Its odd how I viewed academia as a beautiful place where people were judged by merit not by politics. Then I joined it and realized its even more cutthroat than corporate politics, I guess you cant escape human fallibility no matter the system since all systems are reflections of human nature.

Lots of industries these days seem to be rife with fraud and corruption.

In Canada the education system was abused as a immigration path, in part because the schools were greedy and corrupt.

It's gonna get worse as LLMs enable "scientists" to publish with a higher frequency and less work.

How are they generating a profit?

The article hints that medical residents are a large source and it could be effects like competition and visas… does that account for the rate of growth?

Are these unscrupulous editors making “payola” or something?

This is more concerning than the usual paper mills as the crap papers are published in otherwise legitimate journals. The pure paper mills are less destructive as people are much less likely to read and use those papers. But if you have ever growing numbers of crap papers mixed in regular journals that will be a problem.

Nobody cares. State pays the salaries, BS conferences, BS journals. Everybody is happy, no one can be fired. As long as stats look good (R&D per capita, publication, science indexes etc. ) gravy train will move on.