Tens of thousands of bogus research papers are being published in journals in an international scandal that is getting worse every year, scientists warn. Medical research is jeopardized, drug development is hindered, and promising academic research is challenged thanks to a global wave of pseudoscience sweeping laboratories and universities.
Last year the annual number of papers retracted by research journals surpassed 10.000 for the first time. Most analysts believe the number is only the tip of an iceberg of scientific fraud.
"The situation has become horrendous," said Professor Dorothy Bishop of the University of Oxford. "The level of publication of fake papers creates serious problems in science. In many areas it becomes difficult to create a cumulative approach to a topic because we do not have a solid base of reliable findings. And it's getting worse and worse."
The astonishing rise in the publication of false scientific papers has its roots in China, where young doctors and scientists seeking promotion were required to have published scientific papers. Here come shady companies – also known as “paper mills” who started providing fabricated papers for publication in magazines.
Since then, the practice has spread to India, Iran, Russia, the states of the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe with thousands of paper "mills" supplying fabricated studies to more and more scientific journals as more and more young scientists try to boost their careers by claiming false research experience.
In some cases, journal editors have been bribed to accept articles, while paper companies have managed to create their own agent-editors, who then allow the publication of falsified papers.
Paper mills' products very often look like regular ones, but are based on templates, where gene or disease names are placed randomly between virtual arrays and digits. Worryingly, these articles can then be incorporated into large databases used by those working on drug discovery.
Others are more whimsical and involve research unrelated to a journal's scope, making it clear that no peer review has been performed. An example is a paper on Marxist ideology published in the journal Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine. Others are distinctive because of the strange language they use, including references to "breast risk" rather than breast cancer and "Parkinson's disease" rather than Parkinson's disease.
Watchdog groups – such as Retraction Watch – monitor the problem and have noted retractions from journals forced to retract publications. A study, by Nature, revealed that in 2013 there were just over 1.000 recalls. In 2022, the number topped 4.000, before jumping to more than 10.000 last year.
Of this latter total, more than 8.000 retracted papers had been published in journals owned by Hindawi, a subsidiary of publisher Wiley. "We will be discontinuing the Hindawi brand and have begun to fully integrate the 200-plus Hindawi journals into the Wiley portfolio," a Wiley spokesperson told the Observer.
The spokesperson added that Wiley has identified hundreds of fraudsters who were present in their portfolio of journals, as well as many who had guest editor roles.
But Wiley says it could not face the crisis alone, a message echoed by other publishers who say they are under siege from the paper industry. The problem is that in many countries, academics are paid according to the number of papers they have published.
The harm caused by the publication of bad or fabricated research is demonstrated by the antiparasitic drug ivermectin. Early laboratory studies showed that it could be used to treat Covid-19 and it was touted as a miracle drug. However, it was later found that these studies showed clear evidence of fraud and medical authorities refused to endorse it as a treatment for Covid.
