June 2026 – Retraction Watch

Editors of semantics journal resign, launch new journal after publisher ‘ultimatum’

The new journal, *Semantics of Natural Languages*, launched in May.

The entire editorial board of a semantics journal owned by Springer Nature has resigned to launch a new one, citing pressure from the company to increase their annual publication volume by 25%.

All 28 editors at Natural Language Semantics resigned from the journal in early April, editor-in-chief Amy Rose Deal, a linguistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told Retraction Watch.

In a May 19 open letter, five of the resigning editors announced the launch of their new journal, Semantics of Natural Languages. The new journal is published by the Open Library of Humanities, an open-access publisher whose goal “is to liberate university research from commercial control,” according to its website.

Journal retracts study linking hepatitis vaccine to autism that was included in CDC review

A toxicology journal has retracted a 16-year-old study linking hepatitis B vaccines to autism in children following an independent statistical review that found a half-dozen concerns with the study’s methodology.

Using data from the National Health Interview Survey, the authors claimed boys vaccinated in their first month of life had “threefold greater odds for autism diagnosis” than those vaccinated later or not at all.

The study was included in a rapid systematic review of hep B vaccine studies presented by John Su, director of the Immunization Safety Office for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at the Sept. 18 meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. It resurfaced in a presentation at the Dec. 4 ACIP meeting, just before the committee’s decision to no longer recommend that infants receive the hep B vaccine at birth if the mother tests negative for the virus.

Journal retracts paper criticizing parental alienation theory after group threatens to sue

A humanities journal has retracted an article about the controversial theory of parental alienation after receiving legal threats from a group that supports the concept.

On May 19, the Integrated Journal for Research in Arts and Humanities (IJRAH) removed a review article by Robert Keith Head suggesting the theory of parental alienation is unsupported by research and fails “to meet basic validity requirements for psychological constructs.”

The move came after the Parental Alienation Study Group (PASG) — which describes itself as an international, nonprofit membership organization dedicated to the study and understanding of parental alienation — accused the journal of publishing “scientific fraud” and demanded the journal retract the paper or face legal action. The journal said the removal was not dictated by “external demands or threats” but followed a “comprehensive secondary evaluation” by its editorial board and independent psychometric experts who identified “critical methodological and structural flaws that undermined the paper’s scientific validity.”

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