Rita Aksenfeld

‘Biologically implausible distributions’ and self-plagiarism result in 10 retractions for ob-gyn

An obstetrician and gynecologist from an Egyptian university has garnered more than a half-dozen retractions so far this year for self plagiarism and problematic data.

Ibrahim A Abdelazim is on the faculty of Ain Shams University, Cairo, but is on “unpaid leave” and currently working at Ahmadi Hospital in Kuwait, he told us. The recent retractions bring his total to 10, along with one expression of concern. Several journals are conducting investigations into his other papers.

Published from 2012 to 2016, the retracted papers range from methods papers describing how to detect premature rupture of fetal membranes and how to sample endometrial tissue to a descriptive study of fertility after environmental crisis.

Fighting coordinated publication fraud is like ‘emptying an overflowing bathtub with a spoon,’ study coauthor says

The observed and forecasted growth rate of paper mill papers outpaces corrective measures, a new study finds. *R. Richardson et al./PNAS 2025*

Systematic research fraud has outpaced corrective measures and will only keep accelerating, according to a study of problematic publishing practices and the networks that fuel them.

The study, published August 4 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined research fraud carried out by paper mills, brokers and predatory publishers. By producing low quality or fabricated research, selling authorship and publishing without adequate quality control and peer review, respectively, these three groups were well known to produce a large volume of fraudulent research.

“This is a great paper showing how much fraud there is in the scientific literature. The paper also looks at different methods on how to detect problematic papers, networks and editors,” Anna Abalkina, a researcher at Freie Universität Berlin and creator of the Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker, said.

Springer Nature retracts book with fake citations. Help us find more cases like this.

Springer Nature has officially retracted a book on machine learning following coverage by Retraction Watch. A reader sent us a tip about this book; we’d love your help identifying more.

As we reported, the book, Mastering Machine Learning: From Basics to Advanced, contained many citations to nonexistent works. These fake references are a hallmark of text generated by large language models like ChatGPT.

The retraction notice mentions the illusory citations, stating, “Following publication concerns were raised regarding the validity of certain references. Upon further investigation, the Publisher was unable to verify the source of 25 out of 46 references in this book.” After listing the 25 citations, 12 of which we found in our initial reporting, it continues, “the Series Editor and the publisher therefore no longer have confidence in the reliability of this book. The author has not stated explicitly whether he agrees with this retraction.”

Noticed: Sleuths are starting to get credit for retractions

Pseudonymous sleuth Claire Francis has flagged thousands of papers over the years, so they rarely see something new. But an email from Frontiers about an upcoming retraction on a paper Francis originally flagged offered just that: The option to be acknowledged in the retraction notice.

After years of publishers not routinely – or even often – naming sleuths despite many asking for their often unpaid and risky work to be acknowledged, the trend of acknowledging who identified issues in papers may be gaining momentum. Frontiers is one of several publishers developing such policies, and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) plans to release new guidelines in August that would recommend this practice.

Frontiers began offering acknowledgements last year, a spokesperson for the company told Retraction Watch. “Once investigations are complete, the third party is informed of the outcome and, if a retraction is to be published, offered the option to be recognized in the notice with a standardized statement,” they said.

27-year-old Nature paper earns expression of concern

Figure 1a in a 1998 paper was first flagged on PubPeer in 2016 for image irregularities.

Nature has issued an editorial expression of concern on a paper published 27 years ago — and nearly nine years after learning of an “irregularity” in a figure.

According to the June 18 statement, a figure in the 1998 paper showed duplicated control lanes, with one of them flipped.

Pseudonymous sleuth Claire Francis flagged the issue on PubPeer in 2016, and reported the problem to the journal at the same time, Francis told Retraction Watch.

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.

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