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The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- A second article describing new pain syndrome under scrutiny
- Kidney researcher debarred from federal U.S. funding for image manipulation
- Why do nearly 45,000 scholarly papers cite themselves?
- Cureus paper by dean and medical student retracted for mislabeled ECG
- Dental researchers fabricated data in two articles, university investigation found
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 57,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 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):
- “Editorial staffs of scientific journals are increasingly resigning in protest,” featuring our mass resignations list.
- “Major journals ‘publishing papers from Russian-controlled Ukraine,’” and “Stop laundering research from Ukraine’s stolen institutions.”
- “DOGE order leads to journal cancellations by U.S. agricultural library.”
- “AI can be a powerful tool for scientists. But it can also fuel research misconduct.”
- “Hyper-ambition and the Replication Crisis: Why Measures to Promote Research Integrity can Falter.”
- “Doing peer review for no money: a noble tradition or ‘conspiracy’ to enrich journal publishers?”
- Researchers evaluate “Multilingual Metadata Quality in Crossref.”
- “Tackling Science’s ‘Nasty Photoshop Problem.’”
- “Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI.”
- “How a mistake by first-year students led to a Science publication in 2005.”
- “Abuse of power at Germany’s elite research institution” leaves scientists “exposed to abuse.”
- University declares “State Secretary’s thesis invalid due to plagiarism.”
- Senior adviser at ORI leaves position for second time due to “devastating changes … within the federal system.”
- Researchers find “retractions in ENT literature have increased over 5 decades, predominantly driven by intentional misconduct,” featuring the RW Database.
- A Q&A with a professor who detects “signs of potential scientific misconduct in peer-reviewed research papers.”
- “Scholarly publishing system continues to marginalise Africa.”
- Researcher maps 9 decades of research integrity studies.
- University “dismissed three staff members for offenses including sexual harassment, result falsification, and absconding from duty.”
- “Retracted articles on cancer imaging are not only continuously cited by publications but also used by ChatGPT to answer questions.”
- Journal EIC explains “why AJPH has consistently declined requests motivated by political and ideological pressure.” A case in which the journal’s editors declined to publish a paper they had invited.
- “A famous climate scientist won a $1M verdict. Then his case took a turn.”
- “Publishers Embrace AI as Research Integrity Tool,” which indicates their “systems are not actually equipped to ensure quality,” says our Ivan Oransky.
- “Puberty blockers: Former Tavistock clinicians say they wouldn’t refer patients to NHS trial.”
- “Defunding of diversity-related research may deter American university libraries from buying titles in contentious topic areas, publishers fear.”
- “Springer Nature profits up 7 per cent to €512 million,” including “strong revenue growth in Cureus.”
- “Six reasons why open institutional publishing matters.”
- “Antarctic scientist accused of threatening to kill colleagues trapped in research station apologises.”
- “Scientists Say NIH Officials Told Them To Scrub mRNA References on Grants.”
- University “rebuffs calls to retract another falsified paper” by professor.
- “Scientific misconduct is on the rise. But what exactly is it?” featuring the RW Database.
- “Fraud, Blackmail, and the Weaponization of Integrity.”
- “Publication data sees Russian science increasingly isolated.”
- “A supposedly bioluminescent species of cockroach that would not glow: A case of scientific fraud, erroneous observation or bacterial infection?”
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