Fake cures, untrue claims about alleged risks of vaccination, and more have been helped to proliferate, and been given a thin veneer of plausibility, by the rise of the ‘predatory journal.’

The world now has roughly 10,000 sources of misinformation dressed up to look respectable. Though they superficially appear to have scientific authority, for years they’ve made money publishing false and even absurd findings — misleading to the uninformed, but not necessarily dangerous.

Then COVID-19 came along.

Fake cures, untrue claims about alleged risks of vaccination, and more have been helped to proliferate, and been given a thin veneer of plausibility, by the rise of the “predatory journal.”

Take, for instance, one website that published claims that hydroxychloroquine is effective against COVID-19. It was exposed when it also published a satirical study submitted by the “Institute of Quick and Dirty Science,” claiming hydroxychloroquine could prevent scooter accidents in Marseille. Yet the original paper remains online.

Such publications are called predators because they exploit junior academics who need to publish their work to boost their careers, but haven’t done any. Instead, they pay publishers hundreds or thousands of dollars to publish fictitious or low-quality studies so that they can say, “Look, dean, a journal published my work!”

Proper COVID-19 research circulates through science journals, sober and expensive publications where scientists announce their findings,...

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