If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- Bloodhound code sniffs out copied-and-pasted numerical data
- Publisher changes citation, registration policies following Retraction Watch investigation
- A journal named a sleuth in a correction. The sleuth says that was ‘ethical editorial malpractice’
- Could a national database of scientific misconduct rulings stop repeat offenders? Scientists “are divided over whether this centralized, confidential list would solve the problem or generate new ones,” Nature reports.
- Canadian panel seeks to add more teeth to research oversight
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, have metered access or require free registration to read):
- “If a Large Language Model (LLM) can replicate your scientific contribution, the problem is not the LLM,” writes an astrophysicist.
- “Offering scientists cash to spot errors in published papers doesn’t work,” project finds.
- “Many Flaws, Few Retractions: ‘Vapes-Cause-Cancer’ Studies.” A recent vaping retraction that took two years.
- “Raleigh professor, company to pay $152K to settle federal fraud allegations.”
- “Plagiarised research passed automated tests, and I detected it – but only because it copied my work.”
- “China’s Northwest University launches probe into renowned novelist’s daughter for alleged plagiarism.”
- A researcher walks through the “worst review experience” of his career at a Springer Nature journal.
- “The Role of Post-Publication Peer Review in the Retraction of the VICTOR Trial.”
- “Tackle ‘AI slop’ in education research ‘or lose teacher trust.’”
- Researcher proposes the Mentorship Index, which “aims to provide a quantifiable proxy of how researchers support junior scientists, offering a new way to evaluate academic impact.”
- University “investigating engineering researcher’s death after alleged questioning by U.S. government.”
- “Characteristics and trends of retracted publications in gynecologic oncology.”
- “CDC delays publishing report showing covid vaccine benefits,” with acting director Jay Bhattacharya citing methodology concerns.
- “How to categorize citation irregularities: A proposal based on an exploration of the literature.”
- “Scientific Journals Need Dedicated Fact-Checkers.”
- “Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real.”
- “The time has come for big changes to improve research funding.”
- “I Sued the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for Research Fraud and Won $2.6 Million Dollars”: Sholto David tells his story.
- “Professor pitches high-quality reviews as antidote to firms using scientific techniques for own commercial ends.”
- “FSIS Retracts Public Health Alert for Frozen, Ready-to-Eat Chicken Nuggets Due to Updated Laboratory Result.”
Upcoming Congressional Testimony:
- Retraction Watch’s managing editor Kate Travis will appear at the April 15 hearing of the U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight on “The State of Scientific Publishing: Assessing Trends, Emerging Issues, and Policy Considerations.”
Upcoming Webinar:
- National Academies “Workshop on Enhancing Scientific Integrity Progress and Opportunities in the Social and Behavioral Sciences” featuring our Ivan Oransky (April 24, 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].