Weekend reads: A journey through a paper mill; Stanford president’s retractions; developments in Gino case

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Former Alabama chemistry prof faked data in grant applications: Federal watchdog
• ‘Unethical and misleading’: Researcher finds his name on editorial boards of journals he’s never heard of
• Researcher sues U.S. government following debarment, misconduct finding
• Stanford president retracts two Science papers following investigation
• Withdrawn AI-written preprint on millipedes resurfaces, causing alarm

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to well over 350. There are now 42,000 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):

• “One academic paper’s journey through the mill.”
• “We’re retracting two papers from Stanford’s outgoing president. That’s part of how science should work.”
• “The retraction files: Blowing the whistle on suspect science.”
• “Academics Raise More Than $315,000 for Data Bloggers Sued by Harvard Business School Professor Gino.”
• “Amid Uncertainty About Francesca Gino’s Research, the Many Co-Authors Project Could Provide Clarity.”
• “In Historic Step, Harvard Moves Toward Tenure Revocation for Business School Professor Gino.”
• “We conclude that, in general, the tweeting of scientific publications is not a valid indicator of the societal impact of research.”
• In China, “Draft law sets out penalties for AI-aided academic writing.”
• “And are there political risks in diluting the REF’s focus on outputs?”
• “Empirically, we know that many single-shot trials of behavioral interventions fail to replicate.”
• “Science fiction in university labs?” A look at “self-regulation in universities” in Australia.
• “Why preprint review is the way forward.” And “The experiences of COVID-19 preprint authors.”
• “When snowball sampling leads to an avalanche of fraudulent participants in qualitative research.”
• A “Prominent Scholar Who Claimed to Be Native American Resigns.”
• “Dozens of Student Editors for Harvard Kennedy School Policy Journals Call on Dean to Reinstate Their Publications.”
• “‘Gagged and blindsided’: how an allegation of research misconduct affected our lab.” Earlier in STAT.
• “Decolonising publications: Reflecting on the meaning of peer in ‘peer review.’”
• “Twice in the history of social psychology has there been a crisis of confidence.”
• “The Ethics of Publishing Biomedical and Natural Products Research.”
• “How do conservationists choose where to publish?”
• “The plagiarism is proven, we propose to withdraw his doctorate.”
• Scientific Reports has retracted a paper claiming a cosmic air burst led to the decline of an ancient culture in Ohio. The journal is apparently still investigating a paper with similar claims about Sodom and Gomorrah.

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