Month: August 2025

‘Biologically implausible distributions’ and self-plagiarism result in 10 retractions for ob-gyn

An obstetrician and gynecologist from an Egyptian university has garnered more than a half-dozen retractions so far this year for self plagiarism and problematic data.

Ibrahim A Abdelazim is on the faculty of Ain Shams University, Cairo, but is on “unpaid leave” and currently working at Ahmadi Hospital in Kuwait, he told us. The recent retractions bring his total to 10, along with one expression of concern. Several journals are conducting investigations into his other papers. 

Published from 2012 to 2016, the retracted papers range from methods papers describing how to detect premature rupture of fetal membranes and how to sample endometrial tissue to a descriptive study of fertility after environmental crisis. 

Continue reading ‘Biologically implausible distributions’ and self-plagiarism result in 10 retractions for ob-gyn

Fighting coordinated publication fraud is like ‘emptying an overflowing bathtub with a spoon,’ study coauthor says

The observed and forecasted growth rate of paper mill papers outpaces corrective measures, a new study finds. R. Richardson et al./PNAS 2025

Systematic research fraud has outpaced corrective measures and will only keep accelerating, according to a study of problematic publishing practices and the networks that fuel them. 

The study, published August 4 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined research fraud carried out by paper mills, brokers and predatory publishers. By producing low quality or fabricated research, selling authorship and publishing without adequate quality control and peer review, respectively, these three groups were well known to produce a large volume of fraudulent research. 

“This is a great paper showing how much fraud there is in the scientific literature. The paper also looks at different methods on how to detect problematic papers, networks and editors,” Anna Abalkina, a researcher at Freie Universität Berlin and creator of the Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker, said. 

Continue reading Fighting coordinated publication fraud is like ‘emptying an overflowing bathtub with a spoon,’ study coauthor says

Springer Nature retracts book with fake citations. Help us find more cases like this.

Springer Nature has officially retracted a book on machine learning following coverage by Retraction Watch. A reader sent us a tip about this book; we’d love your help identifying more.

As we reported, the book, Mastering Machine Learning: From Basics to Advanced, contained many citations to nonexistent works. These fake references are a hallmark of text generated by large language models like ChatGPT. 

The retraction notice mentions the illusory citations, stating, “Following publication concerns were raised regarding the validity of certain references. Upon further investigation, the Publisher was unable to verify the source of 25 out of 46 references in this book.” After listing the 25 citations, 12 of which we found in our initial reporting, it continues, “the Series Editor and the publisher therefore no longer have confidence in the reliability of this book. The author has not stated explicitly whether he agrees with this retraction.”

Continue reading Springer Nature retracts book with fake citations. Help us find more cases like this.

Weekend reads: Retraction Watch’s 15th birthday; ‘the superstar scientist’ who faked data; sleuths vs. integrity officers on handling misconduct

Dear RW readers, can you spare $25?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 60,000 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?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: Retraction Watch’s 15th birthday; ‘the superstar scientist’ who faked data; sleuths vs. integrity officers on handling misconduct

Happy 15th anniversary, Retraction Watch

Once upon a time, a long time ago, two science journalists had an idea for a blog about retractions. And on Aug. 3, 2010, Retraction Watch launched, detailing in the first post why retractions matter. 

And now, 15 years and 6,700 posts later, that work seems more important than ever. 

We are gratified every day to see Retraction Watch driving the conversation on integrity in scientific research. Our work has provided the foundation for stories on mass resignations at journals, how fake phrases end up in the literature, the retraction of a paper claiming evidence for an ancient comet with Biblical ties. We’ve gotten shoutouts in Science, which included links to our stories as examples for scientists of how to respond constructively to critiques of their work, and in Nature, which urged universities to examine their own retraction data.

Continue reading Happy 15th anniversary, Retraction Watch