Decline and fall

Thousands of academics are engaged in a surprising new business: searching through hundreds of thousands of papers looking for hints that they might be totally made up.

And though it might sound like a boring job, some say they are our last bastion of hope against an assault on our age-old trade in knowledge and ideas.

The culprits? "Paper mills." Whilst they may sound benign enough, these sinister new outfits make a profit from fabricating scientific research and spreading fraudulent data.

They have been traced back mainly to China, Iran and Russia, and can be dangerous - especially as these fake findings often concern the medical sphere.

Fraudulent papers frequently feature digitally altered "findings" which, though the trained scientific eye may identify them as fake, can be sophisticated enough to be virtually undetectable.

Because of this, nobody really knows how much new scientific output is actually fraudulent. Experts estimate that it is between 2% and 20% of new published papers, and China is one of the worst offenders.

But China's contribution to global research is also increasing - in 2021, Chinese papers made up 23% of all international output¹ - leading to concerns that we may be inundated with false information. China surpassed the US as the country with the number of most cited papers last year.

It could not have come at a more tense moment. Some experts believe that China is set to corner the market in new science, with a recent report claiming that Beijing is ahead in developing a staggering 37 out of 44 categories of technology.²

In 2021, China shocked the world by supposedly becoming the first to develop deadly hypersonicTravelling at speeds of more than five times the speed of sound (Mach 5). nuclear-capable missiles. Its recent advancements in nanotechnologyAs digital technology and robots get smaller and smaller, scientists are designing electronic tattoos to monitor patients, injectable sensors, and nanobots to help with post-surgery recovery., syntheticAn artificial substance or material. It is made by humans using chemical processes, rather than occurring naturally.  biology and space science have also been described as historic.

Yet between the West and China, trust is reaching a dangerous low amid its computer chip "Cold War" with America, as well as allegations of intellectual theft and espionageSpying..

In 2022 FBIThe Federal Bureau of Investigation, which investigates crimes on a national level in the USA. director Christopher Wray described espionage from China as the "greatest long-term threat" to the US economy, as statistics have shown that a new counterintelligence case against China is opened every 12 hours.

Some allege that Chinese researchers who work in overseas labs are stealing intellectual property to take back to China, allowing the country to bound ahead. Others suggest that Beijing's unwillingness to better regulate these "paper mills" shows that its government knows there is much to gain from dishonest practices.

Many lament that it has got to this point. China, regarded as one of the cradles of civilisation, is responsible for some of humanity's earliest innovations, many of which were spread to the world alongside physical trade on the infamous Silk RoadA network of Eurasian trade routes linking China to the West, running from the second century BC to the 15th Century AD. .

From our earliest history we have benefited from its inventions, which included a sophisticated system of traditional medicine and inventions such as the sundial, abacusA simple tool used for calculating sums by sliding beads across a frame., gunpowder and paper. China has been a historic trailblazer of human progress - now, some say, it has become our most significant barrier.

Yes: This is clearly a strategy to prevent other countries from developing technology to rival China's new inventions. Some fear it is a part of a plan to hold humanity back for China's own profit.

No: Many Western ideas about Chinese espionage and sabotage are completely overblown. We should not let paranoia over China's plans disrupt our rational thinking.

Or... World progress is about collaboration, and our failure to collaborate is a global problem that we are all responsible for. We have made progress into an economic competition rather than a collective and sacred historic goal.