Many of these fake papers are a major boon to the supplement industry.
Obscure supplements or herbal medicines are a common target for these papers. The more obscure the topic, the less likely the authors are to encounter conflicting results. So you end up with streams of papers showing that various herbal remedies or supplements show efficacy against COVID or cancer or other hot topic issues.
Supplement producers love this because it creates demand for their products. In some cases, I've been shocked to discover that the same researchers who published these papers are now marketing their own proprietary blend of those supplements. They create both the supply and the demand.
> In some cases, I've been shocked to discover that the same researchers who published these papers are now marketing their own proprietary blend of those supplements. They create both the supply and the demand.
Well, fakes aside, legitimate pharmaceutical researchers should also be expected to do this, right?
Not really, no. Once you have a compound that looks promising you then need to spend huge sums of your own money running a battery of human trials compelling enough to convince local regulators that your compound actually works and isn't incidentally harmful. Doing shoddy initial studies is just shooting yourself in the foot. Supplements are their own special area because they generally aren't regulated as pharmaceuticals.
Obscure supplements or herbal medicines are a common target for these papers. The more obscure the topic, the less likely the authors are to encounter conflicting results. So you end up with streams of papers showing that various herbal remedies or supplements show efficacy against COVID or cancer or other hot topic issues.
Supplement producers love this because it creates demand for their products. In some cases, I've been shocked to discover that the same researchers who published these papers are now marketing their own proprietary blend of those supplements. They create both the supply and the demand.