by journal – Retraction Watch

Paper touted by MD Anderson gets expression of concern for data ‘concerns’

A 2025 paper identified a protein (stained in brown) that plays a role in bone metastases.
*Image courtesy of Li Ma via MD Anderson*

Science Translational Medicine has issued an expression of concern over “a series” of data concerns in a paper lauded by MD Anderson Cancer Center last year for identifying “a new driver” of bone metastasis.

The article, published in May 2025, has been the subject of a long and growing thread on PubPeer since April, where critics have been raising concerns about numerous images that appear to have been duplicated. The majority of the paper’s 22 authors are affiliated with MD Anderson in Houston, with at least two authors from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.

In June, the journal issued a correction to the paper, stating the authors “identified errors” during cross-checking of the original data, including incorrect and misplaced images.

Former Crick Ph.D. student loses COVID vaccine paper for fabrication

Science Translational Medicine has retracted a paper on COVID-19 vaccines after an institutional investigation revealed a former Ph.D. student fabricated data and falsified images in the article. The retraction is the former student’s second for fabrication this year.

The July 2022 article looked at whether a vaccine targeting a particular part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus could help defend against a wider range of COVID-19 variants in mice. It has been cited 83 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

According to the October 14 retraction notice, lead author Kevin Ng, formerly a Ph.D. student at the Francis Crick Institute in London, was responsible for fabricated data in one of the figures and falsifying images in another. Ng admitted responsibility for the fabrication during the editorial investigation, the notice states, which “casts doubt on some other experiments presented in the paper, for which primary data and samples are unavailable, precluding post hoc verification.”

A paper suggested a paleontologist’s fossil was forged. He wants it retracted.

An artist’s reconstruction of a mosasaur first described by Nicholas Longrich and colleagues in 2021.
*by Andrey Atuchin, 2020, in: N.R. Longrich et al/Cretaceous Research 2021*

Nicholas Longrich would like to set the record straight.

The paleontologist at the University of Bath in England and his colleagues described what they believed to be a new species of marine reptile in 2021, based on a Moroccan fossil found in a mine. But in 2024, another group of researchers questioned the fossil’s authenticity, pointing out the arrangement and orientation of its teeth “most likely result from forgery” based on published photos and documented alteration in other specimens from that region.

Late last year, Longrich and colleagues published CT scans of the original fossil as well as a new specimen of the species, saying it demonstrated their discovery was genuine. Longrich told us he sent the raw CT data confirming the sample “is authentic” to The Anatomical Record, which had published the critique, seeking an expression of concern or retraction of that paper.

‘Hot mess’ paper questioning CO2 and climate change gets retracted

The paper refers to air temperature data as “obtained by NASA from satellites” and claims the main areas of warming depicted in this figure do “not fit in with the main industrial centers in the world!”
*S.A. Harris/Atmosphere 2023*

A paper that called into question many central data linking carbon dioxide to the rapidly warming climate has been retracted for “significant concerns,” including “unsupported conclusions” and “inaccuracies” in the interpretation of the data.

The paper, published in August 2023 in the MDPI journal Atmosphere, was written by Stuart Harris, a former geography professor at the University of Calgary. It has 26,000 views and was mentioned 869 times on the social media platform X, according to Altmetric. It was also covered by the climate skeptic website The Daily Sceptic. The article was cited four times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

“It is a hot mess,” Marcus Sarofim, a climate scientist at Johns Hopkins University, told Retraction Watch. “I certainly don’t think this paper has any business being in the peer-reviewed literature.” He also pointed out the paper was submitted and accepted in under a month, saying the short timeframe “is always a bad sign.”

Elsevier journal retracts 100+ papers for authorship issues, editor conflicts of interest

Science of the Total Environment (STOTEN) has retracted 165 papers this year, most for “suspicious” changes in authorship or editorial conflicts of interest.

The retractions have come after STOTEN was delisted from Clarivate’s Web of Science in November after the index put it on hold due to concerns about article quality. The journal published over 10,000 articles in 2024; so far this year it has published fewer than 1,000.

The retractions, most of which were issued in August, applied to articles published from 2018 to 2025. At least 50 of the papers were handled by associate editors who had “an ongoing collaboration on a co-publication” or “an extensive record of collaboration” with the authors of the articles, according to the notices.

