The paper mills helping China commit scientific fraud

Few people embody the ideal of scientific excellence as much as Albert Einstein. Each year a Berlin-based foundation bearing his name hands out awards for the sort of research that might have made him proud. This week, the individual prize went to Elisabeth Bik, not a conventional boffin, but a sleuth – a dogged Dutch researcher who abandoned a career at a biomedical start-up for one exposing scientific fraud.

That the Einstein Foundation chose to award Bik is testament not only to the impact of her detective work, but also to the way an epidemic of fake science is shaking the scientific establishment. ‘I have a very strong sense that I’m right. I see these problems and I want to convince people there’s fraud in science,’ she said on receiving the award. ‘What fuels me is anger at people who cheat.’

Sometimes forgeries are so blatant they are comical.