Weekend reads: Retractions at Columbia; retractions for a rector; the early days of peer review

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Journal pulls pesticide article a year after authors engaged lawyer to fight retraction decision
• Springer Nature journal has retracted over 200 papers since September
• Psychology journal apologizes for paper with ‘biased language’ about Tibet
• Plagiarizing papers retracted from engineering journal after Retraction Watch report

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400.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

• “Columbia Cancer Surgeon Notches 5 More Retractions for Suspicious Data.”
• Springer Nature will retract 75 papers by a rector in Spain and his colleagues. Our coverage from 2022.
• “The early days of peer review: five insights from historical reports.”
• “While some authors with precocious citation impact may be stellar scientists, others probably herald massive manipulative or fraudulent behaviors infiltrating the scientific literature.”
• “We are a group of sleuths and forensic meta-scientists who are concerned that Springer Nature is failing in its duty to protect the scientific literature from fraudulent and low quality work.”
• “Harris campaign calls plagiarism claims a partisan attack. Expert says it was ‘sloppy writing.’”
• “In the originally published article, the author failed to acknowledge adequately the contribution of Mitchell P. Goldfarb, who made critical initial observations…” A correction for Robert Weinberg, who has had five papers retracted.
• “I propose the R-Index, defined as the difference between the sum of review responsibilities for a researcher’s publications and the number of reviews they have completed, as a novel metric…”
• “There is a dirty secret in publishing: most popular science books aren’t fact-checked.”
• “Positive publication bias is actively harming science.”
• “Are open science practices in dentistry associated with higher Altmetric scores and citation rates?”
• “Scientific papers that mention AI get a citation boost.”
• “Most of the peer-reviewed academic articles referenced in [Endangered Species Act] ESA listings came from low-IF [impact factor] or no-IF journals that tended to focus on specific taxa or regions.”
• “PhD Scholar Hands Over Complaint Letter Highlighting Faculty Misconduct, Bribery, And Student Issues To TN Guv During Convocation At Bharathiar University.”
• “The untold story of publishing at [London School of Economics] LSE.”
• A scholarly publishing “Generative AI Licensing Agreement Tracker” from Ithaka S+R.
• “A mixed review for Plan S’s drive to make papers open access.”
• “When Malcolm MacLeod made it his personal mission to update the results of every clinical trial ever registered at the University of Edinburgh, UK, he didn’t realize that the effort would take years.”
• “Research assessment has always been controversial, yet it necessarily persists.”
• “‘Anonymous’ genetic databases vulnerable to privacy leaks.”
• “Science’s human aspect is often outright ignored.” A Retraction Watch guest post co-written by the same author, Reese Richardson.
• “Dealing with corrections and retractions: keeping science sound”: A podcast episode with our Ivan Oransky. 
• “Effects of the coronavirus 2019 pandemic on medical publishing: The sacrifice of quality for quantity?”
• “Gender gap in physics entrenched by biased collaboration networks, study finds.”
• Paper apologizes for accusing doctors “of knowingly making false statements about statins.”
• “House science panel says an ‘absent’ NSF failed to protect Antarctic workers from sexual harassment.”
• “The NHS Health Research Authority turns back ethical standards for experimentation on patients by sixty years,” scientists say. 
• “After extensive criticism of the Ethical Review Act, a completely new law has now been proposed” for ethical review in Sweden. 
• “Greek Academia Under Siege by Rise of Predatory Journals.”
• “A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage — and it’s only going to get worse.”
• “Scandal in Neuroscience: The self-correction of research no longer works.”
• “The S-index Challenge: Develop a metric to quantify data-sharing success.”
• “The impact of COVID-19 on the debate on open science”: “Focus on quality, retractions, and misinformation.”
• Two researchers responsible for university rankings “discuss the importance of transparency of rankings.”
• “Basing core research funding on external income is a bad idea,” says research policy expert. 
• Judge rules against researcher who admitted he “screwed up” using NIH data in race-IQ study. 
• A “short history and modus operandi of paper mills, with the aim of increasing awareness.”
• “We have a dilemma”: Checking published studies, circa 1962.
• “How Science Diplomacy Can Reshape Global Research Publishing: A Theory of Change.”
• Investigation finds “evidence of data fabrication, publication without the patient’s consent, and a wrong diagnosis” in…a case report.

Upcoming Talks by Ivan Oransky

• “AAPS PharmSci 360 Opening Session Shines Light on Research Integrity” (Oct. 20, in person, Salt Lake City)
• “Research integrity: the role of open science,” American Chemical Society (Oct. 22, virtual)
• “When Doing the Right Thing Means a Retraction,” Ethics Grand Rounds, Loyola University Chicago (Oct. 22, virtual)
• “Retractions: On the Rise, But Not Enough,” University of California Libraries (Oct. 24, virtual)

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].