Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Publisher flags papers found by university to involve misconduct more than a year ago
• The dean who came to visit – and added dozens of authors without their knowledge
• Exclusive: Wiley journal editor under investigation for duplicate publications

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 48,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 250 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List — or our list of nearly 100 papers with evidence they were written by ChatGPT?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

• “Little change in Japan’s research sector 10 years after stem cell fraud.”
• “Embattled Harvard honesty professor accused of plagiarism.”
• “Fabrication in a study about honesty: A lost episode of columbo illustrating how forensic statistics is performed.”
• “A key chemistry journal disappeared from the web. Others are at risk.”
• “Things we can learn from the ongoing Heterocycles debacle.”
• “Scientific publishers *not* adding value.”
• “Introducing Synchronous Robustness Reports: Guidelines for Journals.”
• “Stanford’s Faculty Senate Condemned Scott Atlas’s Covid Views. Now They Might Take It Back.”
• “COI works both ways: Investigation of misconduct by an independent research integrity organization is the way to go.”
• “Is ChatGPT corrupting peer review? Telltale words hint at AI use.”
• “Three ways ChatGPT helps me in my academic writing.”
• “We propose an algorithm to identify the papers with the highest quality from a large number of submissions.”
• “You may have come across equally troubling papers in your field. Don’t remain silent.”
• “The Master’s thesis of Health Minister Ingvild Kjerkol has been rejected by the complaints board at Nord University, NRK has been informed.”
• “Journal editors probed on ‘relationship with government.’”
• “Social science impact demands faster publishing and more reproducibility.”
• “[I]nvestigation reveals how superconductivity physicist faked blockbuster results.”
• “‘Star’ neuroscientist faked data in paper and grant applications, U.S. government finds.”
• “Publishing negative results is good for science,” writes Elisabeth Bik.
• “‘Weaponization of Plagiarism’ or Rigorous Standards Behind Provost’s Ouster?”
• “Netflix fossil researcher accused of ‘exploiting preprint shortcut.'”
• “Generative AI firms should stop ripping off publishers and instead work with them to enrich scholarship.
• “Jakarta investigates academics in ‘people trafficking’ probe.”
• “The changing landscape of UK learned society publishing.”
• “Physiology journal mandates sex and gender equality checks.”
• “Ekiti university sanctions professor over alleged plagiarism.”
• “On the Dearth of Retractions in Social Work.”
• “All authors responsible for research misconduct in Sweden.”
• “Four years later, chloroquine boosters face limited accountability.”
• “International multi-stakeholder consensus statement on clinical trial integrity.”
• “Authorship conflicts in academia: an international cross-discipline survey.”
• “Is Italy struggling with maintaining high level of research integrity?”
• “Mega-authorship implications: How many scientists can fit into one cell?”

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Chief researcher at national Japanese institute has paper retracted for faking data
• Exclusive: ‘Bust Size and Hitchhiking’ author to earn four more expressions of concern
• Paper claiming vaping tops nicotine gum for smoking cessation retracted from JAMA journal
• High-profile ob-gyn accused of duplicating data threatens to sue critic
• Embattled researcher Didier Raoult earns more than 100 expressions of concern and another retraction
• Cureus reviewing paper alleged to plagiarize Lancet article

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 48,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 250 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List — or our list of papers with evidence they were written by ChatGPT?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

