The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly - #science #research #ScientificFraud

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2420092122

And the PNAS paper itself
🧪 #Publishing #Scicomm #ScientificFraud

Fabricating data is bad enough. Doing it in pediatrics (where children's health is at stake) is unforgivable. These weren't just academic errors; they were lies with potential real-world harm.
🤬
Science must be true, or it's not science.
#ScientificFraud #Pediatrics #ResearchIntegrity

The Editor Got a Letter From ‘Dr. B.S.’ So Did a Lot of Other Editors.

“This has to be A.I.,” Dr. Chaccour decided.
#scientificfraud #artificialintelligence

Paper Chase: A Global Industry Fuels Scientific Fraud in the U.S. In southern India, a new enterprise called Peer Publicon Consultancy offers a full suite of services to scientific researchers. It will not only write a scholarly paper for a fee

Paper Chase: A Global Industry Fuels Scientific Fraud in the U.S.

#ResearchIntegrity #US #America #ScientificFraud #WCRI2026 #WCRI

www.thepress.net/news/real_cl...

Scientific Fraud Threatens Research: Citation Cartels and Ghost Writing

In 2023 over 10,000 papers were retracted for fraud, and some analyses suggest up to one in seven scientific articles may be fake. getnews.me/scientific-fraud-threate... #scientificfraud #citationcartels

Bogus affiliation scuttles paper on Atlantic currents An oceanography journal has retracted a 2017 paper by a group of researchers in China after learning from a reader that one of the authors had a bogus affiliation in the United States. The paper, “…

Very happy to see adherence to journalistic integrity as a value, thank you Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography!

#journalisticintegrity #science #pseudoscience #scientificfraud #oceanography #limnology

retractionwatch.com/2017/09/01/b...

Fake microscopy images generated by AI are indistinguishable from the real thing Materials scientists warn that raw data and replication studies are needed to tackle the looming threat of near-undetectable AI fraud

Why yes, AI can be used to create not only false narratives, but false images in false scientific studies.

#science #ai #artificialintelligence #pseudoscience #scientificfraud

www.chemistryworld.com/news/fake-mi...

Granting agencies grapple with scientific fraud - University Affairs Sophisticated schemes are forcing the Tri-Agency to update its framework on research conduct.

Canada’s federal granting agencies are updating their research guidelines in the face of increasingly elaborate practices of scientific fraud.

#ResearchIntegrity #Canada #ScientificFraud #WCRI2026 #WCRI

universityaffairs.ca/news/grantin...

Screenshot of email from paper mill "publisher"

I knew it! Monte Carlo event generators can cure cancer!

#papermill #scientificfraud

Inside an academic scandal: a story of fraud and betrayal A candid and deeply personal look at back-to-back research scandals that rocked academia.

New Book: Inside an academic scandal: a story of fraud and betrayal

#ResearchIntegrity #ScientificFraud #ResearchIntegrity #WCRI2026 #WCRI

www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

Patterns of Paper Mill Papers and Retraction Challenges - Peer Review Congress Anna Abalkina,1 Svetlana Kleiner2 Objective Paper mills pose a significant challenge to the scientific community, yet knowledge of paper mills remains fragmented. An estimated 400,000 studies originate from paper mills,1 although only 56,000 have been retracted or corrected. This study investigated the patterns of paper-mill articles and the challenges of their retraction, using a sample Read more...

Full abstract for Patterns of #PaperMill Papers and Retraction Challenges from @abalkina.bsky.social and colleagues is at peerreviewcongress.o...
#ScientificFraud #Tanupro

We demonstrated through case studies that (1) individuals have colluded to publish problematic papers in a number of journals; (2) brokers can ensure publication in infiltrated journals at scale; and (3) within a field of science, not all subfields are equally targeted for scientific fraud. Our results revealed some of the strategies that enable entities promoting scientific fraud to evade interventions. Our final analysis suggested that this ability to evade interventions is enabling the number of fraudulent publications to grow at a rate far outpacing that of legitimate science.

R.A.K. Richardson, S.S. Hong, J.A. Byrne, T. Stoeger, & L.A.N. Amaral, The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (32) e2420092122, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2420092122 (2025).

Collusion, brokerage are strategies used by author-editor networks to produce #ScientificFraud at scale. Pub rates double q15y for all scientific articles, q3y for eventually retracted articles, < q2y for articles of likely #PaperMill provenance
@reeserichardson.bsky.social
www.pnas.org/doi/10....

Of the 26 fake personas, 13 managed to end up as published authors. For these 55 articles, 13 fake personas that are published authors were invited to review for a total of 68 times. In contrast, 13 fake personas without a publication record were only invited 25 times in total. Additionally, 48 of the 55 paper mill articles published by these fake personas cited 2 or more articles by other fake personas in an apparent attempt to further build credibility.

