Science is, as we all know, supposed to be self-correcting. Papers get reviewed, checked, challenged – and only then they get published. This is the theory, but the practice often looks different. Occasionally, the system does not just creak a little, it fails dramatically.
A well-known Hindawi journal had the reassuringly serious name “Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine”, eCAM for short. Between 2022 and 2024, the journal experienced one of the largest clean-ups in modern publishing: hundreds of papers were retracted from eCAM, and more than about 10,000 from the publisher’s full catalogue. The reason for these traumatic actions was that investigations had uncovered widespread manipulation of the publication process.
A big part of the story involves “paper mills.” These are commercial yet illegal businesses that will, for a fee, produce a scientific paper with your name on it. No need for actual experiments or real data or the arduous task of writing. Using a mix of recycled material, fabricated results, and increasingly AI-generated texts, these outfits can churn out papers that look perfectly respectable, at least until someone studies them a little more closely. Think of it as fast food for academic careers: quick, convenient, but not especially honest or good for long-term health.
Another key ingredient was the journal’s abundant use of “special issues.” These are themed collections of papers organised by “guest editors”, usually experts invited to oversee a niche topic. In theory, this can be a productive concept. In practice, it turned out to be a bit like handing over the keys to your flat to a bunch of fun-loving youngsters and hoping nobody throws a party.
Investigations found that, in some cases related to eCAM, the system had been even more seriously doctored. Fake or compromised editors, reviewer suggestions pointing to non-existent experts, and tightly coordinated “peer review rings” all meant that papers could sail through the process with both ease and speed but also without a tinge of credibility.
All this had been going on for years and had earned the publisher many millions – after all, eCAM asked hefty fees: the Article Processing Charge Hindawi asked for publishing a paper in eCAM fluctuated over the years, but during the height of the paper mill surge leading up to its closure, it reached $2,400 US per article. On my blog, I had repeatedly pointed out that something was seriously amiss with eCAM (e.g. here and here), yet no action was taken.
The scam eventually started to fall apart when research integrity teams and independent sleuths noticed odd and concerning patterns: identical images appearing in different papers, statistical results that didn’t add up, and peer reviews that seemed to happen at impossible speed. At that point, Wiley, which by then had acquired Hindawi, stepped in and took a much closer look. The result: mass retractions, suspended special issues, and a lot of nearly identical retraction notices politely stating that the “peer review process had been compromised.”
The fallout hit so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) hard. As we all know, this is an area that already faces plenty of skepticism; discovering that a sizeable chunk of its literature had effectively skipped quality control certainly did not help. More broadly, the episode exposed a structural problem: when publishing lots of papers becomes the goal – for journals and researchers alike – quality tends to become less and less important.
After all this, the journal eCAM ground to a halt. It stopped accepting new submissions, and its future as an active journal seems in doubt. Its archive is still online but now dotted with retraction notices that look like a graveyard of publishing failures. Meanwhile, the new publisher has generally become more cautious, tightening the processes, verifying reviewer identities more carefully, restricting special issues, and deploying tools to catch suspicious patterns early.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s that the system eventually did what it’s supposed to do: spot the problem and correct it. But in the case of eCAM, the correction came worryingly late. Perhaps the episode can serve as a reminder that science cannot run on trust alone; it must also rely on verification. And when that verification slips, things will go wrong at scale.
