Ivan Oransky

Weekend reads: ‘An epidemic of scientific fakery’; death threats for critics; Cleveland Clinic settles mismanagement allegations for $7.6 million

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 49,000 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):

Weekend reads: Major Alzheimer’s paper slated for retraction; research dog breeder pleads guilty; biomedical retractions quadruple

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Weekend reads: Another vaccine-autism retraction; ‘Why We Commit Academic Fraud’; on a psilocybin-depression correction

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are nearly 49,000 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):

Weekend reads: ‘Why Scientific Fraud is Suddenly Everywhere’; ‘misconduct, intimidation, alcohol abuse and theft’; ‘grimpact’

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Weekend reads: Rector in Spain faces more scrutiny; Wiley to shut down 19 more journals; chemistry journal folds after outcry

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 48,000 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):

Nature earns ire over lack of code availability for Google DeepMind protein folding paper

A group of researchers is taking Nature to task for publishing a paper earlier this month about Google DeepMind’s protein folding prediction program without requiring the authors publish the code behind the work.

Roland Dunbrack, of Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, peer-reviewed the paper but was “not given access to code during the review,” the authors of a letter submitted today, May 14, to Nature – including Dunbrack – write, “despite repeated requests.”

A Nature podcast said AlphaFold3 – unlike AlphaFold2 – “can accurately predict protein-molecule complexes containing DNA, RNA and more. Although the new version is restricted to non-commercial use, researchers are excited by its greater range of predictive abilities and the prospect of speedier drug discovery.”

Professor, former dean earns nearly 100 expressions of concern for citation manipulation

A professor at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia who once served as a dean at the Stevens Institute of Technology in the United States, has received expressions of concern on 93 of his conference proceedings for what a publisher said were irrelevant self-citations and “artificially inflating the number of citations.”

The notes by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) on the work of Yehia Massoud, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, take two forms. One reads:

Weekend reads: Editor under scrutiny resigns; bullshitting scientists; questionable practices in expanding disciplines

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Concussion researcher McCrory up to 17 retractions

More than two years after retracting an article by one of its former editors in chief for plagiarism, the British Journal of Sports Medicine has retracted six more pieces by the editor, Paul McCrory, a noted concussion researcher in Australia.

The retractions join 11 more of McCrory’s works, including 10 from BJSM and one from Current Sports Medicine Reports.The BJSM, published by The BMJ, is also correcting two additional articles by McCrory.

Troubles for McCrory – for decades “the world’s foremost doctor shaping the concussion protocols that are used by sports leagues and organizations globally,” according to the New York Times – began in 2021 when Steve Haake, a professor at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK, told the BJSM McCrory had plagiarized a 2000 article by Haake in Physics World. (It would not be the only time the work was plagiarized.)

Weekend reads: Medical residents’ publish or perish problem; Alzheimer’s and predatory journals; brain biopsies set off alarm bells

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

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