• “FDA describes ‘objectionable conditions’ at New York State Psychiatric Institute.”
• “The ethical and social effects of the obsession over Journal Impact Factor.”
• “Impact factors are outdated, but new research assessments still fail scientists.”
• “Nobel Prize winner acknowledges errors in three more papers.”
• Moses Bility, a former professor at the University of Pittsburgh who sued the institution for racial discrimination and retaliation has had most, but not all, of his complaints dismissed. Bility is now at Howard University.
• “Drug Company’s Libel Lawsuit Against Scientists Dismissed.” The magistrate judge has a PhD in zoology.
• “Retractions in arts and humanities: an analysis of the retraction notices.”
• “Notre Dame reports 75 lab mice died after dose doubled in drug research. Feds alerted.”
• “It’s Ariely time! They had a preregistration but they didn’t follow it.”
• “Uncertainty is Science’s Super Power. Make It Yours, Too.”
• “Empowering Student Authorship in Synthetic Biology.”
• “China’s universities just grabbed 6 of the top 10 spots in one worldwide science ranking – without changing a thing.”
• “AI reveals huge amounts of fraud in medical research.”
• “All articles published in the Future Healthcare Journal authored by Jeannie Watkins should have stated as a declaration of interest that she is a director of the recruitment organisation PAs Transforming Healthcare (PATH) with a 10% share holding.”
• Experts worry Francesca Gino’s lawsuit for defamation will silence critics.
• Researchers “found an issue with a specific type of brain imaging study.” Then the backlash started.
• Sleuth Nick Wise is a winner of the 2024 Dorothy Bishop Prize. More about his work here.
• How often are retracted papers in orthopedics still cited?
• “Navigating the Retraction Minefield in China and Beyond: A Need for Systemic Changes and Increased Focus on Researcher Well-Being.”
• “A structured, journal-led peer-review mentoring program enhances peer review training.”
• “Black Scholars Face Anonymous Accusations in Anti-DEI Crusade.”
• “Personal Misconduct Elicits Harsher Professional Consequences for Artists (vs. Scientists).”
• “Should research administrators be regulated as carefully as researchers?”
• “In a bold bid to avoid open-access fees, Gates foundation says grantees must post preprints.”
• “Anthropologists take up arms against ‘race science.’”
• “Scientific fraud is so shocking because we do not normally assume a researcher has made up or altered data.”
• “The impact of researchers’ perceived pressure on their publication strategies.”
• “It’s a terrifying conversation, where he lays bare the outright fraud in medical publishing.” Our Ivan Oransky appears on the PicPod podcast.
• “FoSci —  The Emerging Field of Forensic Scientometrics.”
• “Should publishers flag replication failures in the same way they flag retractions?”
• “Daily Caller Retracts Article That Launched Phony Easter Outrage Cycle.”

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Following mass resignation, obstetrics journals place editor’s notes on studies

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 47,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 250 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List — or our new list of papers with evidence they were written by ChatGPT?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

• “‘If Only She Could Have Been Stronger’: Miami Trial Fraud Leads to Prison, Personal Loss.”
• “Journal editors are resigning en masse: what do these group exits achieve?”
• A preprint estimates “at least 60,000 papers…were LLM-assisted.”
• “Legislator pushing anti-vax bill admits cited source was retracted from scientific journal.” Here’s that source.
• “The bottom line is that journals are not equipped with their volunteer editors and reviewers, and non-subject matter expert staff to police the world’s scientific enterprise.” A response from Anna Abalkina.
• “Publishers must own their past mistakes, accept that there will be mistakes in the future, and see retractions as best practice when it comes to dealing with published fraudulent articles.”
• “The Feds Want More Oversight of Scientific Research. Universities Are Fighting Back.”
• What should the annual budget of the U.S. Office of Research Integrity be?
• “Scientists oppose retractions for racism, sexism and fraud.”
• “It is time to stop the weaponization of the footnote.”
• “Fourth Black Female Harvard Scholar Accused of Plagiarism Amid Assault on DEI Initiatives.”
• “Academic publishing requires linguistically inclusive policies.”
• “When it is and isn’t OK to recycle text in scientific papers.”
• “[T]here is low-quality work everywhere you look, the peer-review system has long outlived its utility, and academic publishing is a dumpster fire.”
• “Have AI-Generated Texts from LLM Infiltrated the Realm of Scientific Writing?”
• “Tweeting your research paper boosts engagement but not citations.”
• “The Case for a Peer Review Market.”
• Where do mass retractions leave Frontiers’ image?
• “Nobel Prize winner’s paper to be corrected, according to co-author.”
• A decade-plus of a perplexing “withdrawal” policy at Elsevier, in a thread.
• “How rightwing groups used junk science to get an abortion case before the US supreme court.” Including now-retracted papers.
• Open retraction data: A conversation about Crossref’s acquisition of the Retraction Watch Database.
• “[A]ll the stupid things that researchers say in order to deflect legitimate criticism.”
• Fun with authorship.
• Retractions in pharmacology.
• “Sweden Says Windpipe Surgeon Can Serve Prison Term In Spain.”
• “UW-Madison’s leading DEI scholar accused of decades of research misconduct.”
• “The Top Italian Scientists and their Journal.” Featuring some familiar names from Retraction Watch.
• “In published papers, authorship attribution and disclosure of funding support have emerged, oddly and unexpectedly, as elements of government enforcement in the ‘foreign influence’ area.”
• “Analysis of Indian Retracted Publications: A Study Based on Scopus Data.”
• “Can ChatGPT predict article retraction based on Twitter mentions?”
• “Virologist who was fired from research laboratory in Canada over security threat resurfaces in China.”
• “Two studies fail to replicate ‘holy grail’ DIANA fMRI method for detecting neural activity.”

