Last year, 10,000 sham papers had to be retracted by academic journals, but experts think this is just the tip of the iceberg
Tens of thousands of bogus research papers are being published in journals in an international scandal that is worsening every year, scientists have warned. Medical research is being compromised, drug development hindered and promising academic research jeopardised thanks to a global wave of sham science that is sweeping laboratories and universities.
Last year the annual number of papers retracted by research journals topped 10,000 for the first time. Most analysts believe the figure is only the tip of an iceberg of scientific fraud.
About Author
More Stories
‘A win-win for farmers’: how flooding fields in north-west England could boost crops
UK among lowest-ranked countries for ‘human flourishing’ in wellbeing study
Scientists hope sequencing genome of tiny ‘functionally extinct’ frog could help save it