by country – Retraction Watch

Vietnam researchers face bans and funding cuts for violating integrity rules

*Ton Duc Thang University*, *Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam*

Researchers in Vietnam who fabricate data or plagiarize papers may be permanently barred from future scientific work, according to new guidance from the country’s Ministry of Science and Technology.

The new framework, announced May 25, requires science and technology organizations to implement rules against research misconduct, and it outlines a process for investigating and sanctioning violations. The recommended penalties include written warnings, correction or retraction requests, public apologies, role suspensions, returning research funding, and bans from scientific projects. Violations of scientific integrity must also be recorded in the National Digital Platform for Science, Technology, and Innovation Management, according to the framework.

Researchers who use artificial intelligence inappropriately may also be subject to stiff sanctions. The framework warns researchers should not use AI to create fake data, images, or references nor unverified AI-generated material used as a reference.

Critics of birdsong study fight to be named in Nature’s retraction

A zebra finch in New South Wales, Australia. *Source: JJ Harrison/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)*

Researchers who flagged methodological issues in a paper on birdsong a year and a half before Nature retracted it say they should be credited in the editorial notice. But the editors have refused, with one telling the critics the paper was retracted for unrelated reasons.

The March 2024 study at the center of the dispute looked at how sexual selection may drive song patterns in male zebra finches. Nature retracted the paper last month because two of the synthetic song pairs used in the study were found to be unreliable, according to the notice. All three authors agreed to the retraction.

Todd Roberts, the paper’s corresponding author, told Retraction Watch the critics now asking for credit “prompted us to check the synthetic song pairs used in our paper.” He said his team did not do the reliability analysis of the pairs until after publication.

Widely criticized keto diet study retracted

A 2025 paper claiming the keto diet does not promote the formation of arterial plaques has been retracted after widespread criticism of the study’s methods and claims. The journal found “the identified errors are too great to be corrected with a corrigendum,” according to the March 11 retraction notice.

In April 2025, JACC: Advances published the study, which looked at plaque build-up in 100 otherwise generally healthy people who had experienced an increase in their cholesterol levels while being on a keto diet. The study claimed scans performed one year apart by the company Cleerly showed the diet was not associated with the development of arterial plaques.

This finding went against what previous studies had found, and it led to what Wired called “a new war in the nutrition world.”

New rule in Peru restricts authors with retractions from getting special bonuses

Peru’s Ministry of Education headquarters in Lima.
*ANDINA/Editora Perú*

In an ongoing effort to combat scientific misconduct, Peru has passed new rules that bar research faculty at public universities there from receiving special bonuses if they’ve had one or more retractions in the last three years.

The conditions, published March 2, apply to faculty members at public universities who are eligible for special bonuses funded by the Ministry of Education. Peruvian researchers who participate in one or more research projects qualify for the monthly bonuses, which range from 2,616.50 to 4,434.91 Peruvian soles, or US$699.60 to $1,185.80, according to a summary in the new rules.

The restrictions come after a 2024 investigative commission in Peru identified significant scientific fraud by criminal networks involved in buying and selling academic research. Transactions by three presumed criminal networks amounted to 11.42 million soles, or roughly $3 million, between 2019 and 2023, according to the commission’s report.

Russian news outlets hailed a cancer breakthrough, but the retraction went unnoticed

In August 2021, several news outlets in Russia reported a cancer breakthrough: Researchers at the chemistry and biophysics institutes affiliated with the Russian Academy of Sciences had developed a new kind of nanoparticle that could help detect breast cancer in an MRI and kill tumor cells at the same time. State-run media and several Russian science outlets reported on the study over the next few days.

But four years later, Journal of Materials Chemistry B, the journal that had published the paper, retracted it.

The publisher, the Royal Society of Chemistry, found the paper contained repeating patterns in the electron microscopy data and several images depicting cells that were identical to those included in a later paper with a number of the same authors. The authors — who include Vladimir Ivanov, director of Russia’s Kurnakov Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry, and Alexander Baranchikov, also at the institute — all agreed to the retraction.

Winning science fair project in Vietnam beset by misconduct allegations as major high school competition looms

A science competition for middle and high school students in Vietnam is embroiled in controversy as its winners head to next week’s Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair – widely considered the most prestigious event of its kind. Allegations include cheating and plagiarizing.

Observers in Vietnam noticed the suspect work appears to be especially advanced to have been conducted by two high school students, one of whom is studying mathematics and the other geography. Under the rules of the Vietnam Science and Engineering Fair (ViSEF), the project – titled “Development of multifunctional fire-resistant, heat-insulating, and antimicrobial polyurethane composite materials for application in construction and daily life” – had to have been completed in 12 months while the two student-authors also continued their school work.

