Of course the same thing is happening in the 'Western' world too, with a publication ratchet going on. New hire has 50 papers out? OK! The next pool of potential hires has 50, 55, 52 papers out, so obviously you take the 55 papers-person. You want outstanding people! Then the next hire needs 60 papers. And so on.

Paper mills are bad but mostly from the perspective of academic institutions trying to verify people's credentials/resumes. Paper mills aren't really that much of a concern in the sense of published research results being false in the way the article is talking about because people aren't really reading the papers they publish. In that sense it doesn't really matter if there are places where non-scientists need to get one paper published to check some box to get a promotion, because nobody is really considering those papers part of established scientific knowledge.

On the other hand, scientists intentionally (by actually falsifying data) or unintentionally (as a result of statistical effects of what is researched and what is published) publishing bogus results in journals that are considered legitimate which aren't paper mills actually causes real harm as a result of people believing the bogus results, and unfortunately the pressures that cause that (publishing papers quickly, getting publishable results, etc.) exist everywhere, and definitely not just in China, nor did they originate in China.

Let me give just one example of how prevalent the culture of fakeness has pervaded through China. Nowadays, because the economic decline, people are eating out less, and restaurants are getting less and less traffic. Therefore, they needed to cut costs. So some restaurants started using pre-packaged food, and just heat those up in the microwave and serve them up as cooked dishes. Because other restaurants couldn't survive without doing the same cost-cutting behavior, they've all started doing the same things. Thus, most restaurants in China are now serving pre-packaged food. And there's a backlash from consumers, so now even less people eat out. And then restaurants started using expired pre-packaged food. Oh, and because expired pre-packaged food has a tendency to cause diarrhea, some restaurants in China have started adding Loperamide into the dishes to prevent diarrhea.

Fake it until you make it out of China mentality.

Foreigner caught a Chinese couple scooping up gutter oil https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1eo2wmy/...

Gutter oil used to be a major issue in China but the Chinese government cracked down on it a lot a few years ago.

I recommend watching this video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G43wJ7YyWzM

I do believe that there exists an insane amount of (STEM) questions where there exist very good reasons to do research on - much, much more than is currently done.

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And by the way:

> This is what happens when Silicon Valley execs, trying to make their employees more replaceable, call for more STEM education

More STEM education does not make the employees more replaceable. The reason why the Silicon Valley execs call for more STEM education is rather that

- they want to save money training the employees,

- they want to save money doing research (let rather the taxpayer pay for the research).

So what you're saying is that they push for STEM education to make their employees more replaceable...?

A general rule of thumb is rather that better education and/or specialized knowledge makes employees nore productive, but also less replaceable.

Only when they are the only ones that have that knowledge, not when teaching it becomes rote.

> - they want to save money training the employees,

> - they want to save money training the employees,

> - they want to save money doing research (let rather the taxpayer pay for the research).

means they want to offload costs to the public in order to increase profits, which is what I said above.