Weekend reads: Lawsuits filed and dismissed; ‘the rise of the science sleuths;’ research assessment culture

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Pakistan university’s pharmacy department chair notches two retractions
• Former Harvard cancer researcher plagiarized data, federal watchdog says
• Penn State prof earns second retraction, faces third following university probe
• ‘Stealth corrections’: when journals quietly fix papers
• Nobel prize-winner tallies two more retractions, bringing total to 13

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 50,000 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):

• A biotech company in India has sued researchers over a study they published about their COVID-19 vaccine.
• “Academic publishers face class action over ‘peer review’ pay, other restrictions.”
• “Francesca Gino’s Libel Claims Against Harvard Business School and Data Colada Dismissed.”
• “The Rise of the Science Sleuths” and an Alzheimer’s paper that “came under scrutiny.”
• “Springer Nature plans Frankfurt IPO in latest test of market.”
• “Opium in science and society: numbers and other quantifications.
• “The human costs of the research-assessment culture.”
• The parent agency of the U.S. Office of Research Integrity finalizes research misconduct regulations.
• “Suspicious phrases” in peer reviews point to template use.
• “New academic AI guidelines aim to curb research misconduct” from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
• Author-led initiatives “to reform the publishing system are being undermined by indirect government subsidies which uphold the status quo,” authors say. 
• Researchers address “survey farming” and its “significant threats to data integrity” in marginalized community research.
• “Sleuths unearthing malpractice should receive gratitude, not hostility.”
• A pro-life researcher cited in court cases earns an expression of concern. Her earlier retraction.
• A researcher says a journal published an “apparently AI-generated, research article purporting to have been written by me.” Three similar cases we’ve reported on. 
• “Our findings suggest that journalists’ perceptions of debates in scholarly communication vary widely, with some displaying a highly critical and nuanced understanding and others presenting a more limited awareness.”
• “What we should learn from pandemic publishing.”
• “Citation indexes make research more unequal,” researchers say.
• A book on the philosophy of retraction.
• “The ‘Gollum effect’ is having a horrid, nasty, filthy impact on academia”: When scientists get “too possessive over their research.”
• Creator of CRISPR babies, whose research was deemed “unpublishable,” tweets that he will only publish in Nature or Science.
• “Shining a light on conflict of interest statements.”
• “Prominent” Harvard professor “Accused of Plagiarism by Former Co-Author.”
• A “researcher’s quest to keep his own work from being plagiarized.” A link to our coverage.
• “Trends in research integrity concerns and the evolving role of the publisher.”
• Former professor & whistleblower “alleges theft of research. His efforts for redressal remain unaddressed.”
• “[R]emedies to the problem of irreproducible research, and how we might move towards more sustainable and trustworthy research in biomedical science.”
• “‘End UKRI funds for open access publishing,’ urges report.”
• Watchdogs flag India as a “top producer of ‘low-quality and fraudulent’ research.”
• Researcher who won lawsuit against her university for racial discrimination also claimed she reported “evidence of data falsification and manipulation” at a university lab.
• Author-led initiatives “to reform the publishing system are being undermined by indirect government subsidies which uphold the status quo,” authors say. 
• “Do citation metrics function as an accountability sink?”
• “Haitian American Group Demands Retraction of Trump’s Statements.”

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