, my director decided that, in the event that the student had fabricated sources, we could not give a zero. – Your policies do indeed need some revamping. I suggest to include some general rule that any intentional attempt to deceive the examiners is considered cheating. Actually, I am perplexed that this should be necessary, as deceit is part of the dictionary definition of cheating. (Sidenote: The German word for cheating in an official context when talking about exams even is Täuschungsversuch, which literally translates to attempt to deceive.)

Clearly it's not plagiarism per se, but it is wrong and misleading in a formal essay.
I'm more alarmed that both the Nebraska Methodist College and another school using The Visual Communication Guy's diagram assert such sloppily incorrect definitions of plagiarism. What plagiarism is is such a basic and important piece of information, that it's disturbing to see it mis-defined by schools in their documents where they attempt to explain and  assert their policies about it. In holding others to a rule, it seems vital to use language accurately.
I'm adding another answer here because it occurs to me that the specific context (an essay about fiction) seems potentially relevant to the degree of the problem. Certainly for history or science, for example, inventing sources would be completely wrong and a kind of cheating.
But in fiction itself, and in non-academic articles by some fiction writers, sometimes writers have invented authors and books to refer to, not trying to deceive, but to be creative and/or entertaining, or to illustrate an idea or make a joke at the expense of an imaginary author rather than a real one. I can imagine there could be a case (although I expect not the one asked about here) where it might be fair to invent an example for the sake of making a point in an essay about fiction in general. If necessary, one might even write a short story and then refer to that, for the purposes of illustrating something generic that is possible in fiction, rather than the point being that someone specific other than yourself had someplace written some sort of fiction that you want to discuss in an essay. Of course, that's a peculiar case, and one should be clear that's what one is doing, and not just being lazy and foolishly hoping the professor won't check. It's probably a terrible idea and unlikely to fly outside a creative writing class and/or with a very indulgent teacher, but it does seem to me that it would be theoretically possible in an essay about fiction to honestly invent works.

No, it's definitely not a plagiarism! It is a misguide or clear lies - because the source does not exist at all. If the source does exist and it is used but not mentioned as a source - only then it's a plagiarism.

I would not call this plagiarism, because it's not copying or passing someone else's work off as your own. The word fabrication is closer, but does not quite fit either, because that makes one think of fudging experimental data. I think falsification of sources is a good phrase to describe it.
In my opinion it is academic misconduct almost as bad as plagiarism or result fabrication because it leads to the propagation of bogus results just like outright fabrication does. It's much like the Woozle effect, where a work containing a reference to a nonexistent or misinterpreted other work gets cited itself, until the bogus claim becomes "common knowledge" despite being wrong.
I do know of PhD students who, as a joke, might have a reference to a paper by McCartney, Lennon, Harrison, and Starr (1969) in the bibliography without being cited anywhere in the text. I think that kind of silliness is completely harmless.

Source: The Visual Communication Guy
According to this chart (I'm not sure how credible it is, but my school uses it), citing a source that does not exist constitutes a Ghost Citation, rated “Very, very [serious]” on the plagiarism scale.
In case you can't see the image, the decision is:

Did you cite a source that doesn't exist or did you make up what the source actually said?

If yes, that constitutes a “Ghost Citation” violation.
TL;DR: Citing a bogus source constitutes a Ghost Citation, about half of the seriousness of full-blown plagiarism (identity theft) on the plagiarism severity scale. So yes, it is plagiarism.

Can you add a url for that image. I'd like to get a better look.

Here you go, @tylerharms

Just being as severe as plagiarism doesn’t make something plagiarism. In fact, this diagram seems to conflate plagiarism with honest mistakes (misinterpretation), other misconducts (ghost citations), and plain style questions (giving page numbers when citing) that are clearly distinct from plagiarism.

Everything from stealing complete papers and down to not writing page numbers in citations is plagiarism? I think whoever made that chart would benefit from a more varied vocabulary. It makes me think of the Smurfs.

I disagree with the chart, it is mixing things like fabrication, self plagiarism, sloppy work, bad paraphrasing, formatting, and even honest mistakes, and putting them in the same bag of "plagiarism". And in my opinion, the ranking is wrong: ghost citation is much worse than different levels of self plagiarism.

