Retraction Watch Staff

Weekend reads: Science publishing a ‘hot mess’; AI microscopy ‘indistinguishable’ from real; social media as a bellwether for retractions

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Duke scientists lose eight papers for alleged image manipulation
Sleuth unearths citation, authorship issues at earth sciences journal
Former student who ran paper mill up to 11 retractions
Journal issues speedy retraction in less than a day for ‘inadvertent mistake’
Wiley retracts study stolen by reviewer, following Retraction Watch coverage

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 60,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 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?

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Weekend reads: U.S. EPA tells scientists to stop publishing; ‘unreliable’ Tylenol research; Alzheimer’s paper retracted

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

University email addresses no longer effective bulwark against fake peer review
Study on apple cider vinegar for weight loss retracted after many raise concerns
Second study using ‘Tin Man Syndrome’ X-ray under scrutiny following Retraction Watch inquiry
Math has publication fraud, too
Authors defend retracted paper on vitamin D and COVID-19 critic called ‘deeply bizarre‘
Taylor & Francis threatens legal action against anonymous group’s ‘highly defamatory’ claims

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Math has publication fraud, too

Ilka Agricola
*Credit: Thorsten Richter*

Scholarly publishing in mathematics is unlike many other fields, marked by fewer papers, fewer coauthors per paper and fewer citations. But that doesn’t mean the field is immune to fraud and cheating.

A pair of papers posted to the arXiv addresses the issue of fraudulent publishing in math, particularly metrics gaming, and offers a list of recommendations to help detect and deal with that problem and other fraudulent activities. (The former was also published in the October AMS Notices; the latter will appear in the November issue.) “Fraudulent publishing undermines trust in science and scientific results and therefore fuels antiscience movements,” mathematician Ilka Agricola, lead author of both papers, told Retraction Watch.

A professor of mathematics at Marburg University in Germany, Agricola was president of the German Mathematical Society in 2021-2022 and is chair of the Committee on Publishing of the International Mathematical Union. The new articles are the products of a working group of the IMU and the International Council of Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

Weekend reads: Vaccine contamination paper under investigation; Harvard sues Gino for falsifying evidence; fugitive scientist arrested

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Drummond Rennie (1936-2025): A towering figure in medical journals in his own words
Exclusive: Journal bans drug safety database papers as they flood the literature
Why has this microRNA review paper been cited more than 2,000 times?
Publisher investigating DNA contamination paper that authors say CDC vaccine committee will consider
Exclusive: Iraqi physicist fired by ministry over massive publishing scam

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Weekend reads: Stopping citation hallucinations; the ‘uncanny valley’ of predatory journals; fighting back against misconduct

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

‘Article broker’ in China trying to hook journal editors with fishy publishing deals
Deputy department chair loses paper for image duplication, more retractions to follow
University vice chancellor’s work crawling with ‘tortured phrases’
When you discover you’re an author on a paper you’ve never seen

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Weekend reads: ‘Europe’s largest paper mill?’; the ‘Paper Mill Iceberg’ of cancer research; why is Trump gutting research integrity agencies?

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Papers continue to face retractions for failure to license pricy tool
‘Tin Man Syndrome,’ five other case studies retracted following Retraction Watch coverage
Guest post: In the name of Scopus, one hijacked journal easily tricks authors
New COPE retraction guidelines address paper mills, third parties, and more
Iraqi university dean linked to paper mills has more than a dozen retractions

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Weekend reads: Lawyer sues to retract Paxil paper; most retracted papers have ‘negligible scholarly impact’; the high costs of freely available research

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

‘No misconduct here’: Author defends addendum that sleuth says is ‘inadequate’
Journal let authors make undisclosed changes that masked stolen content in paper
Chemist in Japan up to 40 retractions, earning him a spot on our leaderboard
Exclusive: Cancer researcher sues MD Anderson over misconduct finding
Embattled journal Cureus halts peer reviewer suggestions

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Weekend reads: ChatGPT ignores retractions; the ‘Swiss Cheese Model’ for flagging papers; plagiarism in the age of AI

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Cardiology researcher in Italy up to 17 retractions, most for duplication
Authors asked Elsevier to retract papers in 2012. In the case of one paper, they’re still waiting
Hive mindfulness: Sleuths’ advice leads to retraction of paper on social connection
Top education researcher goes to court over plagiarism claims, university review
PLOS One slaps four papers with expressions of concern for overlapping control data

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Weekend reads: Journal says no to RFK Jr.; another Microsoft quantum computing correction; ‘Journal Impact Nonsense’

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Former lab tech earns federal funding ban years after leaving science
High school student who volunteered at NASA-sponsored lab gets retraction
Genomics pioneer earns first retraction for anti-aging gene therapy paper
Sage journal retracts nearly 50 papers for signs of paper mill activity
‘Tin Man Syndrome’ case plagiarized from hoax, sleuths say

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Weekend reads: Scientific fraud at scale; upheaval inside US human protections office; vaccines-autism paper retracted

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Springer Nature retracts book with fake citations. Help us find more cases like this
Fighting coordinated publication fraud is like ‘emptying an overflowing bathtub with a spoon,’ study coauthor says. More coverage from the New York Times, Science, Nature and the Economist.
‘Biologically implausible distributions’ and self-plagiarism result in 10 retractions for ob-gyn
Dean accused of plagiarism in Bulgaria not guilty, ministry report says

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