[sgt101]

I wrote a series of long replies, but then read this blog that says things that I think quite well.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2025/02/17/do...

I am afraid that there is, likely, a correlation between publication rate and fraud. I agree that a very high publication rate doesn't necessarily mean fraud, but I am afraid that it does cast suspicion, in my mind, on the totality of the output of the author.

In my field I do know some legitimately high output authors. I know a lot of authors who think that they are legitimately high output, when in fact they are simply gaming the system. The sad thing is that they don't know better. I know a lot of people who believe that they have no option but to go with the flow as well - but know perfectly well that they are acting badly.

This is not just a question of academic morals. There are children who today will receive medicines that have no value, and may harm them, because of this practice. There are lines of research that will lead no where and produce no value that are being funded because of this practice. There are lines of research that would provide significant societal benefit that are not being funded because of this practice.

[dahart]

You’re jumping to some pretty big and possibly unsupported conclusions about citation gaming, which is what that blog post is about. People gaming citations are likely trying to fly under the radar and don’t want to draw public attention. Maybe also pay attention to what fields these are in too; gaming in social science might be less impactful than gaming in medicine. One of the examples in the blog post you cited was ghost authors in medical journals which means people who contributed but were not listed; this is almost the opposite problem of what you’re worrying about and it does not amount to bad science.

Medicines aren’t created from the results of a single paper, especially an obscure one with unexplained obscure citations. There are checks and balances. Medicines go through trials which don’t depend on citations. We’ve had ineffective medicines in the past, and it’s happened for other reasons. Notably, consider that the portion of ineffective and actively harmful medications were dramatically higher 50 and 100 years ago than today. If you’re worried about the effectiveness of medicines, then spend your limited time worrying about the anti-vax crowd. They are doing far more damage than people gaming academic citations.

There will always be lines of research that lead nowhere, that’s an inherent feature of the system. Experimental research into unknown topics carries risk, and it should, otherwise it’s not research. If we knew the answer, then we wouldn’t need research.

For the same reason, there will also always be lines of research that don’t get funded. Citation gaming might have a small effect, but there are dozens of other ways human behavior affects what gets funded. And things that work tend to attract people that feel strongly and tend to attract research, so citation gaming doesn’t necessarily lead to strong research getting pushed out.

Gaming of papers is definitely a problem for academics and their careers, and it’s a problem that does need to be fixed, but it’s premature to think the sky is falling. Good science isn’t ending just because some people do bad or mediocre science.