I'd consider any fabrication (ghost citation, false experiment data) much more serious than copying (presumably correct) results/conclusions.

Identity theft is plagiarism? That sounds like exactly the opposite - rather than taking someone's materials and passing it off as your own you're trying to pass off your materials as someone else.

This is an interesting chart, but it is completely wrong about the labeling of the scale. It might be "degree of academic misconduct", but that is NOT the same as "plagiarism severity". Unfortunately, as is clear from this and other posts, the terms are all too often conflated.

This would be a nice chart if it didn't put all the different kinds of misconduct that it mentions under the umbrella of plagiarism.

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text:
What should I do when I would like to move to a new lab because my current PI is abusive?
I started to work in a Lab as a Researcher 4 months ago, with the prospect of being a PhD student. This Lab carries out research topics I am interested and passionate about but when I started there was only one PhD student working, so most of the research projects were stuck.
I am a very proactive and energetic person and I always try to give suggestions or ways to optimise experiments but my PI never listens (that's another issue, he does not like to optimise any new experiment, he thinks it is a waste of time and resources, and we actually end up wasting more resources in repeating experiments that are not working). He gets easily angry and just wants us to do exactly as he says (even though he usually forgets what he said).
I am not sure how to proceed. Should I just wait a little longer to see how things continue? should I enrol in a School before switching? or something else?
I feel depressed and no longer feel like the happy and passionate student anymore. I have a deep love for research and I don't want someone to interfere negatively on this.

This is a rant. You do not like your advisor and he does not like you (according to your version of the story). Then get out. Everything else is fluff. But "suggesting I should spend longer days" is not abuse. It is a suggestion. And "could give me a PhD project from the beginning to focus on" is not realistic. You are not just given a problem then you just do the work and instant PhD. Part of the PhD is actually defining the problem yourself and not strictly working on something that has been given by your advisor.

I understand your points, and appreciate it. I would actually like a PI that lets me work on something myself, rather than controlling every move I want to make and never listening to my ideas. And I can definitely spend longer days, if those days weren't spoiled by some of his harsh, sarcastic, or bitter comments. My real enquiry was not whether if I should "get out" or not. My real question is how to proceed on this transition. Thanks for your answer.

If your real question is how to proceed, why would say so much about your PI, not your future plans?

A PI who is known to kick out some students, and graduate others after 10 (!!!!!) years, is not one you are likely well-placed with. I would certainly look into other labs. Leaving after such few months, when the period additionally was not officially grad school, might not be very hard. Just talk to other PIs, and, if possible, just profess greater interest in their topics as opposed to fleeing a colleague of theirs; it's better to leave on officially good terms, even if they weren't so good.
However, you cannot expect to always have a thesis topic served on a plate, and for sure not right when you start your Ph.D. - at least judging this from the U.S. perspective (if you are elsewhere, ignore the first half of this paragraph as all my experience is with the U.S. system). In many fields, finding your topic is an important part of writing your Ph.D. You might want to ask around in other groups or labs how things are there. Some advisers (I call them 'drawer advisers' - "What should I work on?", and the adviser opens a figurative drawer with topics they could not pursue yet) will do this for you; others won't. You also should listen to suggestions, and it's a bit early to expect your "optimizations" to be really, and always of use. If you genuinely dislike the PI's approach, you should see this as another reason to consider another lab (and try to be reasonably patient there).
The first version of this answer was wondering what exactly the adviser says or does which is upsetting. After your clarification, he seems unduly harsh, and I can see how that makes you feel depressed about your situation. I'm not convinced (yet) that this is because of sexism, but he sounds rude in ways that are simply not constructive for the close work necessary in a lab. Whatever the reason, it sounds bad, and I wouldn't take it. Some reasons (sexism for sure) could allow you to officially complain using your university's grievances procedures, but that's not a great start 4 months in.
Really, ask around, and see what else is out there. If nothing works at your current school, consider a gentler Ph.D. program approach with a period of coursework first, at another university, maybe in another country, a larger program size, and the almost inevitable student bonding which can be your support network.

