If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- Elsevier retracts the least and reinstates the most, new analysis finds
- Reviewer finds ‘top pharmaceutical scientist’ has a self-citation problem
- Elsevier journal removes two 42-year-old papers on cesium as a cancer treatment
- Nine years after journalist raised concerns, BMJ Group journal retracts stent paper
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):
- “Autism-Vaccine Researcher Arraigned in the U.S.” on wire fraud and money laundering charges.
- “Gotcha! Odd language mistakes may help identify fake papers“: A finding of ‘accidental watermarks’ by our Medical Evidence Project.
- “Splitting status and substance: The diverging fates of breakaway and zombie journals,” featuring our Mass Resignations List.
- “The inside story of the falsification of a Kyoto University professor’s ‘career-building paper.'” And was the investigation conducted fairly?
- “Retractions ‘must be the start of AI slop clean-up’, says critic.”
- “Research ‘Junkification’ is Caused by Researchers, Not Journals.”
- Anna Abalkina on the Tanu.pro paper mill, which she says has been present in Italy “for a long time.”
- Researchers provide “conservative estimate” of nearly 150,000 hallucinated citations in 2025 alone. And “Safeguards against GenAI hallucination in literature reviews.”
- University in China fires, issues ban on dean for misconduct.
- “Rising Retraction Rates: A Symptom of a Strained System.”
- Hospital in Norway “Uses Patient Data for Research Without Consent.”
- “30 researchers publish scathing critiques of study that questioned date of early human occupation of Monte Verde in Chile.”
- “The next unit of science: Is the scientific paper due to be replaced?”
- “Challenges to research integrity in rheumatology: the threat of paper mills, fraud and click data science.”
- “Virologist accused of starting COVID-19 will fight U.S. ban on funding.”
- “AI agents may be skilled researchers—but not always honest ones.” And “The AI scientist: now academic papers can be fully automated, what does this mean for the future of research?”
- “Scientific retractions: causes, processes, and implications for research integrity.”
- Researchers propose a “transparent universal credit system to incentivize peer review.”
- “Fake data, AI slop, and the future of academia”: A podcast episode featuring Elisabeth Bik.
- “Beyond genuine collaboration: the rise of strategic co-authorship in contemporary academic publishing.”
- “Will Paying Reviewers Ease the Peer Review Crisis?”
- “The U.S. government has recently convicted multiple postdocs from China for improper shipments of biological materials. Some see a replay of the 2018 China Initiative.”
- “Tenure is not what it used to be, as these Tufts professors found out.”
- “As researchers aim for universal AI disclosure guidelines, the devil is in the details“: Reflections from this year’s World Conference on Research Integrity.
- “The most astonishingly productive historian in recent times is someone you’ll never meet.”
- “As scientific fraud proliferates, so do businesses that aim to stop it.”
- “Notice ‘Subtle’ Behavior, Fight Cynicism: Tips From Whistleblower Attorney in $15M Dana-Farber Case.” A link to Eugenie Reich’s recent guest post for Retraction Watch.
- “‘Endemic micro-cheating’ by academics ‘going unpunished,'” says university dean.
- “Allegations of mismanagement at the School of Industrial Design in Lund.”
- “Identificatory underpinnings of ethical research behavior for graduate students: Evidence from a baseline sample of a university research ethics training program.”
- Researchers say the scholarly system “is not totally broken, but breaking it certainly is.”
- “Reasons for retractions in potential predatory journals”: A study.
- “After USDA request, Indiana plant biologist locked out of lab by school.”
- “Letters to the editor on scientific sleuthing and lab safety.”
- “Science discussions of retracted articles on Bluesky: public scrutiny or misinformation spreading?”
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