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Do some IQ data need a ‘public health warning?’ A paper based on a controversial psychologist’s data is retracted
• Controversial pyramid paper retracted when authors turn out to have radiocarbon-dated nearby dirt
• Exclusive: PLOS ONE to correct 1,000 papers, add author proof step
• Paper cited by article at center of lawsuit for criticizing Splenda earns an expression of concern

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 47,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 250 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List — or our new list of papers with evidence they were written by ChatGPT?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

• “More Studies by Columbia Cancer Researchers Are Retracted: The studies, pulled because of copied data, illustrate the sluggishness of scientific publishers to address serious errors, experts said.”
• “We are in the middle of an epidemic of scientific fraud that is seriously compromising research.”
• A study finds that “publications citing retracted articles were more often retracted.”
• “If it’s the first time you’ve seen a really weird paper get published, I can see why it would capture your attention.” But “it’s all sort of mind-numbingly routine at this point.”
• “When I see fields that don’t have as many retractions, I’m reasonably sure that’s because nobody is looking.” Two BBC appearances by our Ivan Oransky (starting at ~46:00) and here at ~40:00.
• “Response to: ‘Bad bibliometrics don’t add up for research or why research publishing policy needs sound science.'” The strain saga continues.
• “UCLA Punished a Prominent Scientist for ‘Destructive and Harmful Conduct.’ She Says It’s ‘Unjust Persecution.’”
• “Stanford Math-Education Expert Has ‘Reckless Disregard for Accuracy,’ Complaint Alleges.”
• “Guest opinion: Scientific fraud puts Utah children’s safety at risk.”
• “The Latest ‘Crisis’ — Is the Research Literature Overrun with ChatGPT- and LLM-generated Articles?”
• “Lack of experimentation has stalled the debate on open peer review.”
• “Is AI ready to mass-produce lay summaries of research articles?”
• “Ending profiteering from publicly-funded research: Tackling the academic publishing oligopoly.”
• “$160K Libel Verdict for Ex-Student Based on Professor’s Research Misconduct Allegations.”
• “Drug company and former director are convicted of submitting falsified data to MHRA.”
• “Superconductor Scientist Engaged in Research Misconduct, Probe Finds.”
• Our Ivan Oransky appears on the Unleashed podcast.
• “An Influential Economics Forum Has a Troubling Surplus of Trolls.” A story on criticisms on the site in 2016.
• “Academics boycott Wiley gender journal after ‘anti-woke’ shift.”
• “The aspiring rector who wrote four paragraphs and cited himself 100 times.” Our coverage from 2022.
• What is publication integrity, “why does it matter, how it is safeguarded and how could we do better?”
• “Monitoring AI-Modified Content at Scale: A Case Study on the Impact of ChatGPT on AI Conference Peer Reviews.”
• “Universities need to stop hiding from research integrity problems,” says the editor in chief of Science. We and others agree.
• “Participant Fraud in Virtual Qualitative Substance Use Research.”
• “Retracted research papers not a concern, says deputy minister.”
• “David versus Goliath: Early career researchers in an unethical publishing system.”
• “Washington Monthly publishes Israeli writer’s coexistence piece retracted by leftist literary journal Guernica.”

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Misspelled cell lines take on new lives — and why that’s bad for the scientific literature
• Journal blacklists doctor in Pakistan ‘out of an abundance of caution’
• Up to one in seven submissions to hundreds of Wiley journals flagged by new paper mill tool
• Rejected paper pops up elsewhere after one journal suspected manipulation

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 47,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 250 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

