Scientists warn pretend analysis is spreading quicker than actual science

To investigate the issue, scientists combined large scale analysis of scientific publications with detailed case studies. While misconduct is often portrayed as the work of individual researchers cutting corners, the Northwestern team discovered something far more complex. Their findings reveal global networks of people and organizations working together to systematically exploit weaknesses in the publishing process.

The scale of the problem is striking. According to the researchers, fraudulent studies are now appearing at a faster rate than legitimate scientific publications. The authors say the findings should serve as a warning to the scientific community to strengthen safeguards before public trust in science begins to erode.

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Science must police itself better in order to preserve its integrity,” said Northwestern’s Luís A. N. Amaral, the study’s senior author. “If we do not create awareness around this problem, worse and worse behavior will become normalized. At some point, it will be too late, and scientific literature will become completely poisoned. Some people worry that talking about this issue is attacking science. But I strongly believe we are defending science from bad actors. We need to be aware of the seriousness of this problem and take measures to address it.”

Amaral studies complex social systems and serves as the Erastus Otis Haven Professor and professor of engineering sciences and applied mathematics at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering. Reese Richardson, a postdoctoral fellow in Amaral’s laboratory, is the study’s first author.

Investigating Scientific Fraud Networks

When the public hears about scientific fraud, the focus often falls on isolated cases involving falsified data, plagiarism or retracted studies. These incidents typically involve a single researcher attempting to advance their career by taking shortcuts in a highly competitive environment.

However, Amaral and his colleagues uncovered a much broader and largely hidden system. Their analysis revealed an extensive underground network operating largely out of public view.

“These networks are essentially criminal organizations, acting together to fake the process of science,” Amaral said. “Millions of dollars are involved in these processes.”

To understand how widespread the issue is, the team examined large collections of scientific data. This included records of retracted papers, editorial information and examples of duplicated images. Much of the information came from major scientific databases, including Web of Science (WoS), Elsevier’s Scopus, National Library of Medicine’s PubMed/MEDLINE and OpenAlex, which includes data from Microsoft Academic Graph, Crossref, ORCID, Unpaywall and other institutional repositories.

The researchers also gathered lists of de indexed journals. These are academic journals that databases have removed because they failed to meet quality or ethical standards. Additional sources included records of retracted studies from Retraction Watch, discussion comments from PubPeer and article metadata such as editor names, submission dates and acceptance dates from selected journals.

Paper Mills and the Business of Fake Research

After analyzing the data, the researchers identified coordinated operations involving paper mills, brokers and compromised journals. Paper mills function like production lines for academic manuscripts. They produce large numbers of papers and sell them to researchers who want to increase their publication record quickly.

These manuscripts often contain fabricated data, manipulated or stolen images, plagiarized text and sometimes claims that are scientifically impossible.

“More and more scientists are being caught up in paper mills,” Amaral said. “Not only can they buy papers, but they can buy citations. Then, they can appear like well-reputed scientists when they have barely conducted their own research at all.”

“Paper mills operate by a variety of different models,” Richardson added. “So, we have only just been able to scratch the surface of how they operate. But they sell basically anything that can be used to launder a reputation. They often sell authorship slots for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. A person might pay more money for the first author position or less money for a fourth author position. People also can pay to get papers they have written automatically accepted in a journal through a sham peer-review process.”

To detect additional papers produced through these operations, Amaral’s group launched a separate project that automatically scans published materials science and engineering studies. The system searches for authors who incorrectly identify the instruments used in their experiments. Findings from that work were accepted for publication in the journal PLOS ONE.

Brokers, Journal Hijacking and Coordinated Fraud

The team found that fraudulent networks rely on several strategies to spread fake research.

1. Groups of researchers collaborate to publish papers across multiple journals, even though the work is fraudulent. When the misconduct is uncovered, the papers are later retracted.
2. Brokers act as middlemen who arrange the publication of fraudulent papers in compromised journals.
3. Fraudulent activity often concentrates in specific scientific fields that are more vulnerable to manipulation.
4. Organized groups find ways to bypass quality control measures, including journal de indexing.

“Brokers connect all the different people behind the scenes,” Amaral said. “You need to find someone to write the paper. You need to find people willing to pay to be the authors. You need to find a journal where you can get it all published. And you need editors in that journal who will accept that paper.”

In some cases, these groups avoid legitimate journals entirely and instead take over abandoned ones. When a legitimate publication stops operating, fraudsters may acquire the website or domain name and revive it as a vehicle for fraudulent publishing.

“This happened to the journal HIV Nursing,” Richardson said. “It was formerly the journal of a professional nursing organization in the U.K., then it stopped publishing, and its online domain lapsed. An organization bought the domain name and started publishing thousands of papers on subjects completely unrelated to nursing, all indexed in Scopus.”

Protecting the Integrity of Science

To address the growing threat, Amaral and Richardson say the scientific community needs a broad strategy. This includes closer monitoring of editorial practices, stronger tools to detect fabricated studies, deeper understanding of the networks enabling fraud and major changes to the incentive systems that drive scientific publishing.

The researchers also stress the urgency of tackling these problems before artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more deeply embedded in the scientific literature.

“If we’re not prepared to deal with the fraud that’s already occurring, then we’re certainly not prepared to deal with what generative AI can do to scientific literature,” Richardson said. “We have no clue what’s going to end up in the literature, what’s going to be regarded as scientific fact and what’s going to be used to train future AI models, which then will be used to write more papers.”

Amaral said the project was personally discouraging but necessary.

“This study is probably the most depressing project I’ve been involved with in my entire life,” Amaral said. “Since I was a kid, I was excited about science. It’s distressing to see others engage in fraud and in misleading others. But if you believe that science is useful and important for humanity, then you have to fight for it.”

The study, “The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly,” was supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.