The study warns of the black market for fake sciences faster than forensic research

New study By Northwestern University researchers have led to alarm bells about the future of academic research, warning that the spread of fraudulent science is growing at a faster rate of legitimate research.

Over the past four centuries, an implicit contract has been established between scientists and states: in exchange for producing useful knowledge for economic and social development, governments and other researchers have provided stable jobs, good salaries, and public recognition. This model, similar to this in the commercial establishment, has proven effective in most regions of the world.

However, modern research published in the magazine The facts of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reveals that in recent years, this system – which has been stripped of researchers, academic institutions, government agencies, private companies and publishing platforms – raises signs of collapse.

The authors argue that due to the wide range and specialization in contemporary sciences, the contribution of each actor has no longer evaluated through the fundamental merit of their works, but through quantitative indicators, such as the number of published research papers, and the number of times that are cited by other research, university classifications, or through awards and other confessions obtained.

“These indicators quickly have become targets to measure the institutional and personal influence, which generated a failed competition and the increasing equality in the distribution of resources, incentives and bonuses.”

This, in turn, has led to the spread of fraud in some places of the scientific community, where researchers are looking for quick ways to acquire the indicators of success. “The use of numerical measures to evaluate projects and professionals … encourages the search for shortcuts,” says Pere Puigdomènech, Chairman of the CIR-Cat Research Committee in Spain. The types of fraud discovered range from the creation of fake research to plagiarism, buying and selling authorship and categories in the papers.

The mafia that threatens scientific integrity

Northwestern research shows that fraud cases are often not isolated, but rather as a result of complex networks that work systematically to undermine the safety of science.

The research team behind this paper, led by Lewis, Professor of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics at the McC Corc Chamic College of Engineering in North Western, has reached this conclusion after analyzing large quantities of data about expected publications, editing records, and photo repetition.

The sources included two main collections of scientific literature – such as the Science Network, Scopus, PubMed/Medline, and OpenLEX – as well as magazine lists that were removed from these databases to violate quality or ethical standards. In addition, the data on the articles that were deported by the hour of retreating from the investigation site, comments on the scientific papers review, and the editorial descriptive data (the editor’s names, submission and acceptance dates) were collected.

This analysis highlighted the work of “Papermills”-unfamiliar organizations that greatly produce and sell low-quality manuscripts, sometimes through brokers, to academics who are looking to spread materials quickly. These papers often contain false data, processing or surrounded by copyright, prominent content, and even ridiculous or physically impossible claims. “These networks are primarily criminal organizations, who act together to falsify the science process,” Amar said in A. statement It was published by Northwestern University.