Sleuths in a Vietnamese scientific integrity group have found multiple overlaps between the students’ poster and research published in RSC Advances in February 2025. A graph in the students’ poster is almost identical to one in the published paper, according to sleuth Van Tu Duong, although it is plotted in a different color and thickness (see the comparison above). This observation has led to allegations that the students had access to the researchers’ raw data.

Court orders historian to repay grant funding for “pattern of plagiarism” in books

A federal court has ordered a “romance philologist” to repay the Swiss National Science Foundation roughly $51,000 after the group found the author responsible for “massive” scientific misconduct in two grant-funded books.

Carla Rossi, scientific director of the Centro Scaligero degli Studi Danteschi in Verona, Italy, must repay the funding due to extensive plagiarism discovered in the texts, according to the decision by the Federal Administrative Court of Switzerland, released in January. Rossi also is barred from applying for grant funding from the foundation for five years, according to the ruling. Rossi is founder and director of Institut d’Estudis Filològics Dantescs i Digitals Avançats in Barcelona and also director of the Research Centre for European Philological Tradition (RECEPTIO) in Switzerland, which operates an academic press that has published Rossi’s works.

The Swiss body issued the funding ban in 2024 and ordered Rossi to repay grants for a total of three books after finding a pattern of plagiarism and lack of transparency during the grant application process, according to a summary in the court decision. Rossi took the foundation to court over the findings, arguing it reviewed incorrect versions of her books and suggesting other versions circulating on the Internet were altered or manipulated by third parties.

Another retraction and two investigations for chemist

A chemist in Austria who earned a retraction earlier this year is under investigation by his former university, a national research integrity agency and the publisher Elsevier, Retraction Watch has learned, while scrutiny of his publication record has broadened to include more papers flagged on PubPeer.

Maximilian Lackner, a technical chemist and process engineer at FH Technikum Wien in Austria until October last year, according to his ORCID profile, was the senior and corresponding author on a paper in npj Science of Food retracted in January after publishers discovered the five of the cited references weren’t relevant to the claims they were meant to be supporting. The 2024 article has been cited 90 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

Editors also pointed out the information in a flow diagram for selecting studies didn’t appear anywhere else in the article. One of the authors, Fatemeh Ahmadi of the University of Western Australia, told the journal she and Lackner disagreed with the retraction. When we asked why, Ahmadi said the authors were “not interested” in our request for further information.

Major pharmacology journals flag another 15 papers by scientist facing criminal probe

A leading pharmacologist in Italy accused of embezzling research funds is now the subject of coordinated editorial action by one of the field’s professional societies.

The American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics announced expressions of concern for 12 papers, corrections for two and a retraction in an editorial published April 3 in The Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics and Molecular Pharmacology. Salvatore Cuzzocrea, a pharmacology professor at the University of Messina, was a coauthor or corresponding author on all the papers. As we reported previously, Cuzzocrea is being investigated in Italy for allegedly embezzling more than 2 million euros in research reimbursements and allegedly rigging university contracts.

Since our reporting on Cuzzocrea a year ago, journals have retracted five more of his papers. One, from BMC Neuroscience, was retracted 10 days after our reporting for containing data that appeared in an earlier publication. A different paper was retracted last year from Biology for containing overlapping images, another from Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy for image overlaps, and the International Journal of Molecular Science retracted two more this year for containing duplications and “inappropriate editing” of micrographs.

Scientist who alleged COVID cover-up circulated a faked NIH email, agency says

A scientist charged with research misconduct used a fake email communication with an NIH researcher’s address to support his claims of governmental retaliation, Retraction Watch has learned.

Last month, we reported on the upholding of a proposed 15-year debarment by a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services appeals judge against Argentine chemist Ariel Fernández for falsifying research while a professor at Rice University in Houston. Administrative law judge Margaret G. Brakebusch based that May 2025 decision on findings by Rice sent to the Office of Research Integrity in 2010 and conclusions from ORI’s independent review completed in 2022.

Fernández denied the misconduct allegations and told us the findings were retaliation by the government for a 2021 paper he wrote supporting a lab origin of SARS-CoV-2. As evidence of the contention, Fernández showed us an email purportedly from National Institutes of Health researcher Joshua Cherry dated June 2021. The email, which appeared to be from Cherry’s NIH address, threatened to resurrect Fernández’s ORI case if he didn’t remove the paper. We could not independently verify the email’s authenticity at the time.

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