by journal – Page 2 – Retraction Watch

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.

NEJM retracts case study for AI-manipulated imagery

An “Images in Clinical Medicine” item in the *New England Journal of Medicine* has been retracted after the authors acknowledged using AI to alter the photo. *Y. Wang, X. Mu/© The New England Journal of Medicine (2026)*.

The New England Journal of Medicine has retracted a clinical image with a picture the authors admit was manipulated with artificial intelligence.

The short piece, published April 18, reported the case of an 87-year-old man with lung damage after being exposed to a forest fire. The report included a startling image of black “casts” taken from the man’s airways, the size of which can be gauged by a tape measure at the top of the picture.

The dramatic visual drew attention in the media (and one news outlet has already noted the retraction at the time of this writing). But the authors, Yuling Wang and Xiangdong Mu, of Daxing Teaching Hospital and Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital, respectively, acknowledged having used AI to superimpose the tape ruler in the figure.

Researcher claims his case report was stolen by someone else at his hospital

A researcher claims a case report he coauthored was plagiarized by doctors at the same institution three years later — a paper he was alerted to when a journal sent it to him for review.

Moayad Alqurashi, an infectious diseases specialist at King Fahad Armed Forces Hospital in Saudi Arabia, was the lead author on a 2021 case report published in Cureus about a patient who came to the emergency room with rapid vision loss. Doctors eventually diagnosed the patient with neurosyphilis, with non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, or NAION, as the presenting symptom. At the time, Alqurashi was a trainee at Prince Sultan Military Medical City in Riyadh.

Alqurashi told Retraction Watch that in 2023, while a reviewer for Skin Health and Disease, a Wiley title, he was invited to assess a report similar to the case he had written about. He said he notified the journal of similarities between the two cases, and the journal never published the report. The authors of that article had seen the same patient as part of a different department.

“Game-changer” breast cancer study retracted as Indiana researcher out of his post

A group of cancer researchers whose work has been questioned by sleuths has been hit with their third retraction in less than a year.

Today, Science Translational Medicine (STM) withdrew a 2021 breast cancer study by former Indiana University researcher Yujing Li and 12 other authors for image falsification. The immunotherapy study had been described by senior author Xiongbin Lu as a “game-changer” for triple negative breast cancer in a 2021 IU press release.

The paper’s April 15 retraction notice states that a joint research misconduct investigation involving Indiana University, The Ohio State University, and the University of Maryland, College Park determined “falsification occurred during creation of figure S9C.” The institutions alerted the American Association for the Advancement of Science of the misconduct late last year and requested the paper’s retraction, according to Meagan Phelan, a spokesperson for AAAS, which publishes STM.

BMJ retracts most of a special issue for ‘compromised’ peer review and ‘improbable device use’

BMJ’s Journal of Medical Genetics has retracted the bulk of a seven-year-old special issue for an “irreparably compromised” review process and “improbable device use.”

Of the eight papers in