• An Elsevier paper written by ChatGPT goes viral.
• “Harvard Probe Finds Honesty Researcher Engaged in Scientific Misconduct.” More here.
• “Superconductivity scandal: the inside story of deception in a rising star’s physics lab.”
• “These investigations always take too long, are shrouded in secrecy, and lead to public statements crafted by attorneys and crisis consultants that are evasive and incomplete.” Indeed.
• “Australia’s chief scientist takes on the journal publishers gatekeeping knowledge.”
• “Five years ago, Sara Farshchi completed her PhD in Linguistics at Lund University. Now her research has been published under the names of three Ukrainian researchers.”
• “I sent my data to the original journal, and they didn’t care at all. It was very hard to get it published somewhere where you thought the reader of the original paper would find it.”
• “Citation metrics and strategic mutations of scientific research: narratives and evidence.”
• “Using automated analysis of the bibliography to detect potential research integrity issues.”
• Among 6200 medical residents in China, “53.7% of participants admitted to having committed at least one form of research misconduct.” A preprint we featured in October is published.
• “She said the output-focused KPIs have led to an overemphasis on the production of publications in academic journals.”
• “Figures just out reveal that the US National Science Foundation (NSF) received 54 allegations of research misconduct in the 2022–23 financial year.”
• “Peer Review and Scientific Publishing Are Faltering.”
• Court upholds sanctions against University of Northern Iowa professor.
• “And so when they see contradictory result after contradictory result, I don’t blame the public for losing trust in science, because we have not worked to build our own trustability, because we are not policing fraud enough.”
• “More published research should be debunked and retracted, watchdogs say.”
• Not just science: “Princess Catherine Apologizes, Saying She Edited Image.”
• “Papermills prefer Open Access.”
• “‘Damning’ FDA inspection report undermines positive trial results of possible Alzheimer’s drug.”
• “[T]he scientific community writ large need[s] to redouble their commitment to conduct, communicate, critique, and—when an error is found, or misconduct detected—correct the published record in ways that both merit and earn public confidence.” 
• “AI-generated rat genitalia: Swiss publisher of scientific journal under pressure.”
• “Automatically listing senior members of departments as co-authors is highly prevalent in health sciences: meta-analysis of survey research.”
• “I don’t think we should ‘combat’ predatory publishers: An interview with Jeffrey Beall.”
• “If we discourage negative reviews, positive ones will lose meaning.”
• “Integrity Issues Rampant in Alzheimer’s Research, Say Investigators.”
• “Journals must expand access to peer review data.”
• “Plagiarism row brews in Pondicherry University.”
• “How Science Sleuths Track Down Bad Research.”
• “Predatory publishing goes to the dogs.” It’s not the first time.

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• KPMG government report on research integrity makes up reference involving Retraction Watch founders
• Cancer paper earns expression of concern nearly two years after investigation report is revealed
• Editorial board members resign from obstetrics journal to protest handling of allegations
• Iran COVID-vaccine paper with ‘serious flaws’ retracted
• How a sleuth’s email turned a correction into a retraction

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 47,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 250 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

• “The dark world of ‘citation cartels.'”
• “Virtues and vocation: An historical perspective on scientific integrity in the twenty-first century.”
• Another Nobelist retracts a paper.
• University of Pennsylvania pays back $1.7 million after misconduct.
• “Dentist José Luis Calvo Guirado joins the top 20 scientists whose studies have been retracted.”
• “Didier Raoult and his institute found fame during the pandemic.” Then critics dug in.
• “Science integrity sleuths welcome legal aid fund for whistleblowers.”
• “Science, integrity and ethics: a survey reveals the concerns of Inserm researchers.”
• “Alzheimer’s scientist to correct two papers because of data inconsistencies.”
• “Analysis of justification for and gender bias in author order among those contributing equally.”
• “Two Canadian scientists were fired in 2021 for passing information to China.”
• “How to avoid being duped by predatory journals.
• “Whistleblower’s decades long fight to save patients from dangerous research.”
• “Fake academic papers are on the rise: why they’re a danger and how to stop them.”
• “Publish and perish: New issues in publication ethics.” Or not so new.
• “Nature publishes too few papers from women researchers — that must change.”
• “Scientists are already using image-generating models to jazz up papers and presentations. But some say these tools could harm research.”
• “Generative artificial intelligence and scientific publishing: urgent questions, difficult answers.”
• “U.K. science minister pays damages to researcher she accused of airing ‘extremist’ views.”
• “Influencers on social media may cite VAERS data as evidence supporting misinformed conclusions about vaccine safety.”
• “MeToo paper investigated as academic threatens legal action: Article on MeToo movement in Iran named researcher, who denies wrongdoing, as ‘serial abuser.’”
• “Who is at fault when people fake scientific research?”
• “Incorrectly conducted statistical analyses appear to be one of the primary factors propagating misinformation, including skepticism toward vaccinations.”
• “Emerging plagiarism in peer-review evaluation reports: a tip of the iceberg?”
• “Who fakes cancer research? Apparently, lots of people.”
• “Columbia University Hospital DEI Chief Is Serial Plagiarist, Complaint Alleges.”
• “Does it pay to pay? A comparison of the benefits of open-access publishing across various sub-fields in biology.”
• Could Springer Nature try for yet another IPO — its fourth attempt?
• “The super league of Top Italian Scientists.”
• “Danish publishing house shreds freelancer’s book after plagiarism – gives money back to all customers.”
• “China has a list of suspect journals and it’s just been updated.” An interview.
• “Digital Scholarly Journals Are Poorly Preserved: A Study of 7 Million Articles.”