Lancet union declares first-ever strike over staff wages

Union members at The Lancet and its affiliated journals will go on strike Sept. 22 for one day with further action planned for the following week, after pay negotiations with parent publisher Elsevier fell apart, The Lancet’s union announced today.

The strike is the first in The Lancet’s 200-year history. Elsevier was ordered to recognize the union, a chapter of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), in September 2025, and their collective bargaining agreement was finalized in February. As part of the action the union, which represents 110 employees in various roles across several of The Lancet’s 30 journals, is also calling on members to refuse to work hours outside their contracted amount.

Negotiations on pay and support for workers began in March when the union asked for a 7.5% pay raise in the first year. According to an open letter from the union, workers’ pay had failed to keep up with inflation, leaving them “substantially worse off than they were five years ago despite their growing expertise and responsibilities.”

Diabetes association turmoil roils journal as group tries to thwart boycott

A banner message on the *Diabetes Care* website tells visitors they “continue to actively accept and appropriately review all new and previously submitted manuscripts,” which contradicts a statement the journal’s editors posted last week announcing a boycott of ADA activities, including manuscript review.

Tensions between the American Diabetes Association and several editors of its flagship journal — who have boycotted the group over its handling of a protest at the association’s June conference — have again boiled over, this time on the website of the journal.

Steven Kahn, editor-in-chief of Diabetes Care and professor of medicine at the University of Washington, was one of five researchers ejected from the association’s June meeting in New Orleans for distributing copies of a Diabetes Care editorial on funding cuts outside the hall where National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya was scheduled to speak.

On Sept. 1, ADA announced the results of an independent review, which concluded the five attendees were removed because their actions violated the conference’s code of conduct, not because of the nature of the material they were distributing.

PeerJ retracts study that secretly observed tourists’ reactions to snakes

For a study published in PeerJ, a researcher placed plastic snakes (left panel) and viper carcasses on hiking paths (right) to gauge people’s reactions. The journal retracted the paper in August for ethics approval concerns.
*A.V. Dyugmedzhiev/PeerJ 2026*

The journal PeerJ has retracted a study that attempted to capture tourists’ “authentic responses” to venomous snakes by putting plastic models and dead vipers around popular hiking destinations and secretly watching how people reacted to the encounters.

Study author Angel Valentinov Dyugmedzhiev of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences assessed their reactions from a few meters away and never interacted with any of the participants so as to avoid “direct interference in the experimental setup,” he wrote in the paper, published June 23.

When tourists discussed the snakes among themselves, he recorded whether they correctly identified the species and whether they realized the viper was either dead or a model. The study found most tourists didn’t spot the vipers, and only a small number of them showed strong fear toward them.

Researchers appeal misconduct finding over studies of trans youth

Five researchers at Norway’s national gender incongruence clinic are appealing a university committee’s finding they committed “gross negligence” and scientific misconduct after the group published several studies using the medical records of more than 1,000 minors without patient consent.

Two of the articles set out to count how many minors were referred to the clinic, characterize the mental health burden of trans patients and document their treatment trajectories and detransition rates. In June, a joint committee of the University of Oslo and Oslo University Hospital (OUS) ruled five of the coauthors committed scientific misconduct for using the patients’ medical records without ethics approval or patient consent. The researchers maintain the work was for quality assurance, which in Norway doesn’t require consent. The committee ruled the work was research.

Two other articles violated research ethics standards in a “reprehensible” way, the committee found, but did not constitute misconduct. Those papers describe the outcomes of chest wall contouring and genital surgery.

Procrastination study by Duke’s Dan Ariely retracted after sleuths find signs of data tampering

A psychology journal has retracted a seminal 2002 paper on deadlines and procrastination coauthored by behavioral scientist Dan Ariely of Duke University just days after a team of sleuths published analyses of the original study data, finding it had been tampered with.

The posts, which appeared Aug. 31 and Sept. 2 on the Data Colada blog, dug into the datasets behind the two main experiments in Ariely’s paper, published 24 years ago in Psychological Science. The reanalysis was prompted by a study published July 15 in the same journal attempting to replicate one of the paper’s original experiments.

The Sept. 2 retraction notice cited all three works, noting the replication study “raised questions about the underlying data in the original study,” and the Data Colada posts “called into question the veracity of the overall findings.” Ariely’s coauthor on the paper, Klaus Wertenbroch, of INSEAD in France, requested the retraction on July 23, Psychological Science editor-in-chief Simine Vazire told Retraction Watch.

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