Ah, Academia: The Industrialization Of Scientific Fraud
December 15, 2025
Everyone’s favorite technology and fiction writer Cory Doctorow coined a term that describes the so many things in society: Degradation. You can see this in big box retail stores and middle school, but let’s review a definition. Degradation is the act of eroding or weathering. Other sources say it’s the process of being crappy. In a nutshell, business processes erode online platforms in order to increase profits.
According to ZME Science, scientific publishing has become a billion dollar degradation industry. The details are in the article, “We Need To Talk About The Billion-Dollar Industry Holding Science Hostage.” It details how Luís Amaral was disheartened after he conducted a study about scientific studies. His research revealed that scientific fraud is being created faster than legitimate science.
Editors and authors are working with publishers to release fraudulent research by taking advantage of loopholes to scale academic, receive funding, and whitewash reputations. The bad science is published by paper mills that are manufacturing bad studies and selling authorship and placements in journals with editors willing to “verify” the information. Here’s an example:
“One such paper mill, the Academic Research and Development Association (ARDA), offers a window into how deeply entrenched this problem has become. Notice that they all seem to have legitimate-sounding names. Between 2018 and 2024, ARDA expanded its list of affiliated journals from 14 to 86, many of which were indexed in major academic databases. Some of these journals were later found to be hijacked — illegitimately revived after their original publishers stopped operating. It’s something we’ve seen happen often in our own industry (journalism), as bankrupt legitimate legacy newspapers have been bought by shady venture capital, only to hijack the established brands into spam and affiliate marketing magnets.”
Paper mills doubled their output therefore the scientific community’s retractions are now doubling every 3.5 years. It’s outpacing legitimate science. Here’s a smart quote that sums up the situation: “Truth seeking has always been expensive, whereas fraud is cheap and fast.”
Fraudulent science is incredibly harmful. It leads to a ripple effect that has lasting ramifications on society. An example is paper from the COVID-19 pandemic that said hydroxychloroquine was a valid treatment for the virus. It indirectly led to 17,000 fatalities.
AI makes things worse because the algorithms are trained on the bad science like a glutton on sugar. But remember, kids, don’t cheat.
Whitney Grace, December 15, 2025
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