Scientific knowledge has historically been regarded as an objective source of truth, but new evidence suggests that fraudulent and poor-quality research are threatening the reliability of much scientific research.
According to a 2025 article in The Week, more than 10,000 papers were retracted in 2023 alone, and there are countless others that likely went undetected. The problem is so widespread that some scientists say that science as a whole could become "poisoned" by the existence of so much fraudulent work.
Made-up data and photoshopped images became concerns sometime in the 2010s. Publish-or-perish expectations on academics have intensified since then.
Advancement in career, research grants, and reputation often depend on the quantity, not quality, of publications. It is this "publish or perish" environment that has bred a hunger for paper mills — firms that churn out fabricated articles, steal from what has been written, or peddle writer-for-hire spots for five-figure checks. These outfits exploit loopholes in the academic system while profiting from researchers willing to do anything to find work or get promoted.
The problem has now reached an industrial scale..... Thousands of fake papers find their way into the scientific literature every year and the majority of these appear in new or poorly regulated journals created to meet demand.
While publishers are investing in detection tools, including image forensics and text-based AI screening, fake papers also escape peer review too readily. Published articles may then go on to be cited by other scientists, spreading misinformation and wasting time.
confirmed that retractions reached all-time highs in 2023 with "systematic manipulation", including fabricated peer review and fabricated data, being responsible for most of the increase. The journal warned that unless scholarly incentives are transformed, detection will perpetually lag behind the business of fraud.
Sociologically speaking, this crisis illustrates how deviance functions within professional institutions. Not bad "apples" as individuals, but networks of organized dishonesty are rewriting norms in scientific publishing. It illustrates how pressures inherent in a system, economic imperatives, and absence of vigilance can erode faith in knowledge itself.
Policy and medical interventions often rely on peer-reviewed literature, so fake results could have real-world consequences. For criminology students, the emergence of paper mills is a white-collar crime case study and illustration of globalisation of deviance. Unless governments, journals, and universities intervene to redirect incentives for excellence and integrity, the risk is that bad science becomes the new normal.
