Weekend reads: Retraction counts by country; ‘zombie facts;’ false allegations fell president

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• ‘Still angry’: Chemist finds his name on a study he didn’t write
• Sage slaps more than 100 papers from one journal with expressions of concern
• Pair of management papers retracted for similarities to earlier work
• Who you calling ‘bignose’? Shark paper corrected after species mix-up

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 450. 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 300 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):

• Which countries have the highest rates of retractions? Two different answers from two different studies.
• When a “lie is allowed to fester and. . . inform public thinking”: ‘Zombie facts’ with our Ivan Oransky.
• How the president of a German university “Fell Due to False Plagiarism Allegations.”
• “Unaffiliated researcher” sections in journals: “How would we feel about a world where everyone can participate in the formal enterprise of research?”
• “Researchers have a responsibility to publish,” says an engineering academic. 
• “Data sleuths’ work is thankless,” argue our Ivan Oransky and Indiana’s David Allison. “They must get credit for retractions.”
• Springer Nature offers to sell authors “AI Summaries of Their Own Work.”
• South Korean first lady “plagiarised master’s thesis, university concludes.”
• A study looks at “[r]eproducibility and replicability of qualitative research.”
• “Publishers need more help to combat malicious academic networks.”
• Researchers say “it may be beneficial to consider using non-monetary incentives, such as gamification, to promote OA [open access] publishing.”
• Springer Nature develops in-house AI tool to “automate some editorial quality checks.’”
• “Harsh penalties await scientific research fraudsters,” says the Supreme People’s Court of China.
• Defining “safe zones” for China-US research collaboration amid worsening relations. 
• Sociologist who explained the rise of right-wing populism in Germany loses professorship for plagiarism. 
• “Can Academic Fraud Be Stopped?” An updated episode of Freakonomics featuring our Ivan Oransky. 
• Researchers look at “[p]eer reviewers’ conflicts of interest in biomedical research.”
• Journal issues several expressions of concern for Colombia center’s animal rights violations. Our 2023 story on the center.
• Researchers propose methods to analyze “the scientific integrity of the collected work” of authors, featuring the RW Database. 
• “Retractions caused by honest mistakes are extremely stressful, say researchers.”
• Researchers “examine India’s status in retraction trends.”
• “Dying woman and ethical doubts spark probe into cannabis cancer ‘cure.’”
• “Fake scientific papers made with AI used names of 3 Japan researchers.”
• “Teens Are Doing AI Research Now. Is That a Good Thing?”
• “There’s a fine line between trusting scientific literature and relying too much on it.”

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