- A new study has found an organised underground network enabling fraudulent research and increasingly undermining the integrity of science.
- Researchers from Northwestern University found that the publication of fraudulent scientific work is now outpacing the growth of legitimate research.
- This network involves 'paper mills', brokers, and compromised journals that sell authorship slots and publish low-quality manuscripts with fabricated data, manipulated or stolen images, and plagiarised content.
- The study found academics use various strategies, including colluding to publish papers, paying for authorship, and utilising 'sham peer-review' processes to get fraudulent work accepted.
- The study calls for enhanced scrutiny, improved detection methods, and a radical restructuring of scientific incentives to combat this fraud, also highlighting the potential future threat from generative AI.
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