Uncovering the fraudsters and their schemes responsible for polluting the scientific literature

The extent of fraudulent papers in the scientific literature is growing exponentially and goes far beyond isolated events, new research has revealed. ‘You can see a scenario in a decade or less where you could have more than half of [studies being published] each year being fraudulent,’ says Reese Richardson, one of the study’s key researchers at Northwestern University, US.

Scientific integrity and honesty are key pillars of science and research, yet in recent years large organisations – known as paper mills – have been threatening these ideals by facilitating systemic scientific fraud.

Each year, paper mills produce and sell thousands of often poor-quality or fake scientific studies, sometimes using entirely made-up or doctored data and images. Growing pressure for researchers to ‘publish or perish’ has contributed to an increasingly competitive scientific community, leading some to turn to these businesses to pad their publication record. ‘It becomes sort of a snowball situation where the optimum strategy is you have to start to cheat in order to win out,’ says Richardson.