Scientific fraud is surging at an unprecedented rate, driven by organized networks manipulating the very foundations of academic publishing.
In recent weeks, new research has revealed the alarming scale and speed of this crisis, with shocking evidence that data fabrication and falsification are now outpacing legitimate scientific publications.
A major study published by Northwestern University this August, entitled “The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly,” revealed that organized science fraud networks are extensive, resilient, and growing rapidly. The investigation analyzed retracted publications, image manipulation, and metadata across databases such as PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science, revealing coordinated global efforts to flood the literature with fake research.
The scale of the problem is staggering and is perhaps the biggest crisis facing real science today.
By combining large-scale data analysis of scientific literature with case studies, the researchers led a deep investigation into scientific fraud. Although concerns around scientific misconduct typically focus on lone individuals, the Northwestern study instead uncovered sophisticated global networks of individuals and entities, which systematically work together to undermine the integrity of academic publishing...
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