In Pakistan, the military dictatorship in ~2002 decided they wanted to jump start academic research. The scientist who led this effort had the "brilliant" idea

In Pakistan, the military dictatorship in ~2002 decided they wanted to jump start academic research. The scientist who led this effort had the "brilliant" idea that the government pays professors per published paper, but decided there was no need to restrict this to publishing in high quality journals. Simultaneously, promotions were dependent on number of published papers. The end result was natural. People first started published in really low quality journals, then started plagiarizing high papers from others and submitting in lower quality journals. Then got smart, and created their own "fake" journals to publish their "fake" papers in. At the forefront of this corruption was the scientist himself [1]. Things have become dire. Recently, a famous university in Pakistan offered a candidate professor, a contract stating that they would hire him if the published ~10 papers a month. And the government money from that would be his salary. The point of the story is that fraudulent science is not often not just because people are "evil". It can emerge from bad incentives set up by governments or larger institutions. [1] https://loksujag.com/story/bentham-science-publishers-scam https://loksujag.com/story/bentham-science-publishers-scam