Fake References in Medical Papers are Skyrocketing

A reference-integrity audit of 2.5 million biomedical papers and 125.6 million references in PubMed Central identified 4,046 fabricated references across 2,810 papers after multi-database verification and filtering.

Fabrication rates rose markedly, from 1 in 2,828 papers in 2023 to 1 in 458 in 2025, a more than 12-fold increase overall. Most affected papers contained one or two fabricated references, and review articles showed higher fabrication rates than other article types.

Notably, 98.4% of affected papers had received no publisher action at the time of the audit, highlighting gaps in oversight. Read the study in Lancet here.