Weekend reads: Happy birthday, Retraction Watch!; a mysterious conference; extreme publishing; research parasites revisited

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Science and the significant trend towards spin and fairytales
• Cancer paper retracted 11 years after reported plagiarism
• Journal retracts paper on chiropractic product after distributor complains
• Happy 14th birthday, Retraction Watch – and what a year it was

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 50,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 250 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List — or our list of nearly 100 papers with evidence they were written by ChatGPT?

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

• “The mystery of the huge global summit in Barcelona that nobody knows anything about.”
• “Extreme publishing behavior has become worryingly common across scientific fields.”
• “Revisiting the ‘Research Parasite’ Debate in the Age of AI.”
• “[T]his study found no differences in Altmetric Attention Scores or citations between articles with and without preprints in the first years after publication.”
• “The future of open research policy should be evidence based.”
• “NIH loses latest round of free speech lawsuit filed by animal rights activists.”
• “Ethics and Academic Discourse, Scientific Integrity, Uncertainty, and Disinformation in Medicine: An American College of Physicians Position Paper.”
• “The ‘dataset’ simply does not exist and thus the paper’s analysis and conclusions are based on false information,” says Roger Pielke Jr.
• Researchers “call for more thorough and honest reporting of study limitations.”
• Why “sharing our work…is critical for science” but “trying to get papers into high profile journals” is not.
• In a “gross act of ailurophobia,” the world’s highest cited cat has lost his citations. Humans who gamed the system haven’t. And coverage in Science.
• “Equality in publishing: Are joint authors truly equal?”
• “Are retraction notices becoming clearer?” Yes, but “progress is slow.” Featuring research from our Ivan Oransky, Alison Abritis, and Duke students. 
• “In defense of Frontiers’ self-citation rates.”
• “‘I’d like to think I’d be able to spot one if I saw one’: How science journalists navigate predatory journals.”
• A guide to spotting predatory conferences, “what science needs to do about them,” and “five ways to tackle them.”
• “Choosing a publisher? It’s not all about the impact factor”: Seven things that are “more important.”
• A new preprint estimates “that, globally, a total of $8.349 billion ($8.968 billion in 2023 US dollars) were spent on [article processing charges] APCs between 2019 and 2023.”
• “Artificial intelligence in scientific medical writing: Legitimate and deceptive uses and ethical concerns.”
• 5 researchers banned “from participating in government-funded projects” after plagiarism accusations in China.
• “Public understanding of preprints”: How do people “make sense of unreviewed research?”
• Wiley has joined Taylor & Francis in signing AI company deals. “Some Professors Are Outraged.”
• On “the biggest screwup in the entire history of academic publishing.”
• “Sarepta demanded Duchenne patient advocacy group censor video critical of the company.”
• What is “The future of science publishing?”
• “Mount Sinai mounted aggressive campaign to stifle debate” about its “controversial brain research.”
• “Four things no-one wants to admit about research culture.”
• “AI is complicating plagiarism. How should scientists respond?”
• “Stop just paying lip service on publication integrity.”
• “Retractions, Whistleblowers, and the Quest for Scientific Truth.”
• “The Miraculous Guru with an h-index of 62” and the self purported ability to “harness his own ‘biofield energy to change the behaviour and characteristics of living organisms.'”
• “The ripple effect of retraction on an author’s collaboration network.”
• “Responding to incentives or gaming the system? How UK business academics respond to the Academic Journal Guide.”
• “‘Human error’: Health NZ apologises for retracted job offers.”

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