Alicia Gallegos

Spanish court rules researcher plagiarized colleague, orders withdrawal of works

Spain’s Supreme Court in Madrid
*Cberbell/Wikimedia Commons*

The Supreme Court of Spain has ordered a literary scholar to pursue retractions of nine works it determined were plagiarized.

The Tribunal Supremo upheld a lower court’s ruling that narrative theory researcher Franciscó Álamo Felices, a professor at the University of Almería in Spain, plagiarized a colleague’s work in two books and seven articles. José R. Valles Calatrava, a literary theory professor at the same university, sued Felices in 2019 for infringement of his intellectual property rights.

That lower court found Felices responsible for “a huge amount of plagiarism at different times and in different articles, revealing a systematic and conscientious parasitic attitude and a desire for appropriation,” according to a translation of the ruling by DeepL Translate. In an October 2025 decision, the Tribunal Supremo dismissed an appeal by Felices against the ruling, finding he failed to demonstrate any fundamental errors of law.

Journal retracts nearly 150 articles for compromised peer review

A journal published by an organization that develops technical standards is retracting 147 papers for problematic peer review — and the publisher expects more to follow.

The American Society For Testing And Materials (ASTM) International started an investigation into its Journal of Testing and Evaluation after an ASTM vendor noticed some “irregular patterns in the peer review” in a special issue, spokesperson Gavin O’Reilly told Retraction Watch. When the publisher confirmed those patterns, ASTM decided to investigate several related issues, he said.

The investigation revealed the peer review process in the special sections or issues had been compromised, each of the retraction notices says.

Lawsuit fails to block retraction of paper claiming to link heart-related deaths to COVID-19 vaccines

*Greg J. Marchand in a photo from his research institute’s website.*

A Taylor & Francis journal has retracted a widely-read paper linking cardiac-related mortality to COVID-19 vaccines after an unsuccessful legal attempt by the lead author to block the withdrawal. That author says he is considering further legal action against the publisher.

The article, “Risk of all-cause and cardiac-related mortality after vaccination against COVID-19: A meta-analysis of self-controlled case series studies,” drew swift criticism when it was published in Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics in August 2023. At the time, critics and sleuths were quick to challenge the data and methods used in the paper, which now has more than 143,000 views on the Taylor & Francis website and has been cited 15 times, including by two letters to the editor of the journal and a response from the authors, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The retraction notice, posted online January 16, states the retraction resulted from concerns that arose about the methodology of the study and the integrity and availability of the data. The authors provided a full response to the queries; however, the publisher determined the validity of the findings remained in question, the notice states. It continues:

Fed up, author issues her own retraction after journal ghosts her

At wit’s end after a publisher ignored her repeated requests for a correction, Ursula Bellut-Staeck took the extreme step of issuing her own retraction. But is that even a thing?

Bellut-Staeck, an independent researcher from Berlin, Germany, submitted a paper to SCIREA Journal of Clinical Medicine last spring after receiving an invitation from the journal. The article, about mechanotransduction and the impact of infrasound and vibrations, was published June 16.

But when Bellut-Staeck realized her affiliation as listed on the article needed changing, she contacted the journal to request a correction. The problem, she said, was linguistic. Because she didn’t realize “affiliation” has a different meaning in German than English, she had mistakenly listed herself as being at an institution she has since left.

Northwestern to pay $2.3 million for falsified research in NIH grants

Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

A researcher accused of falsifying research in work funded by the National Institutes of Health has cost Northwestern University $2.3 million.

The university, based in Evanston, Ill., violated the Civil Monetary Penalties Law when a former researcher at the school falsified work funded by an NIH award, according to a November press release from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Office of Inspector General. The researcher and other investigators then referenced the falsified research in grant applications, reports and other submissions to NIH for two other awards, according to OIG. Together, the three grants totaled about $5 million, with $3.5 million tied to Northwestern.

The Civil Monetary Penalties law allows OIG to impose penalties against individuals and entities that engage in fraud and other improper conduct related to government grants. OIG learned of the researcher’s manipulation when Northwestern self-disclosed the conduct, the release said.

