The surge is still worrying though. 0.1% of 2.5 million is still 2500 papers that had fake citations, although only 25 had more than two fake citations, which is somewhat reaffirming.

Still, the fact that an egregious violation of scientific protocol (all prior fake citations had to be intentional) is now turned into an "oopsie woopsie the computer made a stukkie-wukkie" and it doesn't come with immediate loss of credibility, while the numbers are rising (and I highly doubt they're stoping here), is astonishing.