Weekend reads: Tragic news on former Cambridge prof; A ‘never AI’ research company was AI after all; OpenAI’s math breakthroughs don’t add up

As we were assembling this week’s Weekend Reads, we learned the tragic news that former Cambridge professor Jason Arday had been found dead in his home. Arday has been the subject of several news stories in recent weeks, including at Retraction Watch. We are shocked and saddened by the news of his death. Our hearts are with his friends and family.

If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org. Find a helpline in your country in this guide.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

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: Tragic news on former Cambridge prof; A ‘never AI’ research company was AI after all; OpenAI’s math breakthroughs don’t add up

Princeton student says she did not conduct the experiments described in her now-retracted paper

A figure from the now-retracted paper in Macromolecular Materials and Engineering shows the “hypothesized effects” of the experiments described in the study.

Earlier this week, Retraction Watch reported on a Princeton student’s decision to retract her own paper from an engineering journal due to “significant methodological errors.” The student, Rishika Porandla, now tells us she never conducted the experiments described in the study.

“The beam experiment described in the paper was a proposed experimental workflow with associated calculated results,” she wrote in an email. “Public confusion led me to recognize and regret that this is not clear in the retracted publication, and I have included detailed clarification in an updated retraction statement to Wiley.”

Porandla’s original article, published in 2024 in Macromolecular Materials and Engineering based on work she did while in high school, claimed to show it was possible to enhance the biodegradation of polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, by mixing it with gold nanoparticles and blasting it with an electron beam.

Continue reading Princeton student says she did not conduct the experiments described in her now-retracted paper

JAMA journal won’t retract oxycodone paper despite author request, citing no ‘falsification’

JAMA Internal Medicine has rejected a petition by a group of clinicians calling for the journal to retract an article on oxycodone therapy for osteoarthritis. The request — which initially included two of the paper’s original authors — stems from 19-year-old court records revealing the sponsor of the study withheld evidence about opioid withdrawal that contradicted the paper’s conclusions.  

Published in 2000 under the journal’s previous name, Archives of Internal Medicine, the study of 133 patients concluded that around-the-clock, controlled-release oxycodone was safe and effective for managing osteoarthritis pain and that withdrawal symptoms were rare. In 2007, documents made public during a federal criminal case against Purdue Frederick Company, the maker of OxyContin, showed the company concealed how many patients became dependent on the drug during the trial and omitted withdrawal data. Purdue pleaded guilty in 2007 to fraudulently marketing OxyContin with the intent to mislead, agreeing to pay the government more than $600 million in penalties. 

Despite the withdrawal data being made public nearly 20 years ago, the study has remained in the scientific literature without changes, Andrew Kolodny told Retraction Watch. Kolodny is medical director for the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative at Brandeis University and president of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing. Kolodny has also testified before Congress about the opioid epidemic, assisted federal authorities with investigating the opioid industry and pain organizations, and acted as an expert witness for plaintiffs in litigation against opioid makers. 

Continue reading JAMA journal won’t retract oxycodone paper despite author request, citing no ‘falsification’

Biology journal pulls 100+ articles and counting from special issues for peer review manipulation

Elsevier’s International Journal of Biological Macromolecules has issued more than 100 retractions and counting for manipulated peer review in guest-edited special issues. The publisher has said one more retraction is coming. 

Since June the publisher has retracted 120 papers. According to the retraction notices, the journal identified “[s]ystematic, coordinated, and widespread manipulation of the peer-review process.”

A spokesperson for Elsevier told Retraction Watch the publisher “became aware of possible systematic manipulation and other issues such as plagiarism, image duplication, and authorship issues in a number of articles published in Special Issues” in 2025, which led them to conduct a wider investigation into more recent special issues. 

Continue reading Biology journal pulls 100+ articles and counting from special issues for peer review manipulation

BMJ Group retracts paper on COVID-19 vaccines and mortality featured in Senate hearing

BMJ Public Health has retracted a paper some — including a witness at a recent U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing — have used to link COVID-19 vaccines to deaths. The action comes more than two years after a researcher cited in the work flagged issues with the study. 

Published May 6, 2024, the paper used the “Our World in Data” database and the World Mortality Dataset to look at COVID-19 related deaths during the height of the pandemic. News outlets covered it, from The Telegraph — “vaccines may have helped fuel rise in excess deaths” — to the New York Post, which quoted the paper’s statements about reported “serious injuries and deaths following vaccination,” a move it later corrected. 

