Low-quality papers based on public health data are flooding the scientific literature

Naddaf, Miryam

3 min read Original article ↗
  • NEWS

The appearance of thousands of formulaic biomedical studies has been linked to the rise of text-generating AI tools.

By

  1. Miryam Naddaf

Data from five large open-access health databases are being used to generate thousands of poor-quality, formulaic papers, an analysis has found. Its authors say that the surge in publications could indicate the exploitation of these databases by people using large language models (LLMs) to mass-produce scholarly articles, or even by paper mills — companies that churn out papers to order.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-02241-2

References

  1. Spick, M. et al. Preprint at medRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.07.07.25331008 (2025).

  2. Suchak, T. et al. PLoS Biol. 23, e3003152 (2025).

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