A tide of fabricated research risks scientific integrity

{"text":[[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":7.68,"text":"The writer is a professor of medical psychology at the Otto von Guericke University of Magdeburg"}],[{"start":15.02,"text":"Modern academia puts scientists around the world under immense career pressure. In the reputation economy, scoring high on publication number and citation is crucial. Unfortunately, this has raised the temptation to sell AI-generated fake manuscripts. The result is a flood of low-quality or fraudulent studies which, if left unchecked, risk damaging the integrity and trustworthiness of science."}],[{"start":44.36,"text":"The gradual erosion of publishing quality is being driven by both pull and push forces."}],[{"start":51.65,"text":"On one side are dishonest authors and institutions seeking to inflate their reputations. On the other are industrial-scale productions of fake science publications and publishers charging spiralling publication fees to maximise their profits."}],[{"start":69.39,"text":"Academic publishing is booming. The largest journal groups generate strong revenues and high profit margins — often 30 to 40 per cent. This bonanza is being funded by buyers who do not always get what they expected and paid for: reliable scientific knowledge."}],[{"start":89.14,"text":"The surge in fabricated research attracted little attention when it began 15 to 20 years ago. But AI has now made the process much easier. The number of fake papers has now exceeded 100,000 per year in biomedicine alone. While my own estimate of fakes is somewhere between 5 and 15 per cent of all papers, one non-profit publisher says that, after integrity and quality checks, 90 per cent of submissions they receive are junk."}],[{"start":122.58,"text":"Most fake papers come from the Middle East and east Asia, Russia and the global south. Many fields are affected, including materials science, chemistry, computing and even mathematics. The deluge is overwhelming the peer review system, causing sloppy oversight. Efforts to corrupt editorial standards, unreproducible data and spiralling publication fees are putting further strain on overburdened research funders, libraries and taxpayers."}],[{"start":154.61,"text":"Even if the number of fake papers produced in Europe or the US is relatively small, the collateral damage affects everyone. Scientific analyses, experiments and clinical trials fail more often, technical knowledge becomes less precise or even misleading, and therapies, materials and technologies fail to deliver what was promised."}],[{"start":181.10000000000002,"text":"Driving everything is a business model in which the price tag to purchase a false scientific publication is anywhere between €2,000 and €25,000, according to online searches. Publishers then charge money to process papers."}],[{"start":198.78000000000003,"text":"Global losses resulting from low quality and fraudulent publishing may extend into billions of dollars."}],[{"start":207.56000000000003,"text":"If false scientific papers are published, the indirect damage also includes harm to patients and the healthcare system, environmental damage, slower economic development and loss of trust in science. If nothing is done, all the manipulation, disinformation and fakery could eventually lead to a knowledge collapse."}],[{"start":233.24000000000004,"text":"Science is a public good and publishing it should be a civic responsibility. A global plan is therefore needed: a reformation of science publishing."}],[{"start":244.19000000000003,"text":"This is proposed in the Stockholm Declaration published by the Open Science journal of the Royal Society of London this week."}],[{"start":252.89000000000001,"text":"Its 34 measures, agreed at a June meeting at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, include an end to the “publish or perish” culture at universities and research institutions that treat publication counts and citation metrics as surrogates of excellence, as well as fraud detection by independent, non-profit entities able to carry out integrity checks."}],[{"start":277.24,"text":"The scholarly community could also support a gradual transition to sustainable, non-commercial publishing models. In these, the collective would hold all journal rights, with free access and no publication fees, along with international standards and regulations for quality control of scientific and technical information."}],[{"start":299.52,"text":"The Stockholm Declaration calls for a global alliance of the willing to act together: academies, scientific organisations and governments. Politicians and the media should address the publication crisis openly and support corrective measures."}],[{"start":317.40999999999997,"text":"But they should also be careful not to cast suspicion on science itself, something that could cause unforeseeable damage even greater than the status quo."}],[{"start":328.51,"text":"The goal of our modern knowledge-based economies and societies should not be to hinder academic freedom but to strengthen it by maintaining the reliability and trustworthiness of science."}],[{"start":342.53999999999996,"text":"Letters in response to this article:"}],[{"start":344.96999999999997,"text":"Essay about fake research leaves me with a question / From Joel S Richman, Clinical and Health Psychologist, Chicago, IL, US"}],[{"start":354.32,"text":"A call to arms to protect peer review from the threat of AI / From Mandy Hill, Managing Director, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK"}],[{"start":373.39,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1763447288_8729.mp3"}