Sex pay ban paper earns a retraction after a long and winding road for an unhappy author

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

Physicist in Iraq fired over publishing scam claims fake Columbia affiliation in new paper

Oday Al-Owaedi

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.

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Weekend reads: A tsunami of misleading medical studies; retraction calls cancer therapy timing into question; a closer look at Max Planck’s retractions

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.

I Support Retraction Watch

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

Increasing workload may have contributed to recent retraction at nursing journal, editor says

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

Major citation index put surgery journals on hold following Retraction Watch investigation

Clarivate’s influential Web of Science database of abstracts and citations has paused coverage of new content from a collection of surgery journals, including a top-ranked title in the field, following a Retraction Watch investigation from March.

Indexation in the database is widely seen as a key scholarly imprimatur and ensures visibility in literature searches and citation counts. If a journal is removed from Clarivate’s Master Journal List following review, it loses its impact factor and manuscript submissions may plummet.

The move came just a week after our investigation, published March 12, which found mandatory citation of reporting guidelines in the International Journal of Surgery (IJS) had inflated the impact factor of the open-access title, making it more attractive to authors and readers. The hold does not appear to be mentioned on the journal websites and we were not aware of it until now.

Continue reading Major citation index put surgery journals on hold following Retraction Watch investigation

A prolific evolutionary biologist caught faking data decades ago notches a new retraction

A study claiming a tenfold decrease in bugs splattered on evolutionary biologist Anders Møller’s windshield over two decades has been retracted.
shanecotee / iStock

Anders Møller, an influential evolutionary biologist from Denmark, somehow survived the blow to his reputation after a high-profile retraction and a finding of scientific misconduct more than 20 years ago.

But a new retraction is once again raising the question of whether that fraud was just a blip in his impressive publication record or further proof, as some claim, that much of Møller’s work rests on a shaky foundation.

The latest paper to fall: Møller’s 2019 study in the journal Ecology and Evolution that reported a tenfold decline in the bugs splattered on his car windshield over two decades. The journal’s editors wrote in their retraction notice that the dataset contained “duplications” and “inconsistencies” that invalidate its conclusions. 

Continue reading A prolific evolutionary biologist caught faking data decades ago notches a new retraction

Springer Nature to start issuing expressions of concern for books 

Hermann/Pixabay

Springer Nature will start issuing expressions of concern notices for books after investigating hundreds of its books for integrity-related problems in recent years.

The publishing giant has seen an uptick in the number of investigations for books. In 2022, Springer Nature carried out 124 such investigations. In 2023, that number grew to 207 in 2023 and 217 in 2024, Svetlana Kleiner, a research integrity adviser with the publisher, told attendees of the World Conference on Research Integrity in Vancouver, Canada, last month. 

Springer Nature carried out 210 book-related probes last year, she added, and 81 in 2026 as of mid-April. 

Continue reading Springer Nature to start issuing expressions of concern for books 

Weekend reads: Media star loses doctorate for plagiarism; journal editor resigns for AI concerns; university removes dean for fabricating data

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.

I Support Retraction Watch

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: Media star loses doctorate for plagiarism; journal editor resigns for AI concerns; university removes dean for fabricating data

RFK Jr. has various stances on retractions. Critics say he’s ‘politicizing’ them

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s letter demanding answers from a journal that recently retracted an article about vaccines has drawn significant attention. But the inquiry isn’t the first time Kennedy has used his platform to try to influence retraction decisions, with one critic calling out a pattern by Kennedy of “politicizing” the process.

Scholars say Kennedy, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has shown an inconsistent ideological approach to retractions. Last year, he called for the retraction of a study that failed to find vaccines cause harm. His recent letter to Toxicology Reports — which includes reference blunders with an 80-year-old paper and outdated COPE guidelines — criticizes the retraction of a paper tying infant deaths to vaccines. While critics call his motives political, one researcher says a key component of Kennedy’s letter – a call for more publisher transparency – aligns with improving the retraction process.   

In the June 11 letter to Lawrence H. Lash, editor-in-chief of Toxicology Reports, Kennedy demanded “a full explanation” from editors for removing a 2021 study linking sudden infant death syndrome to vaccines. We reported the retraction on May 26.

Continue reading RFK Jr. has various stances on retractions. Critics say he’s ‘politicizing’ them

Some Wikipedia citations to retracted papers persist for years, study finds

Retracted scientific papers cited on Wikipedia tend to linger on the popular website for years, according to a study examining nearly 1,200 citations. 

The study’s authors, led by Ph.D. candidate Haohan Shi from the Media, Technology, and Society Program at Northwestern University, used the Retraction Watch Database to compile a list of retracted papers and cross-referenced that list with Wikipedia citations. Of the 1,181 retracted citations identified, just over half were added to Wikipedia before the paper was retracted; a fifth were added after retraction but without any reader warning; and just over a quarter explicitly noted the retraction.     

They also measured how long it took the Wikipedia community to correct citations added before the paper was retracted. The team found that while many corrections occurred swiftly, the median time for a correction was 3.68 years. 

Continue reading Some Wikipedia citations to retracted papers persist for years, study finds