As examples, he says things like "maybe I made a mistake in hiring you", or "as you are doing 70% of your work I should pay you 70% of your salary", or "where did your learn your science?". Even worse, as I come from a developing country he often loves to imply how grateful I should be to be in this much better european country, as if he is doing me a favor. But above all, he does not want to see all the hard work we do every day, even though it sometimes does not show results, and that his harsh attitude towards us every day is counterproductive for the lab (yes, he is around every day).

I feel my work is undervalued, and it seems he demands much more from this girl and me that he demands for the older PhD (who is a man).
And thanks a lot for taking your time to answer.

And funny thing is that he usually only hires women. I think he feels he can mistreat us much easier than to male employees.
I'm almost sure I want to switch to a new lab. What's stopping me is how easily he could find out I am doing it before I actually find one. I wonder how is the typical confidentiality when PIs are hiring new people.   Moving from the city is an option I would rather not take.

"I wonder how is the typical confidentiality when PIs are hiring new people". There is no such thing when a professor hires a student that used to work with another colleague. Before hiring, he should consult the previous supervisor to ask about the student's potential, work ethic, etc...

Being sarcastic is unpleasant, he can also be a demanding supervisor, but are there students who completed their PhD in good time? In any case, you feel mistreated, and this is perfectly fine as a reason to look for another supervisor. There are, however, some unclear statements from you: "he does not want to see all the hard work we do every day..." - unfortunately, hard work is necessary, but not sufficient for success; one can work hard in the wrong direction. Hard work alone won't get you a PhD - have you given him any results that look like they are on the road to success?

@CaptainEmacs: Your comment reminded me that my program had only about a 50% graduation rate (between those counseled out, and those leaving by choice); so yes, good point that one shouldn't look only at that tail end...10 years to graduation though hadn't happened in a long while, but it could even be a sign of patience on behalf of the adviser - it's a bit ambiguous w/o more details...

@CaptainEmacs I have given him some results, even I contributed in the last aspects of one paper (already accepted). But some weeks I haven't given results (I send him weekly reports every sunday), and for him is like I didn't work, even though I am just following his commands (I don't do experiments different from what he tells me to do), so in the end who's fault is that?. He doesn't let me contribute intellectually to my experiments, so I am just being a technician, basically.

Has he ever let you make decisions before? Can it be that he is concerned that you may not take the right decisions? I am not saying this is the case, I am just trying to find out what possibilities there are for such behaviour. There are extremely micromanaging people in science, utter perfectionists, but this is not everybody's cup of tea to have as a supervisor. These guys are only satisfied if one does things as they would do it, but one has to guess what that would be. Or else, surprise them in a positive way, but that is not trivial.

@CaptainEmacs I see what you say here, in the beginning I did some mistakes because of lack of guidance, but after some weeks I started to give some good results and he seemed pleased. Then at some point some experiments were not working (I was following carefully his advices, but in this case he just fixed some parameters for transfection without optimising in this cell line before), and he even though I insisted we should optimise first, he thinks it's a waste of resources, and the transfection never worked, and somehow he blames me, although not directly.

@CaptainEmacs during these months we haven't had a Postdoc, and I have heard that after many years he is back in the lab and doing experiments, so right now this seems like a particular situation in the lab. For the first time he is over-controlling his PhD students that closely, and although he is known to be a bad leader, he always had some Postdocs to cover up the PhD students.

@mermaid Well, then it seems there is a change in the situation as opposed to what you were used to. This can happen. Frankly, 4 months into the project is not long, and if you can change, it's probably a good idea. Otherwise, see yourself 4 years in this situation (which is 12x4 months), and, if it deteriorates, maybe even without a degree. So, if you are convinced it is not your problem, but the supervisor's, you really should reflect on whether you want to spend 12 times the time you already did in such an atmosphere.

@CaptainEmacs yes it seems it's getting worse. Some part of me even tells me he somehow wants me to leave, but he doesn't have the way to?. Seems that my behaviour is less submissive than he would like. Is this possible?