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• A cardiac surgeon’s tortuous efforts – including three lawsuits – to get the scientific record corrected
• Saudi university dean has 20 retractions in two years
• Exclusive: Embattled dean accused of plagiarism in NSF report
• Exclusive: Physician in India who coauthored review with US profs is running a paper mill
• Exclusive: Cardiologist in Pakistan continued publishing after journal shown evidence he was running a paper mill

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 47,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 250 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

• Have we reached peak retraction? Our Ivan Oransky speaks to Peter Coy of The New York Times.
• In May 2023, 31 editors of the Sustainable Organisations section of Frontiers in Sustainability resigned.
• “Autism journal retracts speech-recognition paper, pauses special issue.”
• “Indigenous people sue over alleged Canadian secret medical experiment.”
• “Influential abortion-pill studies retracted: the science behind the decision.” More here.
• A Nobel prize winner earns an 11th retraction.
• Molecular Therapy decides to explain why a paper was retracted two years ago after the withdrawal appears on the front page of The New York Times.
• “The highest-profile research is heavily influenced by cultural forces and career incentives that are not necessarily aligned with the dispassionate pursuit of truth.”
• “Power relations would be more equitable if all leading disciplinary journals and books were published in multiple languages, says Simon Marginson.”
• “A new preprint from economist Patrick Vu argues that there’s a tension between correcting for pseudoreplication (i.e. non-independence of observations), and publication bias.”
• “Are scientists routinely using LLMs to write papers?”
• “From Singapore to Athens via Hong Kong: The Itinerary of Research Integrity from Scientific Research to Real-life Applications and Policy Making.”
• “Federal and university research misconduct regulations and policies may need to be revised to provide institutions with clearer guidance on how to deal with misconduct allegations against top officials.”
• “Eureka! How a Stanford study revealed the success of research failures.”
• “As US schools consider a [chocolate milk] ban, an old, sketchy study [by Brian Wansink] holds sway.”
• “Early COVID-19 research is riddled with poor methods and low-quality results − a problem for science the pandemic worsened but didn’t create.”
• “[G]eneticist and former eLife Editor-in-Chief Michael Eisen called on X for a retraction of the Nature paper…”
• “Fraudulent studies are undermining the reliability of systematic reviews – a study of the prevalence of problematic images in preclinical studies of depression.
• “Should we penalise scientific misconduct in rankings scores?”
• “Brisbane surgeon found to have used woman in human trial without written consent.”
• “[D]yslexia study marred by methodological and ethical problems, researchers say.”
• “Authorship and ChatGPT: a Conservative View.”
• “Bounded research ethicality: researchers rate themselves and their field as better than others at following good research practice.”
• “Penn Calls for Withdrawal of ORI’s Misconduct Proposed Reg; Many Commenters Also Critical.”
• “United2Act Against Paper Mills: Fighting Fraud that Corrupts the Scholarly Record.”
• “Institutional Ethics Committees Move Too Slowly, Critics Say.”
• “Charging authors for scientific publishing is fundamentally flawed.”
• “Research integrity and academic medicine: the pressure to publish and research misconduct.”
• Updates in a legal authorship dispute.
• A “sleuth taking on the widespread problem of research misconduct.”

