While it's tempting to criticize the authors of the papers for having lax ethics, this quote gave me pause: "[Paper mills] sell these papers to e.g. medical do

While it's tempting to criticize the authors of the papers for having lax ethics, this quote gave me pause: "[Paper mills] sell these papers to e.g. medical doctors in China who need to have a scientific paper published in an international journal in order to get their MD, but who do not have any time in their educational program to actually do research." It's a typical case of unintended consequences. It probably seemed like a good idea to require prospective MDs to publish a paper in a scientific journal, but if the medical students don't have time to do the research, what are they supposed to do? Pay others to do the research for them? Maybe some believed that's what they did? See also: The Cobra Effect, Mechanism Design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design