Summarised by Centrist
A crisis in scientific publishing is escalating, with tens of thousands of fake research papers flooding international journals each year. In 2023, over 10,000 papers were retracted, a number believed to represent only a fraction of the issue’s scale.
The problem originates in China, where “paper mills” produce fabricated studies to help young scientists secure promotions. This practice has spread to other countries and is undermining trust in scientific research. In many instances, there’s no peer review taking place, yet articles are being published in journals and absorbed into larger and larger studies. The compounding problem is making it difficult for some subjects “because we lack a solid foundation of trustworthy foundations of findings.”
Journal editors and peer reviewers are failing to detect fraud, and some may be accepting bribes. Fraudulent papers can even infiltrate drug discovery databases, impacting critical areas like medical research and drug development.
