Stanford University has detected a suspicious rise in “extremely productive” academics pumping out 60 research papers a year. The Stanford study raises concerns about the quality and reliability of the science being produced.
According to the Standford data, high-yield authors in Thailand jumped from just one in 2016 to 19 in 2022. High-yield authors also rose dramatically in Saudi Arabia, increasing from six to 69 over the same period.
“I suspect that questionable research practices and fraud may underlie some of the most extreme behaviors,” said study co-author John Ioannidis. “Our data provide a starting point for discussing these issues across all science.”
There is evidence science is becoming increasingly unreliable, and may even be mostly false. Study retractions have risen by 13,650 percent in the last two decades, and now number in the thousands per year. Science is also undergoing a replication or reproducibility crisis. This means most experiments cannot be successfully repeated when attempted by other researchers.
This affects not only “soft” sciences like psychology, where over 60 percent of research cannot be repeated, but also cancer research.
