As we were assembling this week’s Weekend Reads, we learned the tragic news that former Cambridge professor Jason Arday had been found dead in his home. Arday has been the subject of several news stories in recent weeks, including at Retraction Watch. We are shocked and saddened by the news of his death. Our hearts are with his friends and family.
If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org. Find a helpline in your country in this guide.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- BMJ Group retracts paper on COVID-19 vaccines and mortality featured in Senate hearing
- Biology journal pulls 100+ articles and counting from special issues for peer review manipulation
- JAMA journal won’t retract oxycodone paper despite author request, citing no ‘falsification’
- Princeton student says she did not conduct the experiments described in her now-retracted paper. A follow-up to our earlier story: A college student had to retract her paper. The move was ‘the starting point for a better study’
Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):
- A “never AI” research company that pitched us a guest post on retracted trials was, in fact, entirely AI.
- “OpenAI’s latest math breakthroughs commit research misconduct, experts say.”
- IEEE has retracted just 66 of 2,062 likely paper mill conference papers exposed in April study.
- “Is the scientific paper still a fraud?”
- Journal removes a researcher’s Columbia University affiliation from paper following our reporting.
- “Examining the Prevalence and Persistence of Data Implicated in Article Retractions.”
- “How common is academic plagiarism in Britain?”
- Another university in Bangladesh launches a probe following media report on hundreds of retractions from the country’s researchers. And “Bangladesh must confront its failing research culture.”
- Researchers look at “dentally related” retractions, “the impact on oral hygiene and caries management literature.”
- On how the “father of modern cardiology” handled “the discovery that one of his favorite protégés had fabricated research.”
- More than 80% of retracted central nervous system tumor articles included in a study were retracted due to misconduct.
- “AI Slop Risks Future Discovery.”
- The U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine “has removed a chapter on climate science from a reference manual for judges after an outcry from critics on the right.”
- “The Proposed NIH Policy on APCs Is Bonkers. Does it Matter?”
- At one journal, it took four invitations to obtain two reviews in 2007. Last year, it took eight.
- “From policing authors to stewarding science: Governing artificial intelligence across the scientific publishing pipeline in medical journals.”
- “AI agents are checking the scientific literature — and spotting decades-old errors.”
- “Follow-up investigation into ethics approvals” at Didier Raoult‘s former institution found “non-compliance with French and European laws governing clinical research” under his leadership.
- “How well does AI peer review work?” And “Peer review is overwhelmed—can it survive in the AI era?”
- “AI isn’t ready to research itself,” say preprint authors.
- “Can we humanise peer review?”