Weekend reads: Evaluating the benefits of open science, a misconduct investigation in Korea, and what we lose in outsourcing reviews to AI

Happy 2026! We’re excited to bring you the first Weekend Reads of the new year.  

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 460, and our mass resignations list has 47 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: Evaluating the benefits of open science, a misconduct investigation in Korea, and what we lose in outsourcing reviews to AI

Data lost in a flood? The excuse checks out.

Josh Sorenson/Pexels

When two recent retraction notices mentioned data were “destroyed in a flood,” we were skeptical. We’ve seen water take the blame for missing data before. 

In 2019, we wrote about a chemical engineer who said his suspicious data were lost in a laboratory flooding accident. The researcher lost nine papers as a result, as we previously covered. Three years earlier in 2016, researchers in Sri Lanka lost a paper after claiming they, too, had lost their data in a flood. We couldn’t verify the researchers’ claims.

But this time, thanks to a public records request, we’ve confirmed there was in fact a deluge at the researcher’s lab.

Continue reading Data lost in a flood? The excuse checks out.

Cheers to 2025: In which Retraction Watch turned 15, and The Center For Scientific Integrity really became a center

We always enjoy our annual review of the year at Retraction Watch, and 2025 is no exception. But we’re more excited about what lies ahead than what we already accomplished. 

We’re on track for our second-highest year for pageviews — 6.6 million. This year we brought you more than 300 posts. Among our most-read stories this year include ones on metrics: The most-read of the year was on universities whose publication metrics show signs of “questionable authorship practices.” Also among the most-read stories was one on the 20 journals that lost their impact factors this year for citation issues. 

Fakery was also a theme in 2025. A story on a Springer Nature book full of fake references and one on dozens of papers with fake company affiliations were among the most popular of the year. 

Continue reading Cheers to 2025: In which Retraction Watch turned 15, and The Center For Scientific Integrity really became a center

The BMJ retracts clinical trial for ‘severe’ discrepancies in randomization

The BMJ has retracted a paper on a clinical trial of different methods of vascular access during cardiac arrest after an expert raised concerns about the randomization in the trial. 

The study, published in July 2024, reports the results of a trial comparing intravenous and intraosseous vascular access for treating people who experienced cardiac arrest. It has been cited 29 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. 

The retraction marks the 13th The BMJ has issued since its first in 1989, according to the Retraction Watch Database. 

Continue reading The BMJ retracts clinical trial for ‘severe’ discrepancies in randomization

Weekend reads: Court tosses out challenge to ORI funding ban; prof steps down after AI citation ‘scandal’; senator seeks journal’s COVID-19 manuscripts

This is our last Weekend Reads of 2025. Our annual wrap-up at Retraction Watch will come next week, but we’re already looking forward to a new year. If you value the work we do – the in-depth reporting at Retraction Watch, the daily curated links in our newsletter, our comprehensive Retraction Watch Database – please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. Every dollar counts.

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Retraction Watch and the Retraction Watch Database are projects of The Center of Scientific Integrity. Others include the Medical Evidence Project, the Hijacked Journal Checker, the Elisabeth Bik Science Integrity Fund and the Sleuths in Residence Program. Help support this work.  

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: Court tosses out challenge to ORI funding ban; prof steps down after AI citation ‘scandal’; senator seeks journal’s COVID-19 manuscripts

The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now has 400 entries

Sham journals that mimic real ones can fool unsuspecting authors who are submitting a manuscript, researchers looking for references for papers — and even indexing services aiming to be comprehensive in their coverage. For three years, researcher and sleuth Anna Abalkina has been tracking these clones in the Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker.

Earlier this month, Anna’s list of hijacked journals surpassed 400 entries. We took the opportunity to ask her about the list’s history, what happens to journals on the list, how to spot a potentially hijacked journal, and more. 

Continue reading The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now has 400 entries

Court tosses out researcher’s bid to overturn funding ban

A federal court has terminated a former researcher’s lawsuit against the U.S. government agency that barred her from receiving federal funds following an agency investigation that lasted 10 years. 

Ivana Frech  — formerly Ivana De Domenico — sued the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) in 2023 after the agency concluded she engaged in research misconduct while at the University of Utah, by “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly falsifying and/or fabricating” images in work funded by the National Institutes of Health. In her legal complaint filed shortly after ORI’s debarment, Frech alleged the agency’s misconduct findings and debarment decision were “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, unsupported by substantial evidence, and contrary to law and regulation.” 

On December 12, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia threw out Frech’s suit, ruling in favor of the government’s motion for summary judgement. Summary motions are granted when a court finds no genuine dispute over material facts and a lack of conflicting evidence for a jury to weigh. The decision allows ORI’s three-year debarment – which runs through August 2026 – and misconduct conclusions against Frech to stand.  

Continue reading Court tosses out researcher’s bid to overturn funding ban

Professor in India adds coauthors who ‘kindly covered’ publication fee, removes others

Earlier this year, Klaus Heese, a professor at Hanyang University in Seoul, noticed a review article he’d worked on had finally been published. But his name wasn’t on it, nor was that of another scientist who had also been involved in preparing the manuscript.

Instead, two professors Heese didn’t know had been added as authors on the paper, which appeared in June in Natural Product Communications.

Alarmed, Heese emailed Sivakamavalli Jeyachandran, an associate professor at Saveetha University in Chennai, India, and one of the corresponding authors of the article. Heese had received an invitation in 2023 to help with the review from a former collaborator, Arulmani Manavalan, who was working with Jeyachandran and her student Hethesh Chellapandian.

Continue reading Professor in India adds coauthors who ‘kindly covered’ publication fee, removes others

Weekend reads: ‘How long does it take to kill zombie papers?’; ‘The H-Index of Suspicion’; former Springer editors launch new journal

Dear RW readers, we look forward to wrapping up the week with Weekend Reads. If you enjoy it too, please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. Retraction Watch and the Retraction Watch Database are projects of The Center of Scientific Integrity. Others include the Medical Evidence Project, the Hijacked Journal Checker, and the Sleuths in Residence Program. Help support this work.  

Donate now

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: ‘How long does it take to kill zombie papers?’; ‘The H-Index of Suspicion’; former Springer editors launch new journal

World Bank report ‘removed for review’ of nonexistent references after Retraction Watch inquiry

A World Bank report on obesity trends with at least 14 fake references in the text has been removed from the website and is being reviewed by the organization following a Retraction Watch inquiry. 

The report, “Nourishing Tomorrow: Addressing Obesity Through Food Systems in South Asia,” was published in March 2025 in the World Bank Group’s Open Knowledge Repository. The document describes an analysis of how different food systems contribute to rising rates of  obesity in South Asian countries. Three of its four authors are employees of the World Bank.

Muhammad Azam first came across the report in a WhatsApp group for sports science research in Pakistan, he told us. Azam, of the Government College University Lahore, has studied the prevalence of sports science research published in predatory journals in that country. So when a group member shared that some publications Azam knew to be suspect had been cited in the report, he took a closer look and found several “problematic entries,” he told us.

Continue reading World Bank report ‘removed for review’ of nonexistent references after Retraction Watch inquiry