It has been acknowledged for several years now that
fraudulent scientific research papers are common and becoming more common.
These so-called ‘paper mills’ that dishonestly publish fake research and may
include fake authors are the result of several factors, including culture,
academic pressure to publish for career advancement, and sometimes to fake
desired results. This is a concerning problem that needs to be addressed.
There was some decent
research done in recent years to assess the level of the problem. Detection of
fake research has gotten better recently. I imagine that with the recognition
skills of AI that detection will get even better as model training improves.
Perhaps it is ironic that AI, which can be used for fakery and deception, is
also used to detect it. This is not unlike AI being used to make energy more
efficient while at the same time consuming large amounts of energy for data
processing.
The following graphic, from
research in 2020, shows the rise and fall of fake papers in one journal
according to the indicators used at the time. It also shows that the problem
can be addressed successfully.
According to a 2023 article
in Science:
“When neuropsychologist Bernhard Sabel put his new
fake-paper detector to work, he was “shocked” by what it found. After screening
some 5000 papers, he estimates up to 34% of neuroscience papers published in
2020 were likely made up or plagiarized; in medicine, the figure was 24%. Both
numbers, which he and colleagues report in a medRxiv preprint posted on 8 May, are
well above levels they calculated for 2010—and far larger than the 2% baseline
estimated in a 2022 publishers’ group report.”
It should be noted that
Sabel’s indicators (people using private, non-institutional email addresses and
those with an affiliation to a hospital) had a high false positive rate, so the
problem is likely not as bad as depicted above, but it is still quite
significant. His indicators correctly flagged 90% of false papers but also
tagged 44% of legitimate papers as fraudulent. What are paper mills? According
to the article, they are:
“…secretive businesses that allow researchers to pad their
publication records by paying for fake papers or undeserved authorship. “Paper
mills have made a fortune by basically attacking a system that has had no idea
how to cope with this stuff,” says Dorothy Bishop, a University of Oxford
psychologist who studies fraudulent publishing practices. A 2 May announcement
from the publisher Hindawi underlined the threat: It shut down four of its
journals it found were “heavily compromised” by articles from paper mills.”
The fake research may involve
plagiarism, fake reviewers, and help from ghostwriters. Lately, ChatGPT and
other AI assistants are amplifying the problem.
“To fight back, the International Association of
Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers (STM), representing 120
publishers, is leading an effort called the Integrity Hub to develop new tools.
STM is not revealing much about the detection methods, to avoid tipping off
paper mills.”
Integrity Hub works somewhat
like a spam filter. Unfortunately, analyzing papers for fakes takes time and
manpower. COPE issued some guidance for journals in 2021, with key points shown
below.
Once a journal is flagged as
being a target for paper mills, deterrence can increase significantly.
Below are the results of an inquiry by 6 or 7 journals in the COPE study to determine the scope of fraud.
Another perverse incentive is the pressure to publish:
“The “publish or perish” pressure that institutions put
on scientists is also an obstacle. “We want to think about engaging with
institutions on how to take away perhaps some of the [professional] incentives
which can have these detrimental effects,” van Rossum says. Such pressures can
push clinicians without research experience to turn to paper mills, Sabel adds,
which is why hospital affiliations can be a red flag.”
A May 2023 pre-print paper in
MedRxiv provides data from the study led by Sabel. The abstract and figures
below are from that paper.
A June 2024 paper in
Frontiers in Research Methods and Analytics deals with addressing fake research
and suggests that fraudulent research is so prevalent because detection is
difficult.
“The present article discusses the strengths and
weaknesses of three strategies for addressing researcher fraud.”
1) The
first strategy is the common practice of retrospective investigations after
allegations or suspicions of fraud have been raised.
2) The
second strategy is to obtain conclusive evidence of fraud as it occurs. This
requires a sting operation.
3) The
third strategy is to implement research practices that prevent opportunities
for fraud. Data management practices that achieve this goal are
well-established in clinical trials regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) and corresponding agencies in other countries.
The abstract given below
explains the challenges and strengths of each strategy.
A 2025 study in PNAS gives
some new findings about fake science, along with motives, and more accurate
detection methods. The study analyzed 5 million scientific articles in 70,000
publications. According to an article in Deutsche Welle:
"There are groups of editors conspiring to publish
low-quality articles, at scale, escaping traditional peer review
processes," said the study's lead author Reese Richardson, a social
scientist at Northwestern University in the US.
The study found that these
unsavory groups of editors often work with “brokers” who connect them with
fraudulent researchers.
"This kind of fraud destroys trust in science. It
biases systematic and meta-analysis, it delays treatment and delays new
research," said Anna Abalkina, a social scientist at the Free University
of Berlin, who was not involved in the study.