@mermaid Bullying is a well-known strategy to make people leave by letting it look like it was their decision. Be careful, however, to accuse anyone of bullying without a very clear array of evidence. In short, to answer your question, it's possible. Alternatively, he may resent, for instance, the way that you try to tell him how to run the experiments ("He never listens"). Style of communication matters, and students should take care not to come off as patronising (actually, this holds for everyone). Withouth knowing the other side, clearly, if you stay, there are unpleasant times ahead.

@CaptainEmacs This is valuable info. These days have been very useful to reflect and listen. Thank you very much for your insights.

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text:
How can I withdraw a publication from a predatory (fake) journal and resubmit to a legitimate journal?
I have published a paper in a fake journal. I want to withdraw the paper from that journal.
After successful withdrawal from the fake journal, can I can submit the same paper to a legitimate journal?

This is actually rather interesting.  Can you clarify what you mean by "fake journal"?  (You probably really mean something like "shady", right, not that they will not actually publish your paper?)  I suppose that if they agree to withdraw the paper you are free to submit it elsewhere....but I certainly don't really know.

"Withdraw" usually only refers to the withdrawal of a manuscript before acceptance. If it's already been published, the word is "retract". Retraction is a very serious business and usually only done if the paper is found to have serious deficiencies, plagiarism, academic misconduct, etc. I've never heard of an author retracting a paper because they regret their choice of journal.

Related: What are “fake”, “shady”, and/or “predatory” journals?

If it is really fake (First time I hear about "fake" journal) you don't even need to withdraw. It sounds to me like asking for a stealing certificate from a burglar.

@henning Frankly, I think that what you want is rather too broad and that the answer depends too much on the specifics of the journal and the details of the situation for any more detailed answer to hold in general. I agree that any first-hand evidence from concrete cases would be valuable, but it would still be only anecdotal evidence and of limited use to others in similar situations.

@E.P. Maybe, yes. But I think the question deserves some more attention.

I see two main barriers for this to happen, and I would not attempt to cross either unless the circumstances were truly exceptional.

If your paper is already published, you will most likely have transferred either the paper's copyright or a very wide license to the original journal. You can probably force the journal to retract the paper, but if you want the copyright you will have to ask for it back, and it is legally up to them whether they want to give it back or not.
Most journals have a policy of only accepting works which have not already been published. This would make it very hard for your paper to get into the second journal, and the editors would most likely have to make an exception to their rules. This is up to them, and I would advise you to contact them beforehand to see whether they would be willing to do something along these lines.

The worst case scenario is one where the paper is very visibly retracted, you do not get the copyright back, and you cannot republish it anywhere. I can't really imagine any degree of shadiness of the original journal that would make this outcome preferable, because a retraction will leave a very visible, very black mark on your publication record for a long time. As mentioned in the comments, retractions are vivid indications of academic misconduct, plagiarism, or just plainly incorrect findings, and rarely of anything else. Therefore, you should be really careful that this doesn't happen.
I would advise you to take this in stages. First, read all the documentation you have available. Read very carefully, in particular, anything you have signed, either in paper or electronically, to the original journal. Check all their publicly available policies, and particularly those on licenses and copyright. Check also what your new target journal states as their requirements that submissions be 'new, unpublished work'.
Armed with this information, contact your new target journal first, to see if they will re-house your paper after it's been withdrawn, and what conditions they would require for this. Do not move forward until you have good assurances of a good home for your paper, or you risk ending up with a homeless paper.
After that, you should contact the original journal. If you gave them the copyright, you will have to ask for it back but you should be prepared for them to say a plain no. I suppose that if you gave them a more restrictive license then you can ask that they take it down and find out how you can revoke it, but you should be aware that author contracts do not normally include anything like that. Be polite and explain why you are doing things but be prepared for things to turn adversarial; you are after all out to affect their revenue stream.

