Surge in fake citations uncovered by audit of 2.5 million biomedical science papers

Summary: Scientists recently checked 2.5 million medical papers to see if the research they linked to was real. They found a big problem: nearly 3,000 papers had fake references! These are links to studies that do not even exist. The problem is getting worse very fast. In 2025, there were 12 times more fake links than in 2023. Experts think artificial intelligence (AI) might be making up these fake studies. Researchers say this is just the "tip of the iceberg," meaning there are probably many more fake references out there hiding in medical journals.

For more details, see Nature at nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00748-w (opens in new tab)