Gynecologists in Italy collect more retractions and an expression of concern

A group of gynecologists in Italy has tallied yet another retraction, this time for an article with “significant overlap” with the methods, data and text of an older paper that shares two of the same authors. 

The paper, which involved research on a treatment for infertility, is the latest in a string of retractions for Sandro Gerli and Gian Carlo Di Renzo of the University of Perugia, and Vittorio Unfer, now at Saint Camillus International University of Health Sciences in Rome. Just a few weeks earlier, the researchers also received an expression of concern on a separate paper examining a widely used supplement for polycystic ovary syndrome. 

Commenters on PubPeer began to flag the researchers’ papers two years ago, and they now have 11 retractions among them, largely for duplicated data and text across the publications, as well as undisclosed conflicts of interest and unreliable study methods. In 2024, Di Renzo threatened legal action over a critic’s allegations about data duplications among several papers he coauthored — many of which have since been retracted. 

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Nature journal retracts two papers by immunology researchers for image duplication

A Nature journal has retracted a decades-old immunology paper that has been cited more than 1,000 times and, the author claims, spurred the development of new drugs.

 The paper on antibody diversity appeared in Nature Immunology in 2002. The article, cited 1,016 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, is the most cited work for corresponding author Andrea Cerutti, a professor at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies in Spain. 

The retraction comes on the heels of another retraction for Cerrutti, also for a paper in Nature Immunology. Both had been flagged on PubPeer for image issues. The authors maintain there was no misconduct.

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Weekend reads: CDC’s ‘unethical’ vaccine trial; The Lancet ‘refuses to retract’ letter; on the methods used to correct science

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 400 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 63,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up over 640, and our mass resignations list has 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: CDC’s ‘unethical’ vaccine trial; The Lancet ‘refuses to retract’ letter; on the methods used to correct science

As journal’s retraction count nears 170, it enhances vetting 

A journal is implementing tighter controls for guest editors and peer reviewers after an investigation led to the retraction of more than 160 articles. 

As we reported last month, the American Society For Testing And Materials (ASTM) International started an investigation into its Journal of Testing and Evaluation after an ASTM vendor noticed some “irregular patterns in the peer review” of a special issue. The investigation revealed the peer review process in four special sections or issues had been compromised, resulting in the retraction of 147 articles.

The journal has since pulled 19 more papers, this time from a special section on human-centered artificial intelligence published in 2021.

Continue reading As journal’s retraction count nears 170, it enhances vetting 

Court challenge could chill reporting of research fraud, say whistleblower attorneys

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The U.S. government recently announced a record $6.8 billion in False Claims Act settlements and judgments in 2025, the most in a single year since the law’s enactment 163 years ago. For those concerned with scientific integrity, another significant FCA record was also set in 2025: the number of suits brought under the FCA by private individuals against entities they believe defrauded the federal government. 

Successful qui tam suits brought under the FCA can come with incentivizing monetary rewards – sometimes substantial – for the whistleblowers. Whistleblowers filed a record 1,297 of these so-called qui tam lawsuits in 2025, up from 979 suits in 2024. 

Despite the FCA’s banner year, legal experts say a pending challenge may weaken the law’s whistleblower power and impact. A Florida district court recently struck down the FCA’s qui tam provisions as unconstitutional because these suits involve individuals suing on behalf of the government. If an appeals court upholds the decision, some whistleblowers in that court’s jurisdiction may no longer get paid for exposing wrongdoing, a change that could allow more fraud to slip under the radar, legal analysts say.

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Guest post: The CDC hepatitis B study is unethical and must never be published

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The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), an international organization that establishes best practices for scholarly journals, has endorsed specific ethical standards for studies that involve vulnerable groups. Among these standards is this statement in the Declaration of Helsinki: “Reports of research not in accordance with this Declaration should not be accepted for publication.” The current controversy about the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding for a proposed study of hepatitis B vaccines in Guinea-Bissau must serve as a reminder of this core requirement of publication ethics.

An unsolicited $1.6 million grant to the Bandim Health Project at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) would randomly assign more than 14,000 newborns into two groups, those who would receive the vaccine at birth and those who would act as a control group with delayed vaccination. The purpose of the controversial study was to assess the “broader health effects” of the vaccine for the control group. 

But we already know the most critical health effect beyond the 48-months of the study: Withholding vaccination will predictably result in an increased incidence of liver disease later in life, including liver failure, cirrhosis and cancer. Therefore, the true scale of the tragedy brought on by this study would never be fully be known.

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Journal tags ‘impossible’ case report with short erratum

Last August, a reader alerted the editor of a medical journal to a recent case report “riddled with irreconcilable contradictions, medically impossible claims, fictional terminology, and ethical lapses.”

The paper, about a woman who allegedly suffered an aortic aneurysm rupture three days after giving birth, stated that written “informed consent was obtained from the patient for publication.” But the woman died less than two hours after arriving in the emergency room, according to the report.

“If she did not survive, she could not have provided consent post-event,” the concerned reader pointed out in an email to Riaz Agha, editor-in-chief of Annals of Medicine and Surgery, which published the case report in April.

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Weekend reads: Largest leucovorin-autism trial retracted; a paper mill detector for cancer research articles; infant opioid poisoning report flagged

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 400 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 63,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up over 640, and our mass resignations list has 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: Largest leucovorin-autism trial retracted; a paper mill detector for cancer research articles; infant opioid poisoning report flagged

U.S. ORI’s first finding of 2026: Researcher faked data in grant apps

A former cancer researcher at University of Oklahoma Health Science Center has been barred from participating in federally funded research without supervision for three years after the U.S. Office of Research Integrity found he falsified data in grant applications. 

Daniel Andrade committed research misconduct by falsifying data in two grant applications, according to a summary published Feb. 6 on the ORI website and to be published in the Federal Register. The finding is the agency’s first in 2026 and follows just two findings in 2025.

Now a scientist at Cytovance Biologics, according to LinkedIn, Andrade did not return messages seeking comment. ORI also did not get back to us.

Continue reading U.S. ORI’s first finding of 2026: Researcher faked data in grant apps

Journal silently removes paper for plagiarism, author claims identity theft 

If a plagiarized paper by an author who claims he didn’t write it disappears from a journal’s website with no notice, did it ever exist in the first place? It’s not just a philosophical question for the researcher whose published paper turned up in another journal under someone else’s name.

As a master’s student in 2011, researcher Silvia De Cesare published a paper in Implications Philosophiques analyzing a 20th century philosopher’s skepticism of the theory of evolution despite its compatibility with his philosophical views. Now with two doctorates — in ecology and in philosophy — De Cesare is a postdoctoral scholar at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and studies the relationships between evolutionary theory and the idea of progress. 

In June last year, De Cesare learned that someone had published a version of her article in the International Journal of Applied Science and Research (IJASR) in 2020. The paper, a near-verbatim copy of De Cesare’s article apart from the omission of a few footnotes, listed Marcellin Lunanga Mukunda, of the University of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as its sole author. But Mukunda denies publishing the paper, telling us he had been hacked, or perhaps robbed, as an explanation for how his name appeared on the paper. 

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