For centuries, science has served as a bedrock of societal progress. Its principles of inquiry and evidence-based reasoning underpin everything from medical breakthroughs to technological innovation. Yet today, headlines paint a troubling picture of manipulated data and fabricated research findings, resulting in thousands of retractions. And that is just what has been uncovered so far.
As scientific “sleuths”, who focus on cleaning up the research literature, we are often accused of weakening public trust in science. But blame for mistrust lies squarely with the bad actors who have contaminated the scientific literature with what our colleague Smut Clyde has termed “parascience”: outputs that superficially resemble science, with its field-specific jargon, images and tables, but lack its core features, such as peer review or any actual underlying experiments.
The ripple effects are profound when we can no longer rely on the integrity of the scientific record. Medical advancements stall, infrastructure innovations falter and public health initiatives lose credibility. But is science itself in crisis? Hardly.
The scientific method provides the same solid foundation for knowledge as it always has. What we are witnessing is simply an inevitable and necessary process of “course correction” as scientists become aware of the infiltration of these bad actors and bad actions and work to eradicate them.
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That course correction is necessary because the exponential growth of digital technology over recent decades has reshaped the research landscape. The expansion and globalisation of scholarly publishing, coupled with the push for open science, has democratised knowledge but also exposed vulnerabilities. Fraudulent studies, questionable methodologies and manipulated metrics (such as irrelevant citations and inflated publication numbers) have scaled with the system, while the checks and balances needed to safeguard science’s credibility have failed to keep pace.
Bad actors have infiltrated hitherto respected journals as peer reviewers and editors. Predatory and vanity journals have mushroomed, as have paper mills – entities that sell authorship and citations for profit. At the same time, the commercialisation of traditional academic publishing has placed financial pressure on journals to accept more papers, often at the expense of rigorous peer review.
The expansion in the pool of contributors makes it harder to vet the integrity of individual actors, too. Some are simply scrambling to meet targets issued by their institutes or governments by taking shortcuts. But others are lazy or incompetent researchers on the make, having come to see science as a means to gain prestige, riches and influence. And some have a vested interest in the deliberate manipulation or undermining of scientific discourse for political or financial gain.
The malign influence of vested interests is not new: for decades, the tobacco industry funded research that obscured the link between smoking and cancer, for instance. However, the internet amplifies the “illusory truth effect”, whereby false information becomes increasingly believable the more it is repeated. Disinformation campaigns during the Covid-19 pandemic were good examples. Such manipulation efforts exploit the open-access nature of modern publishing to circulate dubious papers that can easily be cited to lend false credibility to spurious claims.
Cleaning a polluted river requires more than removing visible debris – it demands a systemic approach that addresses contamination at its source. In the same way, safeguarding the integrity of science requires vigilance not only in uncovering existing flaws but in building systems that prevent future harm.
Progress is already under way. The rise in retractions, while unsettling at first glance, should be taken as reassurance that science is still self-correcting. And the people driving these cleaning efforts – individuals working tirelessly, often at significant personal cost – are no longer so isolated. Instead, we are part of a growing collective that has embraced the principles outlined in the Forensic Scientometrics (FoSci) Paris Declaration, made last December. Signatories are committed to advocate for transformation, deepen expertise in sleuthing and improve how our findings are communicated.
In addition, commercial publishers are starting to take action, realising that trust in their products is key to their future viability. A case in point is that of Hindawi, whose journals were so contaminated by fraudulent papers that their value plummeted, forcing its parent company, Wiley, to stop using the brand and to close more than 20 of its journals.
Some enthusiasts argue that open access allows greater scrutiny of papers, presenting a disincentive to submit dubious findings. But it is becoming clear that open access is not enough. Open data and analysis scripts will also be important for creating trust in academic articles, as will transparent peer review and editorial decision-making.
Furthermore, clean-up efforts need to extend beyond the academic sphere. Public engagement is critical to counter disinformation and build a shared understanding of why science matters and how it evolves.
The route forward will be turbulent. In the short term, public trust will only be further shaken as more fraudulent practices are brought to the surface. But that must not stop us from wading into the polluted river and doing the work necessary to protect it from future contamination. After all, the pursuit of truth is what the scientific calling is all about.
Leslie D. McIntosh is vice-president for research integrity at Digital Science. René Aquarius is postdoctoral researcher in neurosurgery at Radboud University Medical Centre. Dorothy Bishop is emeritus professor of developmental neuropsychology at the University of Oxford.
