Science Will Soon Be Ridden with Fraud Unless We Act
Society has changed the way we look at science, making it integral to society. It is the base for many parts of society, including but not limited to things like the law, agriculture, and transportation. It is rooted in trusting existing claims and evidence to be able to conclude other matters.
However, recently, whistle-blowers have warned that fake results are sneaking into the scientific literature at an increasing pace in the past few years. [1] Fake results generally include falsified data or plagiarism by individuals who take shortcuts to gain advantage of others’ work. Additionally, the number of low-quality papers being published is also increasing. [1] These papers often aren’t peer-reviewed or vaguely describe details.
There are also now “paper mills” that will write fake papers for money. [2] These “paper mills” often involve brokers who will organize the bogus author. There are even fake peer reviewers to support the fake reasoning in the paper. These underground organizations even hijack legitimate science journals.
This happened to HIV Nursing, a legitimate nursing journal. [2] It was a British journal that stopped publishing, and its online domain went on sale. A malicious organization purchased the domain and used it to publish thousands of papers completely unrelated to nursing, Reese Richardson, the author of a study on scientific fraud, said.
AI only threatens to make the problem of scientific fraud even worse. [3] If we can’t control what humans do, we have much less chance of preventing AI from churning out fake works because humans are the creators and users of AI. If we only choose to use AI to do certain repetitive tasks and not everything, then we can control where it is used. We should not develop AI to the point where it’s too capable of everything.
In conclusion, science is the de facto standard in most modern societies. However, its basis is trust. If we can’t trust existing evidence, it becomes harder to conclude something else that the existing evidence is linked to. Instead, we must waste hours of time trying to prove that evidence right or wrong, every time we research, which is a massive waste of our time. Additionally, it is completely unethical for criminal organizations to gain from fraud. Therefore, we must all work together to solve this short-term problem of scientific fraud before it becomes a much bigger issue.
Sources:
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/science/04hs-science-papers-fraudresearch-paper-mills.html
2. https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2025-08-05/organized-scientific-fraud-is-growing-at-alarming-rate
3. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientific-fraud-global-fraudulent-research-papers-b2802118.html
