Weekend reads: A decade after the STAP scandal; more allegations about Francesca Gino; the disappearing journal

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Publisher flags papers found by university to involve misconduct more than a year ago
• The dean who came to visit – and added dozens of authors without their knowledge
• Exclusive: Wiley journal editor under investigation for duplicate publications

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 48,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 250 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? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List — or our list of nearly 100 papers with evidence they were written by ChatGPT?

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

• “Little change in Japan’s research sector 10 years after stem cell fraud.”
• “Embattled Harvard honesty professor accused of plagiarism.”
• “Fabrication in a study about honesty: A lost episode of columbo illustrating how forensic statistics is performed.”
• “A key chemistry journal disappeared from the web. Others are at risk.”
• “Things we can learn from the ongoing Heterocycles debacle.”
• “Scientific publishers *not* adding value.”
• “Introducing Synchronous Robustness Reports: Guidelines for Journals.”
• “Stanford’s Faculty Senate Condemned Scott Atlas’s Covid Views. Now They Might Take It Back.”
• “COI works both ways: Investigation of misconduct by an independent research integrity organization is the way to go.”
• “Is ChatGPT corrupting peer review? Telltale words hint at AI use.”
• “Three ways ChatGPT helps me in my academic writing.”
• “We propose an algorithm to identify the papers with the highest quality from a large number of submissions.”
• “You may have come across equally troubling papers in your field. Don’t remain silent.”
• “The Master’s thesis of Health Minister Ingvild Kjerkol has been rejected by the complaints board at Nord University, NRK has been informed.”
• “Journal editors probed on ‘relationship with government.’”
• “Social science impact demands faster publishing and more reproducibility.”
• “[I]nvestigation reveals how superconductivity physicist faked blockbuster results.”
• “‘Star’ neuroscientist faked data in paper and grant applications, U.S. government finds.”
• “Publishing negative results is good for science,” writes Elisabeth Bik.
• “‘Weaponization of Plagiarism’ or Rigorous Standards Behind Provost’s Ouster?”
• “Netflix fossil researcher accused of ‘exploiting preprint shortcut.'”
• “Generative AI firms should stop ripping off publishers and instead work with them to enrich scholarship.
• “Jakarta investigates academics in ‘people trafficking’ probe.”
• “The changing landscape of UK learned society publishing.”
• “Physiology journal mandates sex and gender equality checks.”
• “Ekiti university sanctions professor over alleged plagiarism.”
• “On the Dearth of Retractions in Social Work.”
• “All authors responsible for research misconduct in Sweden.”
• “Four years later, chloroquine boosters face limited accountability.”
• “International multi-stakeholder consensus statement on clinical trial integrity.”
• “Authorship conflicts in academia: an international cross-discipline survey.”
• “Is Italy struggling with maintaining high level of research integrity?”
• “Mega-authorship implications: How many scientists can fit into one cell?”

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