This is our last Weekend Reads of 2025. Our annual wrap-up at Retraction Watch will come next week, but we’re already looking forward to a new year. If you value the work we do – the in-depth reporting at Retraction Watch, the daily curated links in our newsletter, our comprehensive Retraction Watch Database – please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. Every dollar counts.
Retraction Watch and the Retraction Watch Database are projects of The Center of Scientific Integrity. Others include the Medical Evidence Project, the Hijacked Journal Checker, the Elisabeth Bik Science Integrity Fund and the Sleuths in Residence Program. Help support this work.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- Professor in India adds coauthors who ‘kindly covered’ publication fee, removes others
- Court tosses out researcher’s bid to overturn funding ban
- The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now has 400 entries
Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):
- Professor “steps down from associate deanship after AI-generated references scandal.”
- “U.S. senator asks Science to provide its coronavirus manuscripts, emails” after accusing scientists of “conducting dangerous research that created the coronavirus.”
- “AI Is Inventing Academic Papers That Don’t Exist — And They’re Being Cited in Real Journals.”
- “A new NSF initiative will support teams of researchers, a departure from the traditional practice of giving grants to individual professors.”
- Researchers say “a troubling trend has emerged that threatens to undermine the very foundation of academic medicine: the proliferation of mass abstract submissions that prioritize quantity over quality.”
- “CDC awards $1.6 million for hepatitis B vaccine study by controversial Danish researchers.”
- “‘This is why the trial is necessary’: experts behind the puberty blockers study respond to mounting opposition.”
- Organizers of a conference explore “the use of AI authors and reviewers.”
- “Negative data makes a valid observation of how the world works.”
- “Published peer review reports have higher informative content than unpublished reports,” researchers find.
- “Organizations play a key role in developing research ethics,” and other conclusions and recommendations on research ethics in Finland, from the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (English version).
- “Three Ways to Innovate and Reimagine Publisher Value in an AI World.”
- “Most researchers would receive more recognition if assessed by article-level metrics than by journal-level metrics.”
- “Research evaluation systems are too slow to measure AI accelerated research.”
- “Detecting Inconsistencies and Fraud in Research Data: Time for Authors to Share the Data Underlying Their Summary Statistics as a Matter of Course.”
- “Fraud Detection and Prevention in Online Research: Lessons Learned and Recommendations.”
- A 2017 paper in Science Signaling by neuroscientist Sylvain Lesne has been retracted. The journal put an expression of concern on it in 2022.
- “Sophisticated bots risk contaminating surveys, games, and other approaches designed to shed light on human behavior.”
- “The gatekeepers of global health knowledge: A systematic review of diversity in editorial boards.”
- “Academic journals’ AI policies fail to curb the surge in AI-assisted academic writing.”
- “‘A serious problem’: peer reviews created using AI can avoid detection.”
- And finally, from The BMJ’s Christmas issue: “How recent is recent? Retrospective analysis of suspiciously timeless citations.”
Upcoming Talks
- “Maintaining Integrity in Peer-Reviewed Publications,” Jefferson Anesthesia Conference 2026, featuring our Adam Marcus (February 2, Big Sky, Montana)
- “Scientific Integrity Challenged by New Editorial Practices,” featuring our Ivan Oransky (February 12, virtual)
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