I’ve always wondering what is the ratio of peer-reviewed scientific publications that just bring nothing really new to the field. Also, what could be the ratio of fake data being published every year? 

Those questions have been bugging me for the last couple of weeks. Ok, I don’t pretend that my papers are among the greatest ever published, however, the data I present are genuine and I always try to have a thorough analysis of a given question.

I’m writing this, because lately I came across a lot of papers that just garbage inaccurate to me. In no specific order, it can be: recycling old data into new one, controls experiments are missing or inaccurate, data too perfect to be true, writing a whole paper with experiments that just bring nothing new to the field, among others….

There is so many journals out there that it is somewhat easy to get a paper publish. If it failed to one journal, we just have to send it to another journal with a slightly lower impact factor. Even if in general, a correlation exists between impact factor and quality however, high impact factor journals are not immune of bad papers.

Nowadays, it is so tough to get funded that it had raised the bar very high in term of publications. A PI and a lab have to produce a lot of papers. Unfortunately it tends to seriously impact the quality, enhance the tendency of over-interpreting the data or fake them. I think the whole thing is definitively not moving in the right direction and that’s made me sad/angry.