A surge in fraudulent scientific practices is undermining medical research, impeding drug development, and endangering promising academic studies worldwide. With over 10,000 papers retracted last year, experts suspect this represents only a fraction of the pervasive scientific fraud occurring in laboratories and universities. 

Professor Munafo told the guardian: 

“If you have growing numbers of researchers who are being strongly incentivised to publish just for the sake of publishing, while we have a growing number of journals making money from publishing the resulting articles, you have a perfect storm.  

“That is exactly what we have now.”