Hi guys! This post deviates from the usual 3d printing posts, but nevertheless an important issue in STEM, academia and beyond.

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What are zombie papers?

Zombie papers is coined by an independent science journalist and molecular biologist, Leonid Schneider. He has his blog here. Basically, papers that contains fraud, errors, irregularities and serious flaws are called "zombie papers".

Fraud may be suspicious data manipulation, basically data that look too perfect or data that is not reproducible and in come cases, plagiarism. According to Leonid Schneider, scientists who have "zombie papers" are called "zombie scientists". And their act is called scientific misconduct in academia.

Who actually track these papers and scientists?

Other than Leonid Schneider, Retractionwatch which is a group of science bloggers including Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky, who track and report on paper retractions and scientists world wide since 2010. On their website, they go by their great slogan - "Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process". And from their archives, we can see a list of world wide paper retractions and scientists who had committed similar acts.

Retraction watch, along with Leonid Schneider, are the rare gems in science journalism diligently reporting, standing against some of the giant scientific institutions and scientists. They reveal some of the science fraud stories that you might not hear in mainstream media.

What are the implications of zombie papers?

Some of the direct implications can be as small as just paper retractions, phd being revoked, termination of employment and diminished reputation.

The indirect implications which may even be bigger than you think are spread of incorrect information to the fellow scientists and the layman. It is a waste of term and resources to fellow scientists who try to perform the experiment and reproduce the results. And of course, for the layman who do not possess scientific and technical know-how and understanding, the spread of incorrect information can be very misleading especially in public health sector.

Most importantly, a published journal paper in Nature is a solid boost to a scientist's reputation and academia career. It represents trust in a particular scientist's technical expertise in that particular field. Unfortunately, trust can be taken for granted by a few handful of zombie scientists. A case below even led to loss of human lives.

Fraud big time with major implications

A very good example that zombie papers and such information is the case of Paolo Macchiarini, a surgeon and his patients. Paolo Macchiarini, a surgeon and professor with Karolinska Institute in Stockholm who was originally renowned in his academia work in synthetic organ transplants. Yet, under his treatment and operation, nine patients died from the surgery.

He had performed the surgery on them which was described in his papers without any prior animal testing.

Like a drama, he was accused of falsifying data in his stem cell research papers by his colleagues and also plagiarized data in one of his papers which resulted in retractions.

In fact, when his colleagues whistle-blew and tried to warn Karolinska Institute about his act, they were asked to "quiet down".

Just recently, Karolinska Institute announced that they are not renewing his employment contract which is due to expire November 2016.

The underlying issue: What drives science fraud?

Publish or perish is a common reason. But are there other reasons why scientists are doing it? Impressive resume? Securing a solid tenure? Risking their reputation? The peer pressure to publish first? Or are scientists such perfectionists?

Or maybe in some cases, they found out that it may be relatively easy to to manipulate results and get away with it, especially since there are no formal institutions policing such acts, and only that handful experts are only able to tell if a set of data is possible manipulated.

Or for that matter, in the first place, why did the paper pass the peer review stage? Is trust in Nature, Science and other reputable journal publishers slowly eroded?

Were authors' names and reputation possible big boost for a paper to pass the peer review easily?

So many questions and i don't have the answers.