One of my favorite scientific papers is Cyllage City COVID-19 Outbreak Linked to Zubat Consumption, which was published in March 2020 by the very real American Journal of Biomedical Science and Research.
That journal is one of many predatory "open-access" scientific journals that have no peer review process and let basically anybody publish their nonsense there for a fee. The paper was published as a trap to show how easy it is to get published by these kinds of predatory sham "science" journals.
The paper lists its co-authors as Nurse Joy, Prof. Elm, and Dr. Gregory House.
It cites papers such as "Make it Double: Coronavirus outbreak reaches Antarctica" by "J James" and "J Jessie" for "Rocket Science Monthly", and "Phobia of Bats and Its Applications in Criminal Justice" by "Wayne B" for "Gotham Forensics Quarterly", as well as real papers about fraudulent predatory journals.
"[...]To this literature we add a report from Cyllage City in the Kalos region, France,
[...] the outbreak is remarkable as no residents are known to have travelled to infected areas in recent months; however an unknown number of international visitors have passed through the city via the Connecting Cave east of the city linking to Routes 7 and 8 of the Kalos County highway network.
Epidemiologists believe it highly likely that a journal publishing this paper does not practice peer review and must therefore be predatory."
The article on the journal's page (x) has not been retracted yet, and I can see how the first two paragraphs create the illusion of it being legit.
But gods, the references








