Organized scientific fraud is growing at an alarming rate, study uncovers
https://phys.org/news/2025-08-scientific-fraud-alarming-uncovers.html
Excerpt:
From fabricated research to paid authorships and citations, organized scientific fraud is on the rise, according to a new Northwestern University study.
By combining large-scale data analysis of scientific literature with case studies, the researchers led a deep investigation into scientific fraud. Although concerns around scientific misconduct typically focus on lone individuals, the Northwestern study instead uncovered sophisticated global networks of individuals and entities, which systematically work together to undermine the integrity of academic publishing.
The problem is so widespread that the publication of fraudulent science is outpacing the growth rate of legitimate scientific publications. The authors argue these findings should serve as a wake-up call to the scientific community, which needs to act before the public loses confidence in the scientific process.
The study, “The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient and growing rapidly,” was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Science must police itself better in order to preserve its integrity,” said Northwestern’s Luís A. N. Amaral, the study’s senior author.
“If we do not create awareness around this problem, worse and worse behavior will become normalized. At some point, it will be too late, and scientific literature will become completely poisoned. Some people worry that talking about this issue is attacking science. But I strongly believe we are defending science from bad actors. We need to be aware of the seriousness of this problem and take measures to address it.”
.....Amaral and his team uncovered a widespread underground network operating within the shadows and outside of the public’s awareness.
“These networks are essentially criminal organizations, acting together to fake the process of science,” Amaral said. “Millions of dollars are involved in these processes.”
.....After analyzing the data, the team uncovered coordinated efforts involving “paper mills,” brokers and infiltrated journals. Functioning much like factories, paper mills churn out large numbers of manuscripts, which they then sell to academics who want to quickly publish new work.
These manuscripts are mostly low quality—featuring fabricated data, manipulated or even stolen images, plagiarized content and sometimes nonsensical or physically impossible claims.
“More and more scientists are being caught up in paper mills,” Amaral said. “Not only can they buy papers, but they can buy citations. Then, they can appear like well-reputed scientists when they have barely conducted their own research at all.”
.....Amaral, Richardson and their collaborators found fraudulent networks use several key strategies:
Groups of researchers collude to publish papers across multiple journals. When their activities are discovered, the papers are subsequently retracted;
Brokers serve as intermediaries to enable mass publication of fraudulent papers in compromised journals;
Fraudulent activities are concentrated in specific, vulnerable subfields;
Organized entities evade quality-control measures, such as journal de-indexing.
Sometimes these organizations go around established journals altogether, searching instead for defunct journals to hijack. When a legitimate journal stops publishing, for example, bad actors can take over its name or website. These actors surreptitiously assume the journal’s identity, lending credibility to its fraudulent publications, despite the actual publication being defunct.
“This happened to the journal HIV Nursing,” Richardson said. “It was formerly the journal of a professional nursing organization in the U.K., then it stopped publishing, and its online domain lapsed. An organization bought the domain name and started publishing thousands of papers on subjects completely unrelated to nursing, all indexed in Scopus.”
“Brokers connect all the different people behind the scenes,” Amaral said. “You need to find someone to write the paper. You need to find people willing to pay to be the authors. You need to find a journal where you can get it all published. And you need editors in that journal who will accept that paper.”
.....”If we’re not prepared to deal with the fraud that’s already occurring, then we’re certainly not prepared to deal with what generative AI can do to scientific literature,” Richardson said.
“We have no clue what’s going to end up in the literature, what’s going to be regarded as scientific fact and what’s going to be used to train future AI models, which then will be used to write more papers.”
“This study is probably the most depressing project I’ve been involved with in my entire life,” Amaral said. “Since I was a kid, I was excited about science. It’s distressing to see others engage in fraud and in misleading others. But if you believe that science is useful and important for humanity, then you have to fight for it.”
Wait, Is That a Kaaba at Ground Zero?
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/kaaba-ground-zero (has paywall)
https://jihadwatch.org/2025/08/wait-is-that-a-kaaba-at-ground-zero
https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2025/08/04/wait-is-that-a-kaaba-at-ground-zero-n4942402
Excerpt:
Did the jihadis get their victory monument after all?
Tablet magazine published a lengthy (over 8,000 words) and thought-provoking article Wednesday calling attention to a startling fact: “a modernist version of the Kaaba, the distinctive cubelike shrine at the heart of the Islamic faith,” now stands “adjacent to the footprint of the Twin Towers, which were destroyed by al-Qaida terrorists on 9/11.” This cube-shaped “not only reproduces the form of the Kaaba, but also slyly replicates several of the distinctive features of the chief shrine of Islam, including its fabric covering, known as the Kiswa. The building is also tilted at an angle to its surroundings, so that one corner points directly toward Mecca.”
.....The plan was to build a 16-story mega-mosque at the principal site of the 9/11 attacks. The Times, which enthusiastically supported the project, quoted the public face of the initiative, the sinister-visaged imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, explaining what it was all about: “A presence so close to the World Trade Center, ‘where a piece of the wreckage fell,’ said Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the cleric leading the project, ‘sends the opposite statement to what happened on 9/11.’ ‘We want to push back against the extremists,’ added Imam Feisal, 61.”
.....And yet now, there is this Kaaba-shaped building, the strangely-named Perelman Center, which opened on Sept. 13, 2023. The building does bear a striking resemblance to the cube-shaped building in Mecca that Muslims circumambulate during their required pilgrimage to that city. Those who would discount the fact that “the building is also tilted at an angle to its surroundings, so that one corner points directly toward Mecca” on the grounds that virtually every four-cornered building is likely to have one corner pointing somewhere toward Mecca have not paid sufficient attention to aerial photographs (Tablet mag supplies one) showing that the building is oddly skewed off its foundations, as if its designers meant for it to point in a particular direction.
When the Perelman Center opened, the New York Times’ architecture critic, Michael Kimmelman, called it “the most glamorous civic building to land in New York in years,” as well as a “retort to terrorism.” Kimmelman also noted that “its architect is Joshua Ramus. He refers to the building as a ‘mystery box,’ alluding to the three exquisitely engineered, shape-shifting theaters tucked inside it.” Kimmelman also noted, “if you look closely, you may notice that the building’s footprint is oriented at a slight angle to the skyscrapers around it. A serendipity of the underground engineering, the angle is a tad irreverent,” and that “at ground zero, irreverence is new and good.”
..... Feisal Abdul Rauf and his shady developer. Sharif el-Gamal, didn’t get their Ground Zero Mosque. But did they get an Islamic shrine nevertheless? Do they understand the Perelman Center as a sign of Islam’s victory over the Great Satan on Sept. 11, 2001? Or do the Perelman Center’s developers see it as a gesture of good will, and a tacit request please not to do it again? One thing is certain: No reporter will ever ask anyone involved what they were thinking when they constructed this peculiar building.
Whatever the building at Ground Zero really is, the establishment media won’t tell you the facts about it.