Weekend reads: 17 retractions from a closed clinic; J&J sues researchers; Retraction Watch in Le Monde

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• ‘Shocked and flabbergasted’: Journal updates duplicate article it had said was “sufficiently” different from original
• Editorial board member dropped from journal site after Retraction Watch-Undark report links him to paper mill
• The new retraction record holder is a German anesthesiologist, with 184
• University cuts anesthesiology researcher’s funding amid four retractions
• University finds former lecturer with two retractions plagiarized in seven publications

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to more than 300. There are now 41,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in Edifix, EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains 200 titles. 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):

• “Exclusive: Investigation prompts retraction of 17 studies from now-shuttered clinic.”
• “Johnson & Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer.” Our previous coverage.
• “Scientific misconduct is much more common than we care to admit.” Our Ivan Oransky interviewed by Le Monde.
• “Wiley’s Edifix Integrates with the Retraction Watch Database to Improve Research Integrity.”
• “Limited online training opportunities exist for scholarly peer reviewers.”
• “UCLA Professor Refuses to Cover for Dan Ariely in Issue of Data Provenance.”
• “Software use in retracted papers” and “Appropriateness of Citing Retracted Articles in Biomedicine: Sentiments Expressed in Citations without Acknowledgement of Retraction.”
• “Widespread dissemination of studies via preprint services conflicts with the journal editor’s interest in delivering fresh, original content.” A counterpoint.
• “Papers that fail to replicate ‘less likely to be cited.’”
• “Analysis of which researchers publish, get credit, move around, get funding, collaborate and receive citations shows how deeply ingrained the bias against women is.”
• “What can open research values bring to research assessment reform?”
• A paper on detecting accounting fraud was retracted for…well, read on.
• A preprint claiming to link COVID-19 vaccines to deaths was retracted by The Lancet just a day after being posted because the “conclusions are not supported by the study methodology.”
• “This guidance presents practical considerations for managing scenarios where editors are contacted with ethical concerns about the integrity of published research.”
• “Trouble at paper mill.”
• “Some authors now list an astonishing number of institutions, sometimes exceeding 20, 30, or more.”
• “The hidden consequences of fraudulent and poor-quality medical research.”
• “A Study Found That AI Could Ace MIT. Three MIT Students Beg to Differ.” The preprint has now been retracted.
• “Publisher pulls former cop’s memoir after police raise doubts over accuracy.”
• “Rising of Retracted Research Works and Challenges in Information Systems: Need New Features for Information Retrieval and Interactions.”
• A call for a system that “allows unreliable papers to be marked as such with minimal negative connotations.”
• French agencies “released a list of 3,400 preferred scientific journals for publishing research.”
• “Undue publicity for flawed fraud detector.” An exchange of letters.
• “Open Access: Who are the Ghost Readers?” asks a new arXiv preprint.
• “Unreviewed science in the news: The evolution of preprint media coverage from 2014-2021.”

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