[nwhitehead]

One idea is to put more pressure on writers of letters of recommendation. There is obviously already some rather weak "reputational incentive" to not give letters of recommendation to fraudsters. But it could be made a more formal policy. Letters could be required to include a statement about the candidate adhering to various formalized "good behavior" policies. Then when fraud happens there could be actual consequences for the letter writer. This would be like the culture in software development where you don't blame people for writing bad code, you blame reviewers for letting in bad code. (Idea comes from Angela Collier, in relation to other forms of antisocial behavior).

[jltsiren]

1. There is already a lot of administrative bloat in the academia, and ideas like this are responsible for most of it. Every time you replace an informal process with a formal one, you add to the bloat. And the formal process rarely works as intended.

2. Letter-writers have no control over the work of the person they recommend. They cannot prevent the submission of a manuscript or a grant. They would be taking a lot of risk for no gain.

3. Letters of recommendation are a form of corruption and nepotism. If you would have a conflict of interest for reviewing a manuscript or a grant, you should not be allowed to write a letter of recommendation either.

[PeterisP]

If what you propose would be implemented, why would anyone ever write a letter of recommendation? I'm currently doing an unpaid favor to the institution which asks for letters of recommendation, as I spend my time so they get my opinion about the candidate. If instead of thanking me for it they would want to put more pressure on me and assign actual consequences, well, that's insulting and I'd pass, I owe them literally nothing.