Fraudulent scientific research is increasingly jeopardizing medical research. A study analyzed over five million articles from 70,000 journals and identified networks of editors who collaborate to publish low-quality articles. These networks evade traditional peer reviews, spreading bogus research that may contain fabricated data and manipulated images. As many as 1 in 7 publications could involve fake data. The rise of AI tools is exacerbating the problem, influencing the integrity of scientific work and delaying advancements in treatment and new research.
"There are groups of editors conspiring to publish low quality articles, at scale, escaping traditional peer review processes," said the study's lead author Reece Richardson, a social scientist at Northwestern University, US.
"This kind of fraud destroys trust in science. It biases systematic and meta-analysis, it delays treatment and delays new research," said Anna Abalkina, a social scientist at the Free University of Berlin, Germany.
"Historically, the scientific [publication] enterprise has been an engine for progress. It's given us vaccines, antibiotics, the internet, sterile surgery everything that makes life comfortable for us now," said Richardson.
AI is also fueling this research misconduct. Fraudulent studies contain fabricated data, unverified results, plagiarized research or manipulated images.
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