The study pointed out that
fraudulent research was used during COVID to influence the merits of treatments
such as hydroxychloroquine. This was often done through "self-promotion
journals,” where paper authors are the editors of those journals. Another issue
is image manipulation, along with copying images from other studies and passing
them off as their own. Deutsche Welle notes that one prominent publisher,
Springer, retracted 2,923 articles from its journals in 2024. That means the
problem is being addressed by some publishers. However, retraction means the
study was already published, and any damage could already be done. I am
inclined to agree with the study’s lead author, Luis Amaral of Northwestern
University:
"It's distressing to see others engage in fraud and
in misleading others. But if you believe that science is useful and important
for humanity, then you have to fight for it," Amaral said.
According to an article about
the paper in Wired:
“The authors argue that due to the large scale and
specialization of contemporary science, the contribution of each actor is no
longer evaluated by the intrinsic merit of their work, but by quantitative
indicators, such as the number of research papers published, how often articles
are cited by other research, university rankings, or by awards and other
recognitions obtained.”
“These indicators have rapidly become targets for
measuring institutional and personal impact, which has generated unbridled
competition and growing inequality in the distribution of resources,
incentives, and rewards,” the authors warn.
“This in turn has led to the proliferation of fraud in
some quarters of the scientific community, as researchers look for quick ways
to acquire indicators of success.”
These frauds seem to be
perpetuated by well-organized networks that operate in the manner of organized
crime rings. Apparently, the networks are attracting scientists who wish to
enhance their own prestige, career advancement, and ability to get research
money.
“Intermediaries connect all the parties. You need
someone to write the article, people willing to pay to appear as authors, a
magazine willing to publish it, and editors who will accept it,” Amaral says.
“Millions of dollars are invested in this process.”
The researchers suggest that
oversight by the scientific community itself will be necessary to curtail
fraud, which threatens to increase as AI develops.
“To curb this threat, the Northwestern researchers
propose a number of measures: strengthening the scrutiny of editorial
processes, implementing more effective methods to detect false research,
developing better understanding of the networks that facilitate these
practices, and radically restructuring the incentive system in science.”
The abstract of the PNAS
paper given below notes that the fraudulent networks' abilities to evade
interventions have aided the proliferation of the fakery. Sometimes the paper
mills gain complete control of a journal so that it effectively becomes a fake
journal. The study uncovered evidence of targeting specific journals and of
targeting new ones when others are de-indexed or fall out of popularity. They
call this “journal hopping.”
The graphs below, from the
paper, show how they derived evidence of coordination among editor groups,
brokers, and fake scientists. The last graph shows how fake science is growing
much faster than science as a whole.
The bottom line is that
scientific integrity is being compromised by what is essentially a criminal
enterprise. This is disgusting! We need to stamp it out. Corruption is
problematic in the world in so many ways. We do have to filter it out, kind of
like spam. Unfortunately, it takes up a lot of bandwidth to do so. However, I
think if we get better at detecting it, combating it, and giving out
consequences to the perpetrators, we can address it successfully.
References:
Fraudulent
research is 'destroying trust in science'. Matthew Ward Agius. Deutsche Welle.
Augiust 10, 2025. Fraudulent research is 'destroying
trust in science'
The
entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing
rapidly. Reese A. K. Richardson, Spencer S. Hong, Jennifer A. Byrne, and Luís
A. Nunes Amaral. PNAS. Vol. 122 | No. 32. August 4, 2025. The entities enabling scientific
fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly | PNAS
Addressing
researcher fraud: retrospective, real-time, and preventive strategies–including
legal points and data management that prevents fraud. James E. Kennedy. Frontiers
in Research Metrics and Analytics. 2024 Jun 27;9:1397649. Addressing researcher
fraud: retrospective, real-time, and preventive strategies–including legal
points and data management that prevents fraud - PMC
Fake
scientific papers are alarmingly common: But new tools show promise in tackling
growing symptom of academia’s “publish or perish” culture. Jeffrey Brainard.
Science. May 9. 2023. Fake
scientific papers are alarmingly common | Science | AAAS
Fake
Publications in Biomedical Science: Red-flagging Method Indicates Mass
Production. Bernhard A. Sabel, Emely Knaack,
Gerd Gigerenzer, and Mirela Bilc. MedRxiv. May 6, 2023. Fake
Publications in Biomedical Science: Red-flagging Method Indicates Mass
Production | medRxiv
COPE
& STM. Paper Mills — Research report from COPE & STM — English. June 1,
2022. Paper
mills research | COPE: Committee on Publication Ethics
Paper
Mills Research report from COPE & STM. paper-mills-cope-stm-research-report.pdf
The
Black Market for Fake Science Is Growing Faster Than Legitimate Research, Study
Warns. Fernanda Gonzales. Wired. August 11, 2025. The
Black Market for Fake Science Is Growing Faster Than Legitimate Research, Study
Warns | WIRED
Addressing
concerns about systematic manipulation of the publication process. COPE. May
12, 2021. Addressing
concerns about systematic manipulation of the publication process | COPE:
Committee on Publication Ethics
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