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Paper claiming ‘extensive’ harms of COVID-19 vaccines to be retracted
• How (not) to deal with missing data: An economist’s take on a controversial study
• Exclusive: Elsevier to retract paper by economist who failed to disclose data tinkering
• Science ‘Majorana’ particle paper earns another editor’s note as expert committee finds no misconduct
• Medical society takes millions from company that sued it for defamation – and lost

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 47,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 250 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

• “Wanted: Scientific Errors. Cash Reward.”
• MDPI says “A total of 84 papers spanning 23 journals are potentially affected by templated reports and citation misconduct.”
• “Retracted studies the latest in a decadeslong abortion-science fight.”
• “Our findings reveal both national and disciplinary gaps in attention to reproducibility and replicability, aggravated by incentive misalignment and resource constraints.”
• “‘Exact replica’: Fort Hare prof at heart of plagiarism and predatory journal scandal.”
• “Competition among publishers and scientific journals for market dominance resulted in an increase in both the number of journals and the cost of publishing and accessing scientific papers.”
• “Duke’s 3-year fraud investigation into Dan Ariely has ended, and the star professor still has a job. Does he want it?”
• “Honorary authorship is highly prevalent in health sciences: systematic review and meta-analysis of surveys.”
• “At The Lancet, we are discussing how we can best strengthen trustworthiness screening of the research submitted to us.”
• Top “oncologist disputes junior scientist’s claims in lawsuit over research credit.”
• “Claudine Gay’s downfall is no victory for research integrity.”
• “Why Scientists Should Care About Society Publishing.”
• “Could AI Disrupt Peer Review?”
• “Amid high profits and falling wages, peer reviewers must be paid.”
• “Large Language Models for Scientific Publishing: Please, Do Not Make Them a Foe.”
• “Publication ethics in biomedical journals are receiving increasing attention.”
• “‘I should do what?’ Addressing research misconduct through values alignment.”
• A publisher silently removes an author who was alarmed to see her name on a paper.
• “Ambiguity in Ethical Standards: Global Versus Local Science in Explaining Academic Plagiarism.”
• “[T]his study suggests that the primary reason for the lower citation rates at the author level is women publishing fewer articles over their careers.”
• “Mistakes, fakes and a giant rat penis: why are so many science papers being retracted?” Our Ivan Oransky appears on the Guardian’s science podcast.
• “The wrong word for the job? The ethics of collecting data on ‘race’ in academic publishing.”
• “The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Writing Scientific Review Articles.”
• “‘Ethics is not a checkbox exercise.’ Bioinformatician Yves Moreau reacts to mass retraction of papers from China.”
• “Salami slicing and other kinds of… misconduct: A faux pas for the author, a disaster for science.”

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Engineering dean’s journal serves as a supply chain for ‘bizarre’ articles
• Econ journal board quits en masse because Wiley ‘appeared to emphasize quantity over quality’
• Elsevier investigating papers after IEEE finds ‘self-plagiarism’
• Stanford prof who sued critics loses appeal against $500,000 in legal fees
• Highly cited scientist published dozens of papers after his death

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 47,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 250 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

• That paper no one could stop talking about for 24 hours has been retracted.
• “China conducts first nationwide review of retractions and research misconduct.”
• “A Columbia Surgeon’s Study Was Pulled. He Kept Publishing Flawed Data.”
• “Vendor offering citations for purchase is latest bad actor in scholarly publishing.”
• “Is ‘silent’ outcome switching in clinical trials research misconduct?”
• “Harvard Extension School Administrator Accused of Plagiarism in Anonymous Complaint.”
• “Overall, ChatGPT does not yet seem to be accurate enough to be trusted for any formal or informal research quality evaluation tasks.”
• “The Perplexing Puzzle of the Top 2% Scientists List.”
• “Scholarly Debate About Drug Efficacy in Scientific Journals Is ‘Protected Speech,’ Not Libel.”
• “Passion is not misconduct.”
• “Why do some academics review so many journal papers?”
• “Science hype has become a serious problem.”
• “The Poor Reputation of Our Scientists.”
• “A once-ignored community of science sleuths now has the research community on its heels.”
• Open peer review “is growing, but still far from common practice.”
• “Plagiarism Has No Place at Harvard — or Anywhere Else In Higher Ed.”
• “How common is academic plagiarism?”
• Kiel University’s president resigns after image manipulation allegations.
• Oops. “The Editor has retracted this article because, owing to an administration error in the editorial office, it was published before the peer review process had been undertaken.”
• “Nearly 500 clinical trials carried out in Nordic countries since 2016 remain unpublished.”
• “I thought I could conquer academic writing on my own—until I learned better.”
• “Peer review isn’t perfect − I know because I teach others how to do it and I’ve seen firsthand how it comes up short.”
• “Worse than Plagiarism: False Firstness Claims and Dismissive Literature Reviews.”
• “An accidental discovery of scientific fraud.”
• “Retraction of Academic Literature: The Urology Perspective.”
• “When did a rejection of an already accepted article become a thing?” Archive.
• “‘Publish or Perish’: The dark side of tenured professorship.”
• “The court’s judgment on the true identity of the author responsible for identity fraud…” A letter about a case we covered in 2022.
• “A flurry of research misconduct cases has universities scrambling to protect themselves.”
• “How journals are fighting back against a wave of questionable images.”
• “Genetics journal retracts 18 papers from China due to human rights concerns.”
• “The Scandals Rocking Cancer Science Matter to Your Health.”

