Weekend reads: Harm reduction for peer review; finding reviewers; fake journals

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Exclusive: One university’s three-year battle to retract papers with fake data
• First paper retracted in string of studies using the wrong medication name
• Exclusive: Providence VA hires scientist previous employer found had harassed mentees
• Exclusive: Editorial board member quits over journal’s handling of plagiarized paper
• Penn State barred embattled professor from doing research

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400.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):

• Researchers propose a “harm reduction approach to improving peer review by acknowledging its imperfections.”
• Finding “willing reviewers” isn’t “becoming harder and taking longer” in meteorology.
• “Fake journals aren’t publishers at all – they are dishonest reformatters.”
• “Director of UK equine testing lab fired, federal law enforcement investigating.”
• “UMD president asks for investigation after being accused of plagiarism.”
• “Is your thesis by publication policy hostile to students?”
• Researchers update “Scopus-based database of highly-cited scientists . . . to incorporate retraction data” using the Retraction Watch Database.
• “By naming and shaming Chinese researchers for misconduct, China’s science ministry is doubling down on its push towards tech prowess.”
• “How Are AI Chatbots Changing Scientific Publishing?”
• “Getting a pass on evaluating ways to improve science.” A response to a recent post by Daniel Lakens.
• “Across the nine servers included in our analysis, by December 2023, we estimate a 68% decline in the number of preprints mentioned in the media…relative to what we would anticipate based on pre-pandemic trends.”
• “Peer review ‘must keep pace with rapidly changing landscape.'”
• “Addressing scientific misconduct challenges requires a whole-system approach, encompassing individual leadership, policy changes, and institutional accountability.”
• “Transparency and Integrity Risks in China’s Research Ecosystem: A Primer and Call to Action.”
• Researchers test how factors like training and gender affect “uncertainty in journal peer reviewers’ recommendations.”
• “Science has to be discussed in a public space”: A researcher’s roundtable initiative.
• “Fixing science means an end to gaming the system” of open science.
• Retractions in Spain have “increased in the last decade, with duplication being the most frequent cause of retraction,” researchers find.
• Anti-aging paper by David Sinclair gets correction after Twitter criticism and a critical preprint. 
• “This Device Is ‘Proven’ to Protect Athletes’ Brains. The Science Is Under Fire.”
• Bullying complaints at national UK research funder “more than trebled in 2023.”
• “Can academic bullying be stopped?”
• Researcher says we need journal “gatekeeping” and “external inspectors” to tackle misconduct.
• “Scientific and technological knowledge grows linearly over time” and “producing knowledge is far more challenging than producing papers,” researchers find.
• “Five problems plaguing publishing in the life sciences—and one common cause.”
• An upcoming talk on Sept. 26 (virtual): “Innovations in Peer Review,” featuring our Ivan Oransky
• “Scopus-indexed publications as a marker of quality makes academic research much more expensive,” author argues.
• Should the peer review process be blamed for AI-generated content in prominent journals?
• Researcher says papers are “primarily currency,” and asks “what if there was salary support for reviewers?”
• “My identity was stolen by a predatory conference.”
• “How and why do the life sciences cite social sciences?”
• “Crisis at Jewish Chronicle as stories based on ‘wild fabrications’ are withdrawn.”

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