Retraction Watch Staff

Weekend reads: Western publishing at a ‘breaking point’; NIH to cap publisher fees; sleuths say their work is being ‘weaponized’

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Viral paper on black plastic kitchen utensils earns second correction
Harvard researcher’s work faces scrutiny after $39 million private equity deal
When it comes to conflicts of interest, affiliations are apparently no smoking gun
Do you need informed consent to study public posts on social media?
Retraction for ‘unsound’ analysis was ‘disproportionate and discouraging,’ author says

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500.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?

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

Weekend reads: Problematic papers prompt submission pause; HHS walks back Springer Nature cancellation; and hidden prompts for positive peer reviews

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Springer Nature book on machine learning is full of made-up citations.
Do men or women retract more often? A new study weighs in.
Chinese basic research funding agency penalizes 25 researchers for misconduct.
Remembering Mario Biagioli, who articulated how scholarly metrics lead to fraud.

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

Weekend reads: Trump cuts funding for Springer Nature pubs; another nonexistent study for HHS; what RFK Jr. got right about academic publishing

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

COPE integrity officer loses 22-year-old paper for image concerns
Slovak science academy ‘strictly condemns’ government official’s paper on mRNA vaccines
Guest post: In defense of direct replication studies (if they even need defending)
Swedish regulators drop investigations into Chalmers’ prosthetics lab
Science issues correction on a paper after repeat experiments and misconduct finding

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Weekend reads: Nobel Prize winners and retractions; Nature to publish peer reviews automatically; ‘AI or Die’?

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

When PubMed got it right, Elsevier got it wrong, and Retraction Watch helped clear it up
Springer Nature psycholinguistics journal retracts over a dozen articles for authorship, peer review issues
Journal corrects nearly 100 papers after authors fail to disclose they are on the editorial board
Citation issues cost these 20 journals their impact factors this year
Editors won’t retract talc and cancer article J&J says is false in court

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Weekend reads: Journals are MAGA’s ‘latest target’; a psychedelic retraction; professor sues rival over plagiarism accusations

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Journal tells author its retracting three papers for concept that ‘violates’ law of thermodynamics
Apparent NCI director candidate wants ‘open, respectful’ post-publication peer review while promoting anonymous site that calls sleuths a ‘mob’
Paper rejected for AI, fake references published elsewhere with hardly anything changed

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Weekend reads: A university ‘integrity index’; surgeon falsely claims Harvard Ph.D.; more on ‘gold standard science’ executive order

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

NIH-funded replication studies are not the answer to the reproducibility crisis in pre-clinical research
$900,000 grant to Retraction Watch’s parent organization will fund forensic analysis of articles that affect human health. A link to Nature’s coverage
‘Anyone can do this’: Sleuths publish a toolkit for post-publication review
Fourth retraction for Italian scientist comes 11 years after sleuths flagged paper
10 years after the downfall of a same-sex marriage canvassing study, tenure, some better practices — and an engagement

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 59,000 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 — 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):

$900,000 grant to Retraction Watch’s parent organization will fund forensic analysis of articles that affect human health

The Center for Scientific Integrity, the parent nonprofit of Retraction Watch, has launched a new initiative to investigate and rapidly disseminate problems in the medical literature that directly affect human health.

Thanks to a $900,000 grant from Open Philanthropy, the Medical Evidence Project will leverage the tools of forensic metascience — using visual and computational methods to determine a paper’s trustworthiness — to rapidly identify problems in scientific articles, combined with the experience and platform of Retraction Watch to disseminate those findings.

“We originally set up The Center for Scientific Integrity as a home for Retraction Watch, but we always hoped we would be able to do more in the research accountability space,” said Ivan Oransky, executive director of the Center and cofounder of Retraction Watch. “The Medical Evidence Project allows us to support critical analysis and disseminate the findings.”

Weekend reads: MAHA report cites nonexistent studies; RFK Jr. threatens publishing access; can ‘zombie papers’ be killed?

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

‘More of the same’: Journals, trade website refuse to correct critiques of book on Alzheimer’s fraud
Meet David Robert Grimes and Mariana Ribeiro, the first two Retraction Watch Sleuths in Residence
IQ study retracted in fallout from decades-old misconduct report. See our previous coverage
Paper on “wokeness” and mental health retracted for political reasons, authors say

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

Meet the first two Retraction Watch Sleuths in Residence

We are thrilled to announce that David Robert Grimes and Mariana Ribeiro will join the Retraction Watch team as Sleuths in Residence starting June 1.

Earlier this year we announced the Sleuth in Residence Program, an opportunity for active sleuths to have a secure and paid position while working closely with our research team on specific projects, and with our journalism team to publish their findings. Our goal is to build capacity in this space to emphasize the value of compensating and protecting the critical work of sleuths.

We’re pleased to be able to bring on two Sleuths in Residence as part of this effort.

Weekend reads: French agency’s research director sanctioned; AI data woes at MIT; is disruptive science over?

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Scopus indexed a journal with a fake editorial board and a sham archive. When we asked them about it, they removed it.
Can a better ID system for authors, reviewers and editors reduce fraud? STM thinks so.
Correction finally issued seven years after authors promise fix ‘as soon as possible.’
Researchers to pull duplicate submission after reviewer concerns and Retraction Watch inquiry.
Genentech authors flip PNAS study from corrected to retracted following Retraction Watch coverage.

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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