Isn't the population of China much bigger as well? Laws of percentages and what not can go along way. Has anyone displayed a percentage of rushed/inaccurate studies between countries to see if the lines normalize?
i saw such a chart a few days ago, specifically for withdrawn papers -- forgive me if i can't dig it up again but china made up something like 50% of the total number
Population of researchers != Population it's more than 4x as large in terms of population but only has ~25% more researchers while having around 50x the retractions.
> Isn't the population of China much bigger as well?
Yes, but official government stats have also been overstating the population a bit. I think it mostly affects the younger generation at present though.
If those certain countries have a very big population I'd say is more of a quantitative issue. If china had 10 scientists they couldn't pump as many papers, fake or good or not as if they're 1million scientists
