Weekend reads: ‘A worrying amount of fraud in medical research;’ a society backpedals on sanctions; a plagiarism case becomes even more bizarre

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• How many times can a journal be hijacked?
• Journal investigating Sodom comet paper for data problems

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to more than 300. There are nearly 39,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

• “There is a worrying amount of fraud in medical research.” An analysis in The Economist using Retraction Watch data.
• “After uproar, society backpedals from actions against scientists who staged climate protest at meeting.”
• “Suddenly they say she’s dead,” A plagiarism case that we and others covered in December becomes even more bizarre.
• A retraction of a COVID-19 paper because the authors were performing CT scans on dead people without ethical approval.
• “I was an associate editor at that time of the retractions and lived, firsthand, the difficulties the journal faced. Taking over the journal soon thereafter meant navigating in stormy waters.”
• Mexico Minister Yasmín Esquivel, already facing allegations that she plagiarized her bachelor’s thesis, “plagiarized in her doctoral thesis,” according to El Pais.
• A court rules that a university can’t share the results of an investigation into allegations about a judge’s thesis.
• “Tackling overpublishing by moving to open-ended papers.”
• “Since we spend so much time performing experiments that eventually fail, why don’t we include them in publications?”
• “Need for transparent and robust response when research misconduct is found.” An open letter to CNRS about their handling of an investigation.
• Thailand: 33 profs “paid for their names to be associated with areas of academic research.”
• “Perceptions on the role of research integrity officers in French medical schools.”
• Meta upon meta upon meta: The Problems with Systematic Reviews: A Living Systematic Review.”
• The American Political Science Review issues an expression of concern.
• “‘Possible crime’ involving Polish funder under investigation.”
• “Professor Says He Was Barred From Campus After FOIA Inquiry.”
• “LHC physicists resolve stalemate over Russian authors” involving more than 250 manuscripts.
• “Creating a regulatory-industrial complex will not achieve our goal of an ethical research enterprise.”
• “Standard Quality Criteria in Retracted versus Non-Retracted Obstetric Randomized Controlled Trials.”
• “We Regret the Fossil Error. It Wasn’t the First.” A case of “science correcting itself.”
• “As scientists explore AI-written text, journals hammer out policies.” And “AI writing tools could hand scientists the ‘gift of time.'”
• “Refine retraction notices to avoid damaging fallout.” This is not a new idea.
• “The Shade Room has since deleted that article and social media posts and wants to make it abundantly clear that 50 Cent did not have penis enhancement surgery or any other procedure to augment his genitals and any implication to the contrary is false.”

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