Paper mill-derived cancer research: the improbability of prostate cancer in women, and ovarian and breast cancer in men

Abstract

There has been a recent burst of discovery of cancer-related papers apparent derived from paper mills. From dozens or more papers with multiple integrity concerns, three papers were selected to show what could be perceived as “unusual” findings, specifically the detection of prostate cancer in women, as well as ovarian and breast cancer in men. While the incidence of the former two is most likely impossible in biological females and males, respectively (i.e., absent transgender individuals), the last case is possible, but likely at a very low (~1%) incidence. However, all three papers, published in PubMed-indexed European Review for Medical and Pharmacological Sciences, display unusually high (> 50%) incidence rates of these cancers. Apart from the implausibility of these findings, one of the papers has already been retracted for integrity-related concerns, reducing the reliability of those findings. Paper mill-derived papers are a cancer in academic publishing, and absent industry knowledge of the sources of these paper mills, and their interaction with editors, journals and publishers, such instances will likely continue to increase. There should be serious civil and criminal penalties for such activities that purposefully defraud readers, other cancer researchers, and the public, by introducing information that could offer misleading clues about medical or health solutions to the dynamics and cure of cancer.