Mostly, though, why don't you consider your options in terms of fixing the damage this publication has done to your record? Publishing in a predatory journal without knowing it is something that can end up happening to anyone (which is why one should always exercise maximum care when opting for a new publication venue).
Keep in mind that the venue of publication does not affect the quality of your paper, but only (potentially) how it is perceived by others. This can be palliated by other means: for example, take the paper to conferences and explain and defend your findings to your peers. Work especially hard at making sure the material finds its way to the hands of people who will use it and cite it, and that will help validate it as good research in a possibly shady journal.
If the journal is not very visible or accessible, post it to an eprint repository if it is possible (though of course only if other republication options are exhausted and allowed by your original journal, or if you are prepared for your relation with them to turn adversarial). Consider building a bigger paper, formally a derivative work, which you can then publish in a journal you're happier with.
In short, there are many options available to mitigate the damage done by a paper in a journal you (and whatever review boards you might come across) don't like. Think them through before you attempt something which is as potentially damaging as this.

Surely, one should check the original journals documentation and policies before contacting any other journal? If the original journal's documentation says, "No, not on your life, not even if you give us your first-born", contacting any other journal is a waste of your time and theirs.

This was written partly on the assumption that 'fake' journals are unlikely to have much documentation that will be helpful. But yes, it is definitely best to read before you contact anyone.

Depending on how "obvious" the fakeness of the journal is there may be the option to actually have any transfer of copyrights legally voided due to something like "intent to mislead" or such (IANAL, though). The what is a fake journal question might provide some hints on what tell-tales to look for. Hopefully your institution provides you with a lawyer...

@TobiasKienzler Yes, that is probably right. I can't see how that can not get very ugly, though.

Sadly true. Then again, maybe such actions might gain enough public attention to save others from this pitfall and might thereby alone be worth the PITA. I certainly wouldn't show even the slightest tad of tolerance towards frauds, otherwise their likes will go on forever...

I really like this answer as it gives solid steps to take. However, to the OP, be prepared to cut your losses. The temptation to just get your paper published leads to this sort of trap all the time. Most journal's aren't "fake" so much as conniving. I would honestly bet money on the fact that they have safety measures in place for just this situation. After all, if they retracted x amounts of papers, who would ever publish with them in the first place. My advice honestly? Cut your loses and work on a second, better paper and be much more careful.

First: I'm not a lawyer, and StackExchange is not a place to pursue legal advice.
Depending on exactly what you mean by "fake," you might want to consult a lawyer. If the journal lied or mislead you then you may have grounds to litigate for contract fraud. It may be possible to revoke the contract, get an injunction against further publication or distribution of your paper, or claim monetary damages. Arguing this successfully would require showing that the journal knowingly mislead you with an intent to profit off your work. There are other reasons to claim that a contract should not be enforced as well.
Be warned that merely having an unsatisfactory outcome is not illegal. Making a bad deal is not generally something the courts are going to protect you from.
A random website synopsis for US contract fraud: https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/what-is-contract-fraud.html
A random website synopsis for when a contract is unenforceable: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/unenforceable-contracts-tips-33079.html
I'd also consider the possible ramifications to your career before pursuing any course of action. Litigation is a high-visibility thing and at best it would seem you're going to come across as naive or gullible.

This is a valuable resource for future visitors, but do note that the question is pretty old and OP is long gone.

@E.P. I noticed only after I took the time to write the answer, unfortunately.

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text:
Google Scholar Syntax quirks: results depend on order of search strings
I am working on a systematic literature review and noticed something quite disturbing since I want to base my work on Google Scholar results: The number and actual results returned by Google Scholar seem to depend on the order of the search terms (to some very relevant extent), at least if the OR operator is used.
This quirk poses a problem, to the extent that it sheds doubt on the reproducibility of the search results. How should I deal with this in my systematic literature review? Is there any plausible explanation for why the results depend on the order of search strings? Knowing this might help to find a workaround. The consequences of this behavior could actually be quite important to any academic user who searches for papers in their own research. Naturally we cannot definitely determine what's going within Google's algorithm as it is a blackbox but we still can come up with hypotheses that we might be able to test nevertheless (I cannot think of anything more scientific than that :))
What I found out so far:
The number of results shown on the top of the results page is known to be a rough estimate that does not necessarily reflect the actual number. Furthermore, only the first ~1000 results/100 result pages are reachable anyway. However, neither is relevant to this question since it happens for far more specific searches with below 10 results as well.
Some examples with their number of results (the results themselves differ too).

