Weekend reads: On errors and consequences; AI in peer review; Canada’s PM accused of plagiarism

Dear RW readers, can you spare $25?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Journal retracts letter about pager explosion injuries in Lebanon
• Sequence errors are ‘canaries in a coal mine’ in genetics studies, sleuth says
• Why RFK Jr.’s pick for a vaccine-autism review may be familiar to Retraction Watch readers
• Former VA physician admitted to altering images and deleting data, documents show

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 58,000 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):

• “When Scientists Don’t Correct Errors, Misinformation and Deadly Consequences Can Follow.”
• “AI is transforming peer review — and many scientists are worried.”
• Canadian prime minister “faces plagiarism accusations for 1995 Oxford doctoral thesis.”
• “The Trump administration wants to spend more federal dollars replicating medical research,” which could “undermine science for political gain.”
• “An Insider’s Perspective on How to Reduce Fraud in the Social Sciences,” from one of Francesca Gino’s coauthors.
• “The Editorial Demise of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics Is Bad News For Us All.” A link to our coverage.
• “Chemistry journals take just under 3 years to retract papers with self-plagiarism,” study finds.
• “The GenAI Footprint in Scholarly Publications Reflects the Complex Issues of Academic Integrity in the Post-Plagiarism Era”: a webinar. 
• “The fog of war in science is about to lift.”
• “Can news and social media attention reduce the influence of problematic research?” featuring the Retraction Watch Database.
• “Who Is Responsible for Unethical Practices—AI, Scholars, Editors, or Institutions?”
• Researchers find the “reporting of ethical approval in [randomized clinical trials] is poor.”
• Journals “must commit to processes that quickly evaluate allegations of misconduct, and correct and retract if necessary.”
• Professor “blames foreign postdoc for data manipulation in retracted papers.”
• “‘Organized crime in science’ forces publishers to deploy hundreds of fraud fighters.”
• “Peer review is meant to prevent scientific misconduct. But it has its own problems.”
• “Learning scientific rigor: Q&A with . . . developers of a new open-access curriculum.”
• “How ‘animal methods bias’ is affecting research careers.”
• Current approaches to addressing data validity concerns in biomedical science are “inconstant, inefficient, conflicted and flawed,” researcher says.
• “A large number of publications in dental research have been retracted during the past two decades, primarily to instances of scientific misconduct.”
• Professor accused of “abuse of power, physical misconduct, plagiarism, falsification” over 15 years.
• “MSU ‘exonerated’ a dean accused of plagiarism. How would a student facing the same claims fare?”
• “Does sharing first authorship on a paper carry a penalty? What the research says.”
• Researchers look at “quality criteria” for retracted and non-retracted obstetrics clinical trials. 
• “Academic publishing is a multibillion-dollar industry. It’s not always good for science.”
• University directors ordered to pay 15 million pesos after professor fired for plagiarism.
• “Cambridge University Press announces ‘radical’ open research review across ‘broken landscape’ of inequity.”
• “Paths to Full Open Access for Cochrane Reviews.”
• “Go-slow internal research fraud probes ‘avoid external scrutiny.’”
• “Inside arXiv–the Most Transformative Platform in All of Science.” (Disclosure: our Ivan Oransky manages the Simons Foundation’s support for arXiv)
• “The Domino Effect of Faulty Metadata.”
• “Cassava Sciences must face malicious prosecution lawsuit over Alzheimer’s drug.”
• “The authors regret [insert corrigendum text]”: An Elsevier journal corrigendum will likely require a corrigendum. (hat tip: John Loadsman)

Upcoming talk

• “Exploring Retraction Watch Data in Crossref” (April 2, virtual).

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on X or Bluesky, like us on Facebook, follow us on LinkedIn, 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].