Carl Zimmer, The New York Times; Fraudulent Scientific Papers Are Rapidly Increasing, Study Finds
"Even as paper mills have worked to keep their efforts hidden, Dr. Abalkina has traced the output of companies in Russia, Iran and other countries, and found thousands of their papers in print. “You learn to see the patterns,” she said.
Dr. Amaral and his colleagues have now analyzed those patterns, using network theory and other statistical techniques. “We tried to give a picture of what’s below the surface,” said Reese Richardson, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University and an author of the new study.
For their analysis, the scientists built a database of more than a million scientific papers. They searched for the papers in online forums where sleuths share duplicated images and tortured phrases, as well as the Retraction Watch Database, maintained by the Center for Scientific Integrity.
The researchers compiled a list of 30,000 papers that have either been retracted or show signs of having come from a paper mill. They discovered connections between the papers that strongly hinted that they were the product of large-scale fraud. Many of these connections linked clusters of editors and authors who often worked together.
“There are huge networks that are very densely connected, where they’re all sending their papers to one another,” Dr. Richardson said. “If that’s not collusion, I don’t know what is.”"
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