Part 3/13:
Over a period of ten months, they authored over twenty papers, of which seven were accepted and officially published in various "questionable" journals. Their strategy was simple yet profoundly revealing: they started with a conclusion they wanted the papers to support, then worked backward to craft supporting "evidence"—which was often completely fabricated and nonsensical. The process illuminated how peer review, supposedly a safeguard of scholarly integrity, had devolved into a rubber stamp for any idea that aligned with prevailing ideological trends.