Today the Retraction Watch list of Nobelists who have retracted papers bids Verabschiedung to Max Planck.
After days of scrutiny, Springer Nature has restored two papers by Planck, who won the Nobel for Physics in 1918, reversing a 2011 decision to retract the articles for “copyright violations.”
Both articles are back, and now carry the following statement:
Continue reading Springer Nature un-retracts Planck papers, citing “human error”
A cancer journal has retracted a paper by a former acting director of an institute in India, bringing her retraction total to nine.
Chitra Mandal, a former senior researcher at the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research’s Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (CSIR-IIC) at Kolkata, served as acting director in 2014-15. She also headed the CSIR’s Innovation complex between 2010 and 2015. She received multiple awards, and was also appointed a Science and Engineering Research Board Distinguished Fellow in 2018.
Mandal has now lost nine articles to retraction and more than two dozen of her papers have been flagged on PubPeer, most for image irregularities or data issues in graphs. In March, Wiley’s Molecular Biology International retracted a 2011 article Mandal coauthored, also for image issues. We previously wrote about an expression of concern on a 2016 paper in which Mandal was a co-author.
The latest retraction involves a 2011 paper in Leukemia Research about the movement of lymphoblasts from the bone marrow to peripheral blood in childhood leukemia. The journal retracted the paper on May 30, citing concerns that some of the data in figures appear to have been manipulated.
Continue reading Former acting director of national research lab in India adds another retraction
The Journal of Medical Ethics has retracted a paper on the use of AI in the pharmaceutical industry for containing references that don’t exist. The article’s sole author: a high school student.
The paper, which argues biased algorithms can exacerbate inequities in health care, was published in September. The author, Irfan Biswas, listed his affiliation as Shrewsbury Public Schools in Massachusetts.
According to the May 28 retraction notice, an investigation by the journal found Biswas used generative AI to “identify and understand referenced sources” and did not verify the references prior to submission.
Continue reading Ethics journal retracts paper by high school student for AI, peer review manipulation
If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 450 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 65,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up to 650, and our mass resignations list has more than 50 entries. We keep tabs on all this and more. If you value this work, please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. Every dollar counts.
Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):
Continue reading Weekend reads: Taylor Swift teaches botany; NEJM retracts key study in Amgen drug; hidden prompts at conference ‘snare AI peer reviews’
Over the last five years, the Association for Computing Machinery has been dealing with a rapid rise in allegations of research misconduct that have created a backlog of cases to investigate.
The publisher has a committee to analyze claims, but with only a small group of volunteers, cases can take a year or more to resolve, said Scott Delman, ACM’s director of publications. To address allegations faster and with a sharper focus, the association is hiring a director of research integrity, a new role for the publisher.
“Certainly, we’ve been investing more financial resources in research integrity over the last five years, but we need an expert,” Delman told us. “We’re long past due in having a dedicated director of research integrity who will be the central resource for ACM on all things relating to integrity.”
Continue reading Computer science society creates new research integrity role to address case backlog
Editors of a journal run by a prestigious math institute will close up shop and form a new journal with an independent publisher, with one editor citing Wiley’s increased oversight as the reason behind the move.
Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics is the journal for the Courant Institute of Mathematics at New York University. The journal has been published in partnership with Wiley for over 75 years, and all the editors of the journal are affiliated with Courant.
In emails Retraction Watch has seen, the editorial board notified Wiley in January that the institute would not be renewing its contract with the publisher once it expired at the end of 2026.
Continue reading Editors of Courant math journal to leave Wiley, establish new roots with independent publisher
In March 2024, Riccardo Ciacci, an economist at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Spain, published a paper claiming Sweden’s ban on buying sex had increased reported rapes by as much as 62%. The finding gained attention on social media, and quickly drew criticism from others in the field.
In particular, a group of three economists took their concerns to social media and to the journal editors, and eventually published a critique of Ciacci’s work. They claimed his analysis reports a statistical relationship not relevant to the finding described in the paper. They concluded there was no large or statistically significant finding.
What followed was a year-long effort to fix the paper, and then ultimately, a decision to retract it. Ciacci, who was not accused of misconduct, said the retraction, which he disagrees with, has cost him a promotion and funding for future research. He also alleges he experienced an onslaught of harassment on social media. In the end, Ciacci maintains the retraction was unjustified, and critics say it came far too late.
Continue reading Sex pay ban paper earns a retraction after a long and winding road for an unhappy author
Five months after he was fired by ministerial order, an Iraqi professor of physics at the center of a massive publishing scam submitted a manuscript to a Wiley chemistry journal claiming affiliation with Columbia University in New York City.
The paper also stated the physicist, Oday A. Al-Owaedi, was affiliated with the University of Babylon in Hilla, Iraq, although he was permanently dismissed from his position last year.
As we reported at the time, Al-Owaedi defrauded “researchers by collecting money from them under the pretext of publishing their papers in reputable international journals as promised, while in fact falsifying and forging publication in fake websites,” according to a ministerial order we obtained.
Continue reading Physicist in Iraq fired over publishing scam claims fake Columbia affiliation in new paperIf your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 450 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 65,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up to 650, and our mass resignations list has more than 50 entries. We keep tabs on all this and more. If you value this work, please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. Every dollar counts.
Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):
Continue reading Weekend reads: A tsunami of misleading medical studies; retraction calls cancer therapy timing into question; a closer look at Max Planck’s retractions
Roger Watson was seeking answers. Last September, a paper in his journal had attracted criticism he thought he and his fellow editors at Nurse Education in Practice should have caught.
The February 2025 paper described the role of moulage, or simulated, realistic-looking wounds, in training nurses to perform endotracheal suction, a way of clearing out the lungs. One group used dummies with simulated bodily fluids, and the other group used regular dummies. An expert flagged the paper seven months after it was published: Tubes used in groups with or without moulage dummies had “significant size difference, which may have influenced the level of difficulty for participants to complete the suctioning task,” the expert wrote in an email Retraction Watch has seen.
The authors responded to the concerns at first, but then the conversation reached an impasse, the authors stopped responding, and the only choice, Watson said, was to retract the paper.
Continue reading Increasing workload may have contributed to recent retraction at nursing journal, editor says