Rita Aksenfeld

Director of Cambridge toxicology institute retracts paper for potential image manipulation

Twelve years after sleuths flagged problematic images in a 2009 paper, the authors — including the head of a UK research institute — have retracted the article.

The paper, published in Genes & Development, has been cited 126 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

According to the June 1 retraction notice, the authors retracted the paper because of “anomalies in the data presented” in multiple figures. “The issues relate to potential instances of image manipulation, including undisclosed splicing, lane flipping, and lane and panel duplications in the preparation of these figures.”

Springer Nature to retract machine learning book following Retraction Watch coverage

A screenshot from June 26 shows the book had been accessed 3,782 times.

Springer Nature is retracting a book on machine learning that had multiple references to works that do not exist, Retraction Watch has learned.

The move comes two weeks after we reported on the book’s fake references.

The link to the information page for the book, Mastering Machine Learning: From Basics to Advanced, now returns “Page not found,” and the text is no longer listed under the book series on computer systems and networks.

University dean’s attempt to correct a paper turns into a retraction

A dean at an Australian university sought to correct some of his papers. He received a retraction instead.

We wrote last year about Marcel Dinger, dean of science at the University of Sydney, who was a coauthor on five papers with multiple references that had been retracted. In May 2024, Alexander Magazinov, a scientific sleuth and software engineer based in Kazakhstan, had flagged the papers on PubPeer for “references of questionable reliability.” Magazinov credited the Problematic Paper Screener with helping him find them.

Dinger told us at the time he intended to work with editors to determine whether the five papers should be corrected or retracted.

Do you need informed consent to study public posts on social media?

The retraction of a paper looking at posts in a Reddit subforum about mental illness has once again raised questions about informed consent in research using public data.

To study the experience of receiving a diagnosis of schizophrenia, a U.K.-based team of researchers collected posts from the Reddit subforum r/schizophrenia, which is dedicated to discussing the disorder. They analyzed and anonymized the data, and published their findings in June 2024 in Current Psychology, a Springer Nature journal.

The paper prompted backlash on X in the subsequent months, and in the Reddit community used for the study. People on the subreddit were concerned about the lack of consent, potential lack of anonymity, and the hypocrisy of discussing ethics in the paper while not seeking consent, a moderator of that subreddit who goes by the handle Empty_Insight told Retraction Watch.

When it comes to conflicts of interest, affiliations are apparently no smoking gun

Seven papers on various aspects of vaping and cigarettes published in Toxicology Reports listed each authors’ affiliation – the tobacco company Philip Morris International – when they originally appeared in the journal between 2019 and 2023. And all but one article disclosed the funding for the research originated from the company.

That apparently wasn’t enough for the journal.

Toxicology Reports has issued a correction to add those affiliations as a conflict of interest. The statements were “missing or incorrect” in the original papers, according to the correction notice, published in the June 2025 issue of Toxicology Reports. In addition to reiterating that the authors work for PMI, the correction also adds to the conflict of interest statements that the authors were funded by the company and used its products in the research.

Do men or women retract more often? A new study weighs in

The male/female retraction ratio for Zheng and colleagues’ dataset showed that male first authors have a higher retraction rate than females. *Source: E-T Zheng et al/*J of Informetrics 2025

When you look at retracted papers, you find more men than women among the authors. But more papers are authored by men than women overall. A recent study comparing retraction rates, not just absolute numbers, among first and corresponding authors confirms that men retract disproportionally more papers than women.

The paper, published May 20 in the Journal of Informetrics, is the first large-scale study using the ratio of men’s and women’s retraction rates, said study coauthor Er-Te Zheng, a data scientist at The University of Sheffield. The researchers also analyzed gender differences in retractions across scientific disciplines and countries.

Zheng and his colleagues examined papers from a database of over 25 million articles published from 2008 to 2023, about 22,000 of which were retracted. They collected the reasons for retraction from the Retraction Watch Database, and used several software tools to infer each author’s gender based on name and affiliated country.

Springer Nature book on machine learning is full of made-up citations

Would you pay $169 for an introductory ebook on machine learning with citations that appear to be made up?

If not, you might want to pass on purchasing Mastering Machine Learning: From Basics to Advanced, published by Springer Nature in April.

Based on a tip from a reader, we checked 18 of the 46 citations in the book. Two-thirds of them either did not exist or had substantial errors. And three researchers cited in the book confirmed the works they supposedly authored were fake or the citation contained substantial errors.

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