One awful spring day in 2025, Luís Amaral sat at his desk at Northwestern University after he had just finished “probably the most depressing project I’ve been involved with.” He had reason to be disheartened. His new study reveals an uncomfortable truth: scientific fraud is no longer just the work of a few bad apples. It is organized to the point it’s become industrialized — and growing much faster than legitimate science.
What we are seeing is large networks of editors and authors cooperating to publish fraudulent research at scale. They are exploiting cracks in the system to launder reputations, secure funding, and climb academic ranks.
This isn’t just about the occasional plagiarized paragraph or data fudged to fool reviewers. This is about a vast and resilient system that, in some cases, mimics organized crime. And it’s infiltrating the very core of science.
“These networks are essentially criminal organizations,” Amaral said. “Millions of dollars are involved in these processes.”
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