At this point there are multimillion dollar organized crime gangs penetrating every facet of science, research, citations, journals, peer review and poised to use AI in a tidal wave of paper mills which are completely overwhelming legitimate science. We are on the brink of complete loss of control over what it means to conduct science and all public trust.
Organized scientific fraud is growing at an alarming rate, study uncovers
Shouldn’t be too hard to spot, there was a lot of fraudulent studies during the COVID era with Ivermectin and other drugs. What researchers did was to ask for IPD data (original data), and it’s easy to tell if they made up the data, if they didn’t comply with handing it over… well that’s a clue as well.
It’s spreading and everywhere now. Scientific research paradigm as it stands now, is dying. Time for radical reform and rethinking of all incentive structures.
Science Scams are Spreading (Sabine Hossenfelder)
GPT5: “do a tidy transcript, summary and critique of”
Here’s a structured tidy transcript, summary, and critique of the video you shared:
Tidy Transcript (cleaned & condensed)0:00–0:45
Academic research is deteriorating rapidly. Organized fraud in science is spreading globally. Example: A particle physicist in Chile, part of CERN’s ATLAS collaboration, earned ~$319,000 in “publication bonuses” in 8 months since ATLAS papers appear in high-impact journals with thousands of co-authors.
0:51–1:43
Papermills—networks selling authorships or citations on scam papers, increasingly AI-written—originated in China/India but are now spreading west. A Ukrainian network sold 1,500 papers (2017–2025) with 4,500 authors. Other cases: Manchester student running a papermill; Hungarian postdocs publishing through one.
1:48–2:19
Poland: A Vice-Rector and science council head implicated in papermill-linked publications, resigned after retractions.
2:19–2:47
Spain: Rector of University of Salamanca had 75 papers retracted for running a “publication and citation factory,” pressuring collaborators to cite him and exploiting conference proceedings to inflate citation counts.
2:52–3:30
These activities spread because they’re profitable and not strictly illegal. Selling/buying authorships is not a crime unless public funds are misused. The main risk is reputational, but as this becomes normalized, accountability may blur.
3:35–4:12
Some cases do involve misuse of public money. Example: “Non-existent research network” siphoned $6.5M in research funding across US, Japan, Ireland, France. In Romania, four staff siphoned €2.5M of EU funds via fake travel claims.
4:18–4:57
This reveals a slow unravelling of academic research. Incentive structures built over the last 50 years are fundamentally broken, worsened by global connectivity and quantification of research output, which make gaming the system easier.
5:03–5:09
Prediction: Within a few years, academia’s collapse will be undeniable.
5:16–6:29
Closing note & sponsorship ad (Ground News).
SummaryMain Claim: Academic research is deteriorating, driven by systemic fraud, papermills, and perverse incentives.
Key Evidence:
Underlying Cause: Broken incentive structures (publication counts, impact factors, citation metrics, monetary bonuses).
Prediction: Academia is “falling apart” and within a few years the collapse will be obvious.
Tone: Alarmist but evidence-based, blending anecdotal scandal reports with structural critique.
CritiqueStrengths
Weaknesses
Overall Assessment
This is a sharp, provocative critique of academia’s perverse incentives and growing fraud industry (papermills, citation factories, fake networks). It raises real issues but does so in a way that risks sensationalism. The absence of deeper reform proposals and reliance on scandal cases makes it more of a wake-up call than a balanced analysis.
Do you want me to expand this into an academic-style “review and critique” (with references to studies on papermills, retraction trends, and incentive structures), or keep it in this journalistic summary style?
Given the speed at which AI crap can be produced, we should expect this in areas of information and research generation (in fact, with videos and other forms of data, perhaps all areas)…
This may be the number one challenge over the next decade or two; separating the wheat from the chaff, with a flood of “chaff” overwhelming all the systems.
AI Slop is everywhere…
Or, in other terms… AI could lead to the Enshittification of many areas of life…
The vid is a mere five minutes and 21 seconds. The last minute is for endorsement of a product she uses.
I am a fan of Sabine Hossenfelder. I prefer to listen to her, than read some AI transcript. One of the rare occasions where I prefer the vid than text.