Those already occur though.

I wonder if we could form a graph that would make a collusion ring intuitively visible (I’m not sure what—between papers, authors, and signings—should be the edges and the nodes, though). Making these relationships explicit should help discover this kind of stuff, right?

Another problem with my idea is that a lot of famous luminaries wouldn’t bother playing the game, or are dead already. But, all we can really do is set up a game for those who’d like to play…