10200: ("microarchitecture" "pipeline") OR ("pipeline" "instruction set")
38100: ("pipeline" "microarchitecture") OR ("pipeline" "instruction set")
39300: ("pipeline" "instruction set") OR ("microarchitecture" "pipeline")
39800: ("pipeline" "microarchitecture") OR ("instruction set" "pipeline")

Ask Google about their search algoritms - not on topic here.

The question could easily be changed into an on-topic one by asking "How should I deal with this in my SLR", instead of "What's going on here".

The question is interesting for most academics: many of them use Google Scholar, and may not be aware of this problem or its solution.

@SolarMike I have looked at the definitions of this site and I deem it definitely on topic. The question is not just on the algorithm Google is using but also the consequences on my and possible every Scholar user and this site targets the primary users of GS: academics More importantly, I am not aware of any other SA site that would be more fitting, are you?

@stefanct I don’t have to offer any site where you can post - if others agree it is off-topic here then it will be closed.

@lighthousekeeper well, without a somewhat reasonable hypothesis what's going on it is rather strange to give advice how to deal with it - unless "dealing with it" boils down to "don't use it" which would not be very helpful. I'd rather hear people's theories and conclude my own verdict on how to deal with it. after all it's my responsibility to deal with it and its outcome.

. so to sum up: nobody was able to state why the question is off-topic (since it is very well within the definition of the site as I read it - it is asking about a detail in about every academic's research and publication process) and nobody suggested an alternative SA community where this would be more on-topic. kthxbai

@stefanct sorry for this "welcome". There is a decent chance this will be reopened, though.

I've slightly reworded and reorganized your question to highlight why it is on-topic here, in line with what @lighthousekeeper suggested.

Now that the real question has surfaced (see the comments under my answer: OP wants to do web scraping and states " it is important that I discover the papers I am looking for"), I am in favour of leaving this closed: it has become a question for help with a specific research subject, and it is unclear what the exact question is.

@louic I disagree. He's following the systematic literature review (SLR) methodology, in which it's indeed important to have a systematic coverage of the papers one is looking for. This issue is entirely orthogonal to the subject/topic of the SLR.

If you want to use google scholar as a means of measuring the number of papers on a certain topic: don't.
Contrary to what we often see in reviews or other publications, you did some more research than simply copying the number of results from a naïve search, and that research indicated that this number is highly unreliable (as should have been expected). Conclusion: Google scholar is not the right tool for the job. Its algorithms are unknown, and the sources it searches are unknown as well. Maybe it even counts the same paper multiple times, depending on which words you search for, who knows?
Having said that, in practice nobody really seems to mind an introduction stating "a Google search for XXX returned N results", but the question remains how useful such a statement is, given your findings.

I am not (really) interested in the number of results. You are totally right in what you write - and yes, Google counts some documents twice sometimes if they differ only slightly. This is all known and not topic of my question though. I am primarily interested in the results themselves. I am scraping them and will analyze them further by looking at better sources for the metadata. However, for that it is important that I discover the papers I am looking for and as I have shown it is not obvious what one gets from GS queries that look to me like they should result in the same output.

@stefanct Perhaps it would be useful to include this specific aim in your question.

@henning--reinstateMonica maybe, but I tried to formulate it rather generally. after all this behavior of GS is widely unknown AFAICT but relevant to every academic using it.  the answer above is focusing on the number issue and i have rephrased the question already to better explain that this is not the point/problem. your edit has hopefully dealt with the problems discussed in the question's comment section - thank you!


