Weekend reads: Why scientist rankings should be ignored; misconduct claims in court; mining company demands retraction

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Faked heart papers retracted following Ohio State investigation
• “Deceit, delusion, and a classic medical fraud”: An excerpt from a new book about a cancer treatment hoax
• ‘Coding’ errors prompt retraction of paper on long COVID in kids
• Exclusive: Biochemistry journal retracts 25 papers for ‘systematic manipulation’ of peer review
• Sleuths spur cleanup at journal with nearly 140 retractions and counting
• Journal retracts article for plagiarized images after trying to gag researcher who complained
• Exclusive: Publisher retracts more than 450 papers from journal it acquired last year

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400.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):

• “Why Scientist Rankings Should Be Ignored.” An op-ed by our co-founders in a leading newspaper in Vietnam.
• “Unusual Fraud Claim Against Scientific Co-Author Over Alleged Research Problems Fizzles Out.”
• “A Tenure-Denial Case at Harvard Reaches a Rare Destination: the Courts.” The case has settled.
• Mining company Rio Tinto is “demanding the retraction of the scientific work against the Jadar project.”
• “Task swap prompts data do-over for autism auditory perception study.”
• “Concerning trends and potential issues in osteosarcoma research publication.”
• “Our findings further revealed that ethical misconduct reduces trust in science among people with both low and high science literacy.”
• “AI Scientists Have a Problem: AI Bots Are Reviewing Their Work.”
• A list of more than 500 papers with clear evidence of generative AI use.
• “Registered Revisions”: “Assessing the effects of a precommitment policy applied during peer review.”
• Tunisia “Cabinet approves new draft decree to tackle plagiarism in [higher education] HE.”
• Among radiology trainees, “In a two-week period 53% reported receiving unsolicited emails from predatory publications and 32% reported receiving emails from fraudulent conferences.”
• “Congressional probe questions clinical trials run in China, citing army involvement.”
• “Clinical trials exclude disabled Americans because federal agencies failed them, new report finds.”
• “Is AI my co-author? The ethics of using artificial intelligence in scientific publishing.”
• “Is ChatGPT a Reliable Ghostwriter?”
• “A new ‘AI scientist’ can write science papers without any human input. Here’s why that’s a problem.”
• The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has a new Scientific Integrity Officer, formerly of the Office of Research Integrity.
• “Editors rely on the honor system; is that good enough to disclose authors’ possible conflicts?”
• “As brain research advances, how should study participants be protected? Bioethicist Saskia Hendriks has some ideas.”
• Researchers propose the creation of a “journal transparency tool . . . which will allow users to obtain information about a given scholarly journal’s operations and policies.”
• Fraudulent journals “attract authors who do not uphold scientific integrity principles,” study finds. 
• “‘Treat me fairly now or I will commit misconduct later”: A study “argues that the use of fair evaluations and other procedurally just processes” is important in preventing graduate student misconduct.
• “Scientific whistleblowers can be compensated for their service.”
• “’This has GOT TO BE bullshit!’… Personal reflections on the Ranga Dias affair.” A link to our previous coverage. 
• An editorial looks at “why research and education fraud is concerning for medical and psychiatric education.”
• “Preserving Academic Integrity: Combating the Proliferation of Paper Mills in Scholarly Publishing.”
• “Blow that whistle at your own risk. . . hard-won lessons from decades of fighting for scientific integrity.”
• “The PubPeer conundrum: Administrative challenges in research misconduct proceedings.”
• “Six of the main publishing groups have increased the average price for publishing articles by 26.6% in the last four years,” according to an APC dataset that was part of a recent paper. 
• “Study adds to growing body of evidence that [gender] biases can affect all researchers in a field.”
• The ERROR project “offers researchers a bounty for spotting mistakes in published papers.”
• “Assessments of research culture should be open about failure.”
• “Nicki Minaj wins retraction lawsuit over gossip blogger who claimed she was a ‘CRACKHEAD.'”

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