An expression of concern, placed on the paper about a month after it was published, attempted to quell these claims, noting the study “does not establish any such link.” The notice also announced an institutional investigation by the Princess Máxima Center in the Netherlands, where three of the four authors worked, including corresponding author Saskia Mostert.

Continue reading BMJ Group retracts paper on COVID-19 vaccines and mortality featured in Senate hearing

A college student had to retract her paper. The move was ‘the starting point for a better study’

Rishika Porandla published a paper based on research she did in high school. As a sophomore at Princeton, she revisited the work — and found errors in the methodology, leading her to retract the study.

Note, August 14, 2026: See an update to this story here.

As a sophomore at Princeton University, Rishika Porandla took a course called “The Curious Scientist,” where students practice disciplinary research skills and act as a “PI” on a project of their choosing.   

Porandla didn’t have to think twice about what subject to dive into. In high school, she had studied the biodegradability of polyvinyl chloride and discovered a new process to break down the plastic. The finding led to one of her proudest high school achievements — a published journal article. She was eager to use the Princeton class to advance her discovery. 

From the outset, Porandla’s project for the class seemed like “a slam dunk,” Andrea DiGiorgio, the course’s instructor, told Retraction Watch.   

Continue reading A college student had to retract her paper. The move was ‘the starting point for a better study’

Weekend reads: Second gene editing death in China reported; Jason Arday’s resignation from Cambridge; Retraction Watch’s sweet 16

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 66,000 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.

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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: Second gene editing death in China reported; Jason Arday’s resignation from Cambridge; Retraction Watch’s sweet 16

Clarivate removes hold on mega-journal Heliyon after internal audit, 650+ retractions

Clarivate has lifted its hold on Heliyon after the journal’s internal audit led to over 1,000 retractions, expressions of concern and corrections. As a result, the journal will receive an impact factor in the coming cycle, a Clarivate spokesperson said. 

Clarivate decided in September 2024 new content from Heliyon would not be indexed in its Web of Science due to concerns about quality. The journal told us at the time it was “investigating,” and since then, it has retracted over 650 articles.

Clarivate lifted the hold on May 14, and Heliyon released a statement shortly after, noting all content published while the journal was on hold will now be indexed. The statement says the audit “revealed behaviors that did not align with our policies.” As we wrote in February, the journal has previously said the concerning practices included compromised peer review, authorship irregularities, tortured phrases and citation manipulation. 

Continue reading Clarivate removes hold on mega-journal Heliyon after internal audit, 650+ retractions

Decade-long fraud by market survey firm a ‘gut punch’ for researchers

Credit: AndreyPopov/iStock

In April 2025, David Victorson, a psychologist at Northwestern University in Chicago, was polishing several manuscripts for submission when a colleague sent him a link to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice. “Eight Defendants Indicted in International Conspiracy to Bill $10 Million for Fraudulent Market Survey Data,” the headline read.

Victorson couldn’t believe it. Op4G, a market research company he first worked with more than a decade earlier, was being indicted for selling bogus data between 2014 and 2023. In fact, Victorson had just used them to run an online survey related to meditation as part of a U.S. National Institutes of Health project to create a standardized mindfulness metric. He didn’t yet know whether his own data were compromised, but he knew there was no way he’d be submitting his manuscripts with those data.

“Because they were within the period of the indictment, we scrapped them entirely,” Victorson said. “It took years off our lives.”

Continue reading Decade-long fraud by market survey firm a ‘gut punch’ for researchers

RFK Jr. questions another publisher on expression of concern for a vaccine paper

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

The U.S. Secretary for Health and Human Services is once again questioning a publisher on an editorial action regarding a paper on vaccination.

Published in Sage Open Medicine in 2020, the article looks at health outcomes in vaccinated versus unvaccinated children. Its authors are Brian Hooker and Neil Z. Miller, both longtime vaccine critics. 

Sage Open Medicine put an expression of concern on the paper on May 18. “The following article is under investigation,” it reads. “This expression of concern will remain in place until the investigation concludes, and a final decision has been made.”

Continue reading RFK Jr. questions another publisher on expression of concern for a vaccine paper