QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Science must police itself better in order to preserve its integrity,” said co-author Luís A. N. Amaral of Northwestern University. “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,” Amaral says. “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. Science and academia are intensely competitive, sometimes prompting individuals to plagiarize or falsify data to gain an advantage. However, Amaral, a professor of engineering sciences and applied mathematics and an expert in complex social systems, says his team uncovered something even more insidious: a largely unknown, underground network of scientists committing organized scientific fraud." “These networks are essentially criminal organizations, acting together to fake the process of science,” Amaral said. “Millions of dollars are involved in these processes.”
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SECOND QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Paper mills operate by a variety of different models,” lead author Reese A.K. 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.”
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THIRD QUOTE OF THE DAY: "“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.”
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STORY: "Scientific Fraud Exposed: The multi-million-dollar 'shadow industry' creating junk science to propel academic careers," by Ryan Whelan, published by'Debrief,' on August 6, 2025. (Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in history and a master of library and information science with a certificate in data science.) The Debrief describes itself as 'rebelliously curious in exploring frontier science and innovative technology,: "The Debrief is an independent science and technology news platform dedicated to investigating the breakthroughs that are shaping the world of tomorrow. We specialize in original reporting at the intersection of space, frontier science, defense, energy, the environment, and emerging technologies."
GIST: "An in-depth investigation has revealed that organized, multi-million-dollar networks dedicated to scientific fraud are on the rise, researchers at Northwestern University report.
These expanding operations—ranging from paid authorships and citations to entirely fake journals—are now proliferating at a faster rate than legitimate scientific output. By combining case studies with large-scale data analysis, the researchers identified global fraud networks that systematically exploit academic publishing for their own gain.
The new study highlights the tools and tactics being used to exploit academic publishing, and offers recommendations aimed at protecting the integrity of science.
SCIENTIFIC FRAUD ON THE RISE
Scientific fraud reached a new milestone in 2006 when Eric Poehlman became the first person sentenced to prison for falsifying data in 15 federal grant applications and 10 scientific papers—the first such punishment for misconduct not involving fatalities. In today’s climate of waning public trust in institutions, the Northwestern team warns that scientists must confront this growing problem, even if some are reluctant to acknowledge failings in their field for fear of empowering science deniers.
“Science must police itself better in order to preserve its integrity,” said co-author Luís A. N. Amaral of Northwestern University. “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,” Amaral says. “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.”
Science and academia are intensely competitive, sometimes prompting individuals to plagiarize or falsify data to gain an advantage. However, Amaral, a professor of engineering sciences and applied mathematics and an expert in complex social systems, says his team uncovered something even more insidious: a largely unknown, underground network of scientists committing organized scientific fraud.
“These networks are essentially criminal organizations, acting together to fake the process of science,” Amaral said. “Millions of dollars are involved in these processes.”
HOW FRAUD INFILTRATES THE SCIENCE COMMUNITY
The team analyzed extensive datasets, including editorial records, image duplication, and retracted publications from major scientific literature aggregators. They also examined journals removed from databases due to ethical and quality violations and tracked data from retracted articles, including submission and acceptance timelines and editor names.
Their findings revealed a network of paper mills, brokers, and infiltrated journals. Paper mills produce low-quality papers filled with plagiarism, doctored images, and nonsensical claims—then sell them to desperate scientists trying to publish in the hyper-competitive “publish or perish” environment. Beyond ghostwriting, these operations sell citations to inflate the apparent impact of a researcher’s work.
“Paper mills operate by a variety of different models,” lead author Reese A.K. 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.”
In a related project, the team scanned published science and engineering papers for errors, such as misidentified instruments, and recovered one such case in PLOS ONE.
THE BROKERS OF BOGUS SCIENCE
“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.”
The researchers discovered consistent behavioral patterns. Fraudulent researchers often collaborated across journals until their activity drew scrutiny, and the papers were subsequently retracted. Brokers helped coordinate submissions to infiltrated journals, often targeting weaker or less scrutinized subfields. These organized efforts find ways to circumvent efforts to maintain academic integrity, such as de-indexing journals.
One strategy employed by these networks is to identify journals that have ceased publication and then use that name to establish a fraudulent journal under the guise of a trusted name.
“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.”
MITIGATING SCIENTIFIC FRAUD
Despite the grim findings, the team believes solutions are within reach. As far as individual journals, they recommend improved editorial scrutiny and more effective detection methods. However, they emphasize that systemic change is necessary—particularly addressing the incentives that drive researchers to engage with these networks. Especially in light of the increasing number of AI papers masquerading as human research, the team urges getting ahead of the problem.
“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.”
“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,” Amaral said.
The paper, “The Entities Enabling Scientific Fraud at Scale are Large, Resilient and Growing Rapidly,” appeared on August 4, 2025, in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf."
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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