If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- A company named Springer that isn’t the publisher is offering authorship for sale. And now it isn’t, following our story.
- Authors respond with ‘a bit like a threat’ after journal reveals postdoc’s identity
- Former Crick Ph.D. student loses COVID vaccine paper for fabrication
- Paper touted by MD Anderson gets expression of concern for data ‘concerns’
- Journal retracts, republishes paper on Long COVID treatment trial
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 800, 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):
- “As AI triggers a tsunami of submissions, computer science conferences impose caps.”
- After their first-ever strike over staff wages last month, Lancet Group union members plan three more strike days due to employer inaction.
- “Is this the ‘mathocalypse’? Why OpenAI’s latest results dump has left mathematicians in shock.” The company has already withdrawn preprints.
- “NIH appears to shut down comments on science peer-review rule change ahead of schedule.”
- Editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology on why it doesn’t require AI disclosures.
- Lead researcher on cannabis extract cancer paper loses appeal against termination for research misconduct.
- “Award-winning microscopy image disqualified over AI use.”
- “They had their names stolen and misused in a fake article: — ‘I feel powerless and angry.'”
- “Whistleblowing in universities is ‘extraordinarily risky,'” says author who raised flags about bullying at his university.
- University of Zurich “launches independent and confidential External Reporting Office” for reporting misconduct.
- “Identifying Alternatives to Retraction of Controversial Research Findings.”
- “Will AI scoop your science? Some researchers see a gloomy future.”
- “Teams led by physicist used ‘BootLoops’ software to produce 36 papers in weeks on everything from linguistics to health policy.”
- “Springer Nature Removes Description of ‘Fatigue’ Patients as ‘Combative’ and ‘Reproachful”; authors claim the journal editor included the language without their consent.
- “EPA’s New Science Chief Defends Integrity After Trump’s Shakeup.”
- “Design open science to be equitable,” European Commission policymakers urged.
- “Shadow of success: the temporal association between performance incentive system and research misconduct.”
- “Dutch minister criticises ‘fraud’ as ‘fifth of theses AI-written.’” And “AI use in STEM PhD dissertations reaches 29%, study finds.”
- “My worst research failure—and what it taught me”: Three researchers reflect.
- “China ‘more tolerant of failure’ with new 15-year research grants.”
- “MI5 warns UK universities over ‘theft of tech secrets by Chinese front company,’” an alert that “will send chill through UK’s cash-strapped universities.”
- 14% of retractions relating to turmeric were for paper mill issues, researchers find.
- “Why Citations Are Moribund.”
- “Reporting quality and spin in abstracts of randomized clinical trials related to oral mucositis.”
- Creators of new detector say it can tell whether a paper was written by AI or humans “by examining its ideas.”
- “Google launches Deep Review AI tool to help researchers catch manuscript errors.”
- Academic publisher mergers “could help by creating savings that offset the increased costs of quality control.”
- “Who Cares Whether Academics Use AI to Write?”
- “As a journal editor, I’ve started using Claude to help find reviewers,” says ecologist.
- “Study highlights public investment behind academic publishers’ profits.”
- “A $480 editing fee and the fairness of academic publishing.”
- “Has AI Destroyed the Doctoral Dissertation?”
- “Nine in ten research papers disputing definition of ultraprocessed foods have industry ties, study finds.”
- “Bibliometrics: Are we doing everything wrong?”
- Researcher who asked ChatGPT to help reorganize her study says when she told it to “continue,” it emailed five researchers for their datasets.
Upcoming talks
- “Why Retractions Are on the Rise and Why That’s Good News”: A Population Health Sciences seminar featuring our Ivan Oransky (October 19, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health and virtual)
- “Quantifying the Post-Retraction Persistence of Discredited Science”: our Ivan Oransky reports the findings of the Center for Scientific Integrity’s study commissioned by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (February 19, AAAS Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL)
- “What Retractions Reveal about AI and Research Integrity” by our Ivan Oransky (February 20, AAAS Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL)
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].