Retraction Watch Staff

Dana-Farber settles suit alleging image manipulation for $15 million

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has settled a lawsuit filed under the False Claims Act, admitting researchers used images and data that were “misrepresented and/or duplicated” in support of grant applications to the National Institutes of Health. Dana-Farber agreed to pay $15 million to settle the claim.

Sleuth Sholto David filed the claim in April 2024, about three months after he first posted about the allegations, which played a key role in Dana-Farber’s decision to retract or correct dozens of studies. Authors of some of those papers were among senior leaders of the institution, including president and CEO Laurie Glimcher.

As is typical in such cases, the complaint remained sealed while the Department of Justice investigated. As part of the agreement, David will receive $2.63 million, or 17.5 percent of the settlement.

Weekend reads: Springer Nature retracts papers using ‘bonkers’ dataset; preprint server welcomes AI authors; ethics editors’ COI disclosures ‘insufficient’

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

How to juice your Google Scholar h-index, preprint by preprint
One of Kazakhstan’s top nuclear physicists also leads his nation in retractions
COPE’s involvement leads to retraction of paper on homeopathy for lung cancer
Journal removes funding statement from hormone therapy paper without issuing correction

Did you know that Retraction Watch and the Retraction Watch Database are projects of The Center of Scientific Integrity? Others include the Medical Evidence Project, the Hijacked Journal Checker, and the Sleuths in Residence Program. Help support this work.

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

Weekend reads: ‘The fall of a prolific science journal’; Clinical trials by ‘super-retractors’; ‘How to Study Things That May Not Exist’

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Iraqi journal suspected of coercion, two others dropped from major citation databases
Authors retract Nature paper projecting high costs of climate change
The case of the fake references in an ethics journal
Number of ‘unsafe’ publications by psychologist Hans Eysenck could be ‘high and far reaching‘
Glyphosate safety article retracted eight years after Monsanto ghostwriting revealed in court
Nature paper retracted after one investigation finds data errors, another finds no misconduct

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Weekend reads: How an MIT student’s AI study ‘Fell Apart’; Egyptian scientists, Russian affiliations; the ‘dangers’ of bibliometrics with ‘polluted data’

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Exclusive: ‘Highly problematic’ policy has Saudi university pressuring faculty to cite its research
Meet the researcher aiming to halt use of ‘fundamentally flawed’ database linking IQ and nationality
After realizing a fungus contaminated their experiments, researchers retract and redo study

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

Weekend reads: Our cofounder credited in fake citation; ‘Substantial’ undisclosed COIs in psychiatry research; an AI threat to online surveys

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Computing society pulls works for ‘citation falsification’ months after sleuth is convicted of defamation
Research integrity conference hit with AI-generated abstracts
AI unreliable in identifying retracted research papers, says study
Lancet journal retracts COVID-19 metformin paper nearly 2 years after authors request correction
Springer Nature flags paper with fabricated reference to article (not) written by our cofounder
COVID-19 paper by scientists at Harvard, Duke gets expression of concern for ‘unreliable’ data
Exclusive: Reviewer recommended against publishing paper on DNA in COVID vaccines

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Weekend reads: Debunking ‘When Prophecy Fails’; ‘Godfather of AI’ first to reach 1 million citations; ‘Cake causes herpes?’

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Author changes name, publishes 10 papers in journals that banned him
Bug in Springer Nature metadata may be causing ‘significant, systemic’ citation inflation
Math is back as Clarivate boosts integrity markers in Highly Cited Researchers list
BMJ places expression of concern on heavily criticized stem cell paper
AMA ethics journal shutters after 26 years
Botanists plant a stake in oral cancer research with case report, now under investigation

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Weekend reads: Journal retracts ADHD intervention papers; ‘Science and the crisis of trust’; letters to editors surge

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Former Australian science agency ecology researcher loses two papers
Dozens of board members resign from big-data journal after mass staff firings
Review mill in Italy targeting ob-gyn journals, researchers allege
Exclusive: A misconduct ruling, a flawed investigation, and an attempted payoff
Sleuths flag ‘complete mismatch’ in data of BMJ stem cell study
Journal retracts ‘bizarre’ placebo effect paper

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Weekend reads: Another CDC journal in trouble; Web of Science company endorses Iraq awards; on the scarcity of peer reviewers

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Embattled journal Cureus delisted from Web of Science, loses impact factor
‘A new low’: Researchers at Iraqi university must cite colleagues, school journals in papers
Challenge accepted: A reader wrote a program to find fake references in books
Widespread image reuse, manipulation uncovered in animal studies of brain injury
Exclusive: Web of Science company involved in dubious awards in Iraq

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Weekend reads: NEJM launches rival to MMWR; Former NIH official gets expression of concern; ‘1 in 5 chemists’ added errors to papers: study

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Exclusive: Journal to retract Alzheimer’s study after investigation finds misconduct
Less is more: Academic publishing needs ‘radical change,’ Cambridge press report concludes
Exclusive: American Heart Association reviewing award to rocket scientist with seven retractions
‘Confusing and frankly, disturbing’: When researchers are impersonated
Despite new retractions, suspect organ transplant papers remain in the literature

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Weekend reads: Spinal researcher gave patients ‘false hope’; HHS admits error in laying off top ethics official; Alzheimer’s fraud trial set to begin

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

A review claimed a researcher was an expert in sex robots. He’s not
Iraqi dean earns another retraction for paper posted for sale on Facebook
Sleuth loses paper for duplicate publication after flagging hundreds of untrustworthy articles
Controversial Paxil “Study 329” earns expression of concern after critic sues publisher
Exclusive: Iraqi university forcing students to cite its journals to graduate

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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