If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- Journal investigating paper on heart device with registration number for wrong trial
- When open data are misused
- ‘Hot mess’ paper questioning CO2 and climate change gets retracted
- Announcing the First Research Accountability Reporting Fellows: Our collaboration with The Open Notebook.
We’re honored to be the subject of a paper published this week: Retraction Watch is “a significant example of the long‐anticipated, but little‐realised, idea of watchdog science journalism,” Declan Fahy writes.
In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 450 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 67,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is approaching 700, 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):
- “China intensifies crackdown on academic misconduct with new measures and database.”
- “Is AI Flooding Medical Journals With ‘Meaningless’ Research?” Our Ivan Oransky says “It’s not fraudulent, and it’s not really slop.”
- “Sham scientific societies are misleading star researchers.”
- “Boot Camp Promises a Submitted Paper in Just 2 Days.” We have noted similar schemes target foreign applicants to U.S.programs.
- The researcher who published the second-highest number of papers in Norway is acquitted of misconduct.
- “By overlooking retractions, ranking systems incentivize volume over quality, weakening accountability.”
- “China punishes prominent academics exposed by research sleuth.”
- AI bots like iLands are “flooding researchers with requests for money and time.” An agent even sent us a musical lament for a retraction earlier this week.
- Researchers publish peer-reviewed proposal of tool to help researchers “spot problematic trials before they distort evidence.”
- “AI cannot replace human participants in behavioral research.”
- Researchers look into whether some preprint publishers are “more attractive to predatory publishers.”
- Director of Iran science ministry said more than 2,200 Iranian papers have been retracted, called for new policies from university research ethics committees.
- “We’re asking the wrong question about AI in research,” says head of journals policy at Springer Nature.
- “U.K. funder uses ‘AI triage’ to reject grant proposals—leaving researchers dismayed.” And “AI ‘could filter out weaker grant proposals’, study suggests.”
- “AI Presents Science with a ‘Ship of Theseus’ Problem: Replacing every part of the research process with AI will leave science recognizable but devoid of human judgment.”
- “‘AI slop’ hides the conversations we should be having.”
- “AI can widen science — but only if institutions stop rewarding the already measurable.”
- Poor research methods “are substantially driven by deficits in statistical thinking and data skills that are common across the sciences,” says researcher.
- China launches journal aimed at “rivalling the world’s oldest and most influential academic titles.”
- “Beware sham scientific societies: the research community must be more vigilant.”
- Editors of biomedical journal on why they reject submissions before peer review.
- “Our metrics for measuring faculty productivity are fueling a crisis in scientific integrity.”
- “Paid to peer review: firms are paying researchers to assess manuscripts for journals.”
- “Secret watermark labels proteins as ‘made by AI.'”
- “AI Slop Coming to a Library Near You.”
- “The Methods Section Should Not be an Afterthought in Scientific Papers.”
- “The clinical trial bottlenecks game: Can you speed up a vaccine trial by changing its design?”
- “Every reply pleases one group and angers another”: Play a game to see how many weeks you’d last running an academic journal.
Upcoming Events
- “What is Accountability Journalism in Science and Why Does It Matter?” in partnership with The Open Notebook (October 5, virtual)
- “Covering Fraud and Misconduct: Lessons from the Retraction Beat,” featuring our Kate Travis (October 8, virtual)
- “Meta-Research In Action: Implementing Better Science” featuring our Medical Evidence Project researchers Rhiannon Kamstra and Floe Foxon presenting with New York University colleagues (October 27, NYU)
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].