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Journal takes 3 years to pull papers by researcher who committed misconduct
• Journal retracts 80 papers ID’d as paper mill products following sleuth’s report, Undark-Retraction Watch investigation
• Paper about clergy sexual abuses in South Korean churches retracted over ‘citation irregularities’
• Book retraction surfaces long-standing feud between South African academics

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to nearly 400. There are more than 46,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains well over 200 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? Or The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

• Harvard “Neuroscientist Accused of Research Misconduct.”
• “Top Harvard Diversity Officer Sherri Charleston Faces Plagiarism Allegations.”
• “My Favorite Euphemisms for Plagiarism.” A plagiarism expert draws on our hit parade.
• “Citation cartels help some mathematicians—and their universities—climb the rankings.”
• An editorial board member reflects on the “significant turmoil” at a journal whose changes in leadership we reported on last month.
• What happened when a researcher tried to sting a leading scientific society’s peer review process?
• “How many authors are (too) many?”
• “The King of Curcumin: a case study in the consequences of large-scale research fraud.”
• “Announcing Reformscape: a new online tool to explore responsible academic career assessment and drive positive change.”
• “Open-data version of Leiden Ranking launched.”
• “Questionable research practices of medical and dental faculty in Pakistan – a confession.”
• “Supervisor suspended after students allege academic misconduct.”
• “Overcoming the ‘ostrich effect’: A narrative review on the incentives and consequences of questionable research practices in kinesiology.”
• “Criticism of statistical analysis on the origin of Corona.”
• “OSF Preprints to Implement Pre-Moderation Policy” to “ensure that content would not need to be withdrawn.”
• “Plagiarism, paper mills and profit: These scientists are fighting the epidemic of fraudulent science research.”
• “This work reveals an alarming preservation deficit” of the scholarly literature.
• “Overall, addressing the current ‘crisis of confidence’ in [industrial/organizational] IO psychology requires individual researchers, academic institutions, and publishers to embrace system-wide change.”
• “Weaponizing plagiarism will help restore faith in academic institutions.”
• “Receptivity toward retraction due to information hazards was unrelated to scientists’ engagement in activism, suggesting that formal scientific training affords researchers an ability to separate personal and professional values in scientific discourse.”
• “How I learnt to write research papers as a non-native English speaker.”
• “Sports Illustrated Issues Retraction On Reported WWE Royal Rumble / WrestleMania Plans.”
• “A scientific sleuth has shaken Dana-Farber.” Profiles of Sholto David in STAT and The Guardian. And a Q&A in The New York Times.
• “Leiden hospital’s academic status at risk due to shoddy fraud prevention.”
• “They want science to be and do better,” Oransky said. “And they are frustrated by how uninterested most people in academia — and certainly in publishing — are in correcting the record.”
• “Some of the debate about [COVID-19] preprints and quality clustered around retractions.”
• “How does bad data slip through? Allegations of research fraud raise questions about ‘peer review.’”
• “Journals need to provide better guidance for victims of plagiarism,” says a group whose story we covered.
• “Predatory journals are real but how we talk about them can be misguided.”
• DOAJ amends its special issues criteria after some note likely unintended consequences.
• “Michigan universities struggle with FOIA requests. It may be by design, experts say.” The story includes some of our experiences and thoughts.
• “[T]he vast majority of image-related issues still stem from honest mistakes,” says Dror Kolodkin-Gal, a co-founder of a company that sells screening tools.
• “The Second Digital Transformation of Scholarly Publishing.”

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.