text:
Are new experimental verifications of well-understood theories publishable?
As an example, consider the deflection of light by mass. This is a general relativistic effect wherein a large body causes light to not travel in straight lines. Deflection of starlight by the Sun was one of the first experimental tests of General Relativity. The successful detection overturned Newtonian mechanics and made Einstein famous.
This experiment was conducted about the Sun because, as the most massive object in the Solar System, the magnitude of the deflection is also greatest for the Sun, making it the easiest to detect. However, there's no reason why light would not be deflected by, say, Jupiter. Suppose a researcher, through very careful measurements, measures deflection of starlight by Jupiter. Are the results publishable?
On the one hand, the measurement is new, and it has not been done before.* On the other hand, it should not surprise anyone if the measured deflection matches theoretical predictions from GR, in fact it would be a major shock (of Nobel-winning magnitude) if it didn't match. Absent this major shock, then, I suspect most physicists will immediately lose interest in the details of the experiment.**
I've tagged the question with 'physics' because the example is from physics, although I'm also interested if something similar happens in another field.
*I don't actually know if it's been done before. If it has been done before, replace "Jupiter" with a lower-mass object like the Moon.
**To be a bit more technical, most physicists would expect deviations from General Relativity (if they happen at all) in the strong-field limit - that is, where gravity is very strong (e.g. around black holes). Going from the Sun to Jupiter is going in the "wrong direction", towards the weak-field limit.

Quite frankly, I wish we had journals and databases dedicated to tracking reproductions of existing techniques, let alone new techniques of verifying stuff.

Every successful verification is publishable, the question is whether it's interesting.

It was straightforward to find a paper relevant to your proposed experiment: Li et al., Light Deflection under the Gravitational Field of Jupiter—Testing General Relativity, ApJ 925, 47 (2022), showing quite clearly that such tests are publishable. I'm also reminded of Gravity Probe B, a satellite that was launched to test aspects of general relativity within Earth's weak gravitational field, calling for a design capable of high-precision measurements. In that case, the goal was to test two unverified predictions of the theory or it likely would not have been funded. On the other hand, time at Earth-based observatories is much cheaper.
In general, as outlined in TimRias' answer, physics is very open to publishing precision tests of theories, as is seen clearly in, for example, quantum electrodynamics (QED). Precision tests and independent verification provide key information about how well we know something.

asked 2+ years ago in Astronomy SE and going beyond simple deflection: Has GAIA learned anything about General Relativity looking near Jupiter? (Gerry Gilmore: "oblate rotating mass moving in a deeper (Solar) potential") and also Is GAIA the only game in town for looking at quadrupole gravitational deflection of light?

and as a caveat only slightly related is the future possibility of observing (supernova) neutrino deflection near but also through the Sun and other bodies: Light or neutrinos graze or pass through the Sun and arrive at Earth - need an expression for Sun's gravitational effect on observation direction/time

@uhoh Thanks, I didn't realize Gaia had that capability. There is a paper Abbas et al., Differential astrometry with Gaia: Investigating relativistic light deflection close to Jupiter, A&A 664, A143 (2022) that may be of interest to OP.

just fyi I've unaccepted the answer there and added a bounty - feel free to add an updated answer there, thanks!

As long as the experiment is testing the theory in a new way/regime where it has not been previously tested, and isn't a simple trivial variant of a previous test, then in principle the result should be publishable. The fact that we have a very strong prior on the outcome (one way or the other) does not really change that. It may not necessarily get into the highest tier journals, but it should be publishable nonetheless (as long as the work scientifically sound etc.).
A completely separate question is if research like this is fund-able...

The paper linked by Anyon is published in one of the most prestigious astrophysics journals, and one of the papers with the results of Gravity Probe B was also published in PRL, which is one of the most prestigious physics journals. I'm impressed, the Gravity Probe B paper even has over 3k citations according to Google Scholar. I'd have guessed most people would not really be interested in the result ...

The impression I get from my colleagues who work in particle physics is that these types of experiments get discussed quite a lot, since by verifying existing models in different ways, they also rule out violations of said models in different ways. So they're often on the top of peoples minds when they're trying to figure out which direction to go in their research.

Citation wise, you will also tend to cite these experiments in the introduction of your articles, as justifications for why you chose to investigate a certain model or not (i.e. you ought to mention which models have already been ruled out by experiment)

Consider this situation: The experiment couldn't have been carried out 50 years ago due to lack of precision measurements. These measurements have been developed for unrelated purposes. And someone figures out "with these new tools, we could now do this experiment successfully". It would useful both for testing the 50 year old theory in a new way, and making sure that supposedly general purpose measurement tools work in a context that they were not designed for.