The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly 2025 Richardson et al.

J

Jaybee00

Senior Member (Voting Rights)

Significance​

Numerous recent scientific and journalistic investigations demonstrate that systematic scientific fraud is a growing threat to the scientific enterprise. In large measure this has been attributed to organizations known as research paper mills. We uncover footprints of activities connected to scientific fraud that extend beyond the production of fake papers to brokerage roles in a widespread network of editors and authors who cooperate to achieve the publication of scientific papers that escape traditional peer-review standards. Our analysis reveals insights into how such organizations are structured and how they operate.

Abstract​

Science is characterized by collaboration and cooperation, but also by uncertainty, competition, and inequality. While there has always been some concern that these pressures may compel some to defect from the scientific research ethos—i.e., fail to make genuine contributions to the production of knowledge or to the training of an expert workforce—the focus has largely been on the actions of lone individuals. Recently, however, reports of coordinated scientific fraud activities have increased. Some suggest that the ease of communication provided by the internet and open-access publishing have created the conditions for the emergence of entities—paper mills (i.e., sellers of mass-produced low quality and fabricated research), brokers (i.e., conduits between producers and publishers of fraudulent research), predatory journals, who do not conduct any quality controls on submissions—that facilitate systematic scientific fraud. Here, we demonstrate through case studies that i) individuals have cooperated to publish papers that were eventually retracted in a number of journals, ii) brokers have enabled publication in targeted journals at scale, and iii), within a field of science, not all subfields are equally targeted for scientific fraud. Our results reveal some of the strategies that enable the entities promoting scientific fraud to evade interventions. Our final analysis suggests that this ability to evade interventions is enabling the number of fraudulent publications to grow at a rate far outpacing that of legitimate science.

 
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I wonder if part of the reason we've arrived here is the ever-growing pressure from academic institutions that people must publish to maintain their position and their funding. That seems to have got much worse since higher education was turned into a service industry paid for by students, rather than most first degrees being funded by local authority grants. I get the impression that at one time you only published regularly if you were a research department. Now it seems everybody has to do it.

The whole edifice seems on the brink of collapse. Maybe it'll turn out to be a positive thing—there needs to be some kind of system reset.
 
article is in Telegraph so account holder/subscribers only
www.telegraph.co.uk

Criminal gangs fake science papers for money

Academics at Northwestern University say scientific journals could soon be ‘completely poisoned’ by fake reports
www.telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk


Fraudulent science papers produced by criminal gangs for money are starting to outpace legitimate studies, experts have warned.

Academics at Northwestern University, in Illinois, US, warned that scientific journals could soon become “completely poisoned” by fake reports that damage public trust and are potentially medically harmful.
The problem is driven by illegal “paper mills”, largely based in Russia, China and India, which produce sham research and invite new and struggling academics to pay thousands of pounds to have their name listed as an author.

In many countries, the number of published papers and citations is critical for scientists to achieve promotion and win funding grants.

For the new study, researchers carried out a large-scale analysis of scientific journal data and discovered “sophisticated global networks of individuals and entities, which systematically work together to undermine the integrity of academic publishing”.

They estimated that the number of fraudulent articles was doubling every 18 months, compared to legitimate articles, which were doubling every 15 years.

The problem is so widespread that the publication of fraudulent science is “outpacing the growth rate of legitimate scientific publications”, academics found.
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for those who don't mind ads the full article is available here https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/worl...1&cvid=7cc06214d9b543ffbc5bd9c40241873b&ei=48


eta: similar article here https://www.chemistryworld.com/news...ing-the-scientific-literature/4021938.article
 
Kitty said:
I wonder if part of the reason we've arrived here is the ever-growing pressure from academic institutions that people must publish to maintain their position and their funding. That seems to have got much worse since higher education was turned into a service industry paid for by students, rather than most first degrees being funded by local authority grants. I get the impression that at one time you only published regularly if you were a research department. Now it seems everybody has to do it.

The whole edifice seems on the brink of collapse. Maybe it'll turn out to be a positive thing—there needs to be some kind of system reset.
Click to expand...
Academia was built to maximize the number of published papers, with no regard for quality.

They got exactly what they paid for: lots of papers, most of them entirely useless.
 
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