Quality of scientific papers questioned as academics 'overwhelmed' by the millions published

It was, at first glance, just another scientific paper, one of the millions published every year, and destined to receive little to no attention outside the arcane field of biological signalling in stem cells destined to become sperm. But soon after the paper was published online, in the journal Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology, it found a global audience. Not all of the readers came for the science. The reason for its broader appeal? An eye-catching image, which depicted a rat sitting upright with an unfeasibly large penis and too many testicles. Its body parts were labelled with nonsense…