Weekend reads: Half of social science ‘doesn’t replicate’; ‘Scientific ghosts: Life after retraction’; multisensory learning paper retracted

If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• A citation alert led researchers to a network of fake articles. But who is benefiting?
• Jury to decide whether Duke retaliated against researcher who reported sexual harassment
• BMJ retracts cardiac stem cell paper, removes authors months after sleuths flag data ‘mismatch’
• Biology journal ghosts researcher after holding paper hostage
• Judge tosses lawsuit over controversial Paxil ‘Study 329’
• Guest post: Should universities investigate questionable papers students and faculty wrote elsewhere?

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 400 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 64,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up to 650, and our mass resignations list has more than 50 entries. We keep tabs on all this and more. If you value this work, please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. Every dollar counts.

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

• Project reveals half of social science research “doesn’t replicate.” And “Can Science Predict When a Study Won’t Hold Up?” 
• “Scientific ghosts”: Researcher finds 94% of retracted Nature Index articles continued receiving citations post-retraction. 
• “Researchers retract multisensory learning paper after failed replications.”
• A “comparison of human-authored and ChatGPT-generated research article titles.”
• Researchers who requested the retraction of 2000 glyphosate paper say they were the first to ask. 
• “How to be a science sleuth.”
• “Dismissed psychologist cut, pasted, and manipulated research results,” says university magazine.
• “Predatory publishing in nutrition and dietetics: Risks, impacts, and collaborative solutions.”
• “Top science prize project faces plagiarism allegations” that a student’s project is similar to associate professor’s study.
• “China’s science awards system is plagued by shadowy practices. Can reforms fix it?”
• “The New York Times drops freelance journalist who used AI to write book review.”
• The Conversation retracts an article about the transatlantic slave trade for affiliation issues.
• “Facts are in crisis. What are we going to do?”
• “South Africa moves to punish scientists acting ‘improperly.’”
• “The emerging submission crisis in behavioral science.”
• “The Shocking Speed of China’s Scientific Rise” includes cash rewards to scientists for publications alongside questions of quality and research influence.
• “For open research to work, research institutions and publishers need to collaborate.”
• “Restoring Trust in Science: Storytelling, AI, and Integrity in Scholarly Publishing“: A recorded webinar featuring our Ivan Oransky. 
• “Why we won’t be funding open access publishing any more,” from a UK cancer research charity. 
• “Policies Permitting LLM Use for Polishing Peer Reviews Are Currently Not Enforceable,” say researchers. 
• “Predatory university rankings jeopardise the value of Webometrics.”
• Former medical school dean earns another retraction, this one for data concerns. 
• “The real threat to trust in science isn’t outright fraud, but the pervasive tweaking of research designs and models.”
• “Cite unseen: when AI hallucinates scientific articles.” And “Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done?”
• “Laboratory workers can shape sustainable practices without affecting scientific quality.”
• “Anonymisation in research must be overhauled for AI era.” 
• “Most research fails not because the science is poor, but because the systems surrounding it are misaligned with how scientific evidence is produced, used, and sustained.”
• “How to Lie with Statistics with your Robot Best Friend.”
• THOR, HERCULES, BATHAM and AVATAR: “The Ethics and Psychology of Oncology Trial Acronyms.”
• A retraction correction: “The first bullet point in this Retraction notice … incorrectly refers to a forest plot as a funnel plot.”

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