Sage journal retracts more than 40 papers over concerns with peer review, author contributions

Sage has retracted 45 papers from one of its journals for questionable authorship and peer review.

The publisher began an investigation into Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation last year to address citation concerns, a Sage spokesperson told Retraction Watch. The journal was one of 20 titles that lost their impact factors in Clarivate’s 2025 Journal Citation Reports for excessive self-citation and citation stacking.

Sage retracted the articles due to “concerns around the peer review process underlying these articles and author contributions to these articles, as well as the integrity of the research process,” according to the retraction notice, published November 23. The publisher detected “one or more” issues in each of the papers, including patterns of citation manipulation, indicators of third-party involvement and problems with peer review.

Court: University disclosure of researcher’s misconduct did not violate due process

An appellate court has dismissed a legal challenge by a cancer researcher against her former institution, ruling the university’s misconduct investigation and disclosure process did not violate her right to due process.

In 2020, The Ohio State University determined that Flavia Pichiorri, a former postdoc in the lab of Carlo Croce, was responsible for manipulating and reusing images in four publications, spanning from her time in Croce’s lab through establishing her own lab at Ohio State. Pichiorri sued the Ohio State Board of Trustees in April 2023 alleging the release of its misconduct findings to “prestigious journals” and her new employer violated her due process rights, defamed her, and inflicted emotional distress, among other claims.

But in a December 19 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit concluded Pichiorri’s complaint never identified an adequate “liberty interest” worthy of procedural protections under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. The appeals court affirmed a lower court’s decision tossing the complaint for failure to state a constitutional claim.

Court tosses out researcher’s bid to overturn funding ban

A federal court has terminated a former researcher’s lawsuit against the U.S. government agency that barred her from receiving federal funds following an agency investigation that lasted 10 years.

Ivana Frech — formerly Ivana De Domenico — sued the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) in 2023 after the agency concluded she engaged in research misconduct while at the University of Utah, by “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly falsifying and/or fabricating” images in work funded by the National Institutes of Health. In her legal complaint filed shortly after ORI’s debarment, Frech alleged the agency’s misconduct findings and debarment decision were “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, unsupported by substantial evidence, and contrary to law and regulation.”

On December 12, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia threw out Frech’s suit, ruling in favor of the government’s motion for summary judgement. Summary motions are granted when a court finds no genuine dispute over material facts and a lack of conflicting evidence for a jury to weigh. The decision allows ORI’s three-year debarment – which runs through August 2026 – and misconduct conclusions against Frech to stand.

Controversial Paxil “Study 329” earns expression of concern after critic sues publisher

After more than 20 years of criticism and calls for retraction, a journal has placed an expression of concern on a study of the antidepressant Paxil in teens that critics say has led to unwarranted and potentially harmful prescribing of the drug to youth.

The 2001 paper, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP), reported findings from a randomized trial known as “Study 329,” which concluded the antidepressant Paxil was safe and effective in kids ages 12 to 18.

In 2012, Paxil maker GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay $3 billion to settle civil and criminal charges that included “unlawful promotion” of the drug for adolescents, for whom the product was never approved, and allegations the company “participated in preparing, publishing and distributing a misleading medical journal article” — the JAACAP paper. A reanalysis in 2015 found the drug was “ineffective and unsafe” for the age group studied.

Wiley retracts study stolen by reviewer, following Retraction Watch coverage

A Wiley journal has retracted a paper more than a year after a researcher reported the work was hers and had been stolen by a reviewer for another journal.

As we reported in July, Shafaq Aftab, now a lecturer at the University of Central Punjab in Pakistan, contacted Wiley in September 2024 after discovering a paper published in one of its journals, Systems Research and Behavioral Science (SRBS), was the exact work she submitted to a different journal a year earlier.

The retraction notice, issued October 1, states an investigation found “significant unattributed overlap with an unpublished manuscript” and data the authors provided to the journal were “insufficient to resolve the concerns.” Subsequently, “additional scientific errors were identified in the manuscript,” according to the notice.

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