55 articles in 4 @springernature.com journals were compromised by a #PaperMill: 2 initial fake authors were nominated as peer reviewers by subsequent fake authors, allowing the mill to increase its output, ultimately involving 26 fake personae
peerreviewcongress.o...
#ScientificFraud

Scientific fraud has become an ‘industry,’ alarming analysis finds Sophisticated global networks are infiltrating journals to publish fake papers

www.science.org/content/arti...

And if one thought things were not bad enough. How and why people do this, eludes my mind.

#scientificfraud #retractions

Science Cheats: A Reading List on Unscrupulous Scientists - Longreads Six stories on the shady side of scholarship.

Science Cheats: A Reading List on Unscrupulous Scientists

#ResearchIntegrity #ResearchMisconduct #ScientificFraud #WCRI2026 #WCRI

longreads.com/2025/08/14/s...

The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly | PNAS Science is characterized by collaboration and cooperation, but also by uncertainty, competition, and inequality. While there has always been some c...

Analysis from @amarallab.bsky.social in @pnas.org reveal strategies enabling entities promoting #scientificfraud to evade interventions, so that the number of fraudulent publications is growing at a rate far outpacing that of legitimate science.
www.pnas.org/doi/10....
#papermills #metaresearch

Scientific fraud has become an ‘industry,’ alarming analysis finds Sophisticated global networks are infiltrating journals to publish fake papers

Scientific publishing going boing? Interesting paper
www.science.org/content/arti...

#science #scientificfraud

“Whoever doesn’t hesitate to vivisect will hardly hesitate to lie about it.”
- George Bernard Shaw
Test on Vivisectors instead(
They have no feelings!
#ScientificFraud

International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication Enhancing the quality and credibility of science.

#PaperMill Use of Fake Personae to Manipulate the #PeerReview Process

by Tim Kersjes of @SpringerNature

is part of Day 1’s "Authorship and Integrity Issues” session.

Learn more and register at peerreviewcongress.org!

@jama.com @bmj.com

#metaresearch #scientificfraud #scientificmisconduct

3/11 But Wakefield's fraud was different: "maleficent woo-woo" with "all the branding of reputable research." It fell on "parched ground"—people were keen for it to be true because vaccines are "inherently boring" compared to conspiracy theories.
#ScientificFraud #ReputableBranding

International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication Enhancing the quality and credibility of science.

The PRC program is now online!

Patterns of #PaperMill Papers and Retraction Challenges

from @abalkina.bsky.social ‪@springernature.com

is part of the #ResearchMisconduct and Integrity session

Learn more and register at peerreviewcongress.org!

#scientificfraud #peerreview

@bmj.com @jama.com

#Scientificfraud

For more info, comments in PubPeer
pubpeer.com/search?q=Jol... Explanations for non chemists in For better science, still censored in Italy:
forbetterscience.com/tag/jolanda-...

c.c. Leonid Schneider @forbetterscience.bsky.social

Invasion of the ‘journal snatchers’: the firms that buy science publications and turn them rogue Study finds dozens of journals that have hiked their fees and started churning out papers after being acquired by small, recently formed companies.

Well, ... #science #scientificFraud #predatoryJournals

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Because nothing saves money like setting out to prove the validity of a fraudulent paper that was retracted by its own author. Talk about fraud waste and abuse.

time.com/5175704/andr...

#vaccines #autism #scientificfraud #pseudoscience

Renowned scientific integrity investigator endows fund to support fellow sleuths Microbiologist Elisabeth Bik donates $200,000 to support training, travel

Many #researchintegrity sleuths are volunteers with little financial support for their often-daunting work to uncover #scientificfraud. One of the most prominent, Elisabeth Bik, has now provided money to change that. @elisabethbik.bsky.social @science.org www.science.org/content/arti...

Quand les chercheurs trichent : l’exemple des « phrases torturées » Remplacer un mot par un synonyme pour copier un article sans se faire démasquer par un logiciel anti-plagiat : que nous dit ce type de fraude du fonctionnement du monde de la recherche ?

When researchers cheat: the example of “tortured sentences”
Text in🇫🇷 French
#FraudeScientique #ScientificFraud
➡️ @theconversation.com
➡️ theconversation.com/quand-les-ch...

It’s not his uncovering of the serious cases of #ScientificFraud that I object to. I believe fraud in science is toxic, and the major cases cited by Piller and collaborators are thoroughly credible. I totally agree that once fraud is discovered, its perpetrators must face significant punishment

Yet this picture of scientists & scientific inquiry sits uncomfortably with the reality a& prevalence of #scientificfraud