|
Abstract
|
Criminal science publishing gangs--formerly known as "paper mills"--are fraudulent businesses producing fake scientific papers with false content. We decided to use the former term because the latter one was inspired by a fantasy novel (Byrne and Christopher 2020). But we are not dealing with a fantasy novel. We are dealing with the reality of true crime.
Fraudulent science papers are produced by scientists who sell their services of writing ghost papers for customers who are presumably in urgent need to demonstrate their scientific output. Their aim is to generate--or polish--their "scientific standing" to personally gain job promotions and increase their "credibility." Criminal science publishing gang products are sold in many scientific disciplines and challenge the very foundation of trust and reliability of scientific conduct. Such publications are often hard to identify because they are written by trained scientists. Accordingly, their apparent quality is often high enough to end up being published in scientific peer-reviewed journals (Seifert 2021) and thus become part of the permanent scientific record. The mechanisms of operation of criminal science publishing gangs are now well understood and have been recently reviewed (Christopher 2021; Seifert 2021). Yet, the problem is growing at a concerning rate. To help solve the problem, two Editors-in-Chief of scientific journals (Bernhard A. Sabel, Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience; and Roland Seifert, Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology) have joined up to write this Editorial and voice an urgent call to action.
Of truth and trust
Journal editors, scientific peer reviewers, and journal publishers work under the assumption of trust that authors report data correctly and interpret them fairly in an unbiased manner in the context of the current state-of-the-art. Trust is the fundamental value system of the entire scientific community which aims to promote our knowledge on the basis of honest experiments, observations, and analyses. If there is no trust, there is no truth. Unveiling scientific misconduct is therefore an essential element of science. If this system of trust is violated, it will create confusion and waste human and financial resources, carrying great risks in health, technology, environment, and humanity at large. As in personal and business relationships, trust is slowly gained, but it can be quickly lost...
Language: en |