Hooray, science is alive – albeit in a secondhand store. Welcome to the glorious age of "paper mills": factories for useless studies that aren't even worth the effort of shredding. The business model? Quite simple: Desperate academics, desperate to get their name on something, encounter shady agencies that provide them with the academic veneer – for cash, of course.
Demand is booming, waste production is growing exponentially. Every year and a half, the number of scientific spotlight dummies doubles. Quality? Zero. Scientific value? Substandard. But hey, the main thing is that it's published.
Researchers in the hamster wheel – with paper trophies
The victims aren't just readers who stumble across worthless data garbage. No, it's also real scientists who have to waste their time sifting through this fake stuff. Welcome to the academic hamster wheel: less research, more disposing of other people's trash.
Years ago, Sydney cancer researcher Jennifer Byrne stumbled upon such a cheap imitation of her own work. At first uninteresting, then suspicious, and finally obvious: systematic fraud. Since then, she's been playing Sherlock Holmes in a lab coat, chasing after the scientific waste producers.
AI – the new ghostwriter of nonsense
Of course, artificial intelligence can't be left out. Since ChatGPT and others have gotten involved, the numbers have exploded even faster. Algorithms now churn out pseudo-studies faster than peer reviewers can drink coffee. Scientific fast food: cheap, hollow, and guaranteed to have no nutritional value.
Publishers: Profiteers in the guise of science
And the publishers? Are they playing along? After all, the cash register rings with every submitted work – regardless of whether it comes from real sweat or from a digital copy-paste toilet. Quality assurance? Oh well, that just hurts the margins.
Conclusion: avalanche of garbage in the name of knowledge
The solution? According to Byrne: independent oversight. Sounds good, but will likely be lost in the chorus of academic money-spending. Until then, we can watch as science drowns in an ocean of PDF garbage.
The new formula is: Knowledge = Cash + Copy-Paste. Knowledge? None.
"Dravens Tales from the Crypt" has been enchanting for over 15 years with a tasteless mixture of humor, serious journalism - for current events and unbalanced reporting in the press politics - and zombies, garnished with lots of art, entertainment and punk rock. Draven has turned his hobby into a popular brand that cannot be classified.
My blog was never designed to spread news, let alone get political, but with current affairs I just can't help but capture information here that is otherwise censored on all other channels. I am aware that the design page may not seem "serious" to many in this regard, but I will not change this to please the "mainstream". Anyone who is open to non-state-compliant information sees the content and not the packaging. I've tried enough to provide people with information over the last 2 years, but quickly noticed that it never matters how it's "packaged", but what the other person's attitude towards it is. I don't want to put honey on anyone's mouth to meet expectations in any way, so I'll keep this design because hopefully at some point I'll be able to stop making these political statements, because it's not my goal to go on like this forever 
I leave it up to everyone how they deal with it. However, you are welcome to simply copy and distribute the content, my blog has always been under the WTFPL license.
It's hard for me to describe what I'm actually doing here, DravensTales has become a culture blog, music blog, shock blog, tech blog, horror blog, fun blog, a blog about found items on the internet, internet bizarre, trash blog, art blog, water heater, zeitgeist blog over the years , Scrap blog and grab bag blog called. Everything that is right ... - and yet not. The main focus of the blog is contemporary art, in the broadest sense of the word.
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