Gustavo Monnerat/LinkedIn

May 10, 2026, 16:18

Gustavo Monnerat: How Thousands of Fake References Slipped Into Biomedical Literature

Gustavo Monnerat, Deputy Editor at The Lancet, shared a a post on LinkedIn:

“2.5 million biomedical papers scanned.

4,046 fabricated references found.

A new Lancet article examined PubMed papers from 2023 to early 2026 and found a problem scientific publishing can no longer treat as rare.

Key findings:

Across 97.1 million PMID-bearing verified references, the authors identified 4,046 fabricated references in 2,810 papers.
The proportion of affected papers rose from about 1 in 2,828 in 2023 to 1 in 277 in the first 7 weeks of 2026.
The fabricated-reference rate increased more than 12-fold, reaching 56.9 per 10,000 papers in early 2026.
98.4% of affected papers had received no publisher action at the time of the audit.

One example:

a 2025 surgical paper had 18 fabricated references among 30 verified references.

The citations were topically specific, attributed to real researchers, and carried plausible publication years.

But the cited studies did not exist.

What should the threshold be for journals: correction, expression of concern, or retraction when a paper contains fabricated references?

Ref:

Topaz et al.

Fabricated citations:

an audit across 2.5 million biomedical papers.

The Lancet, 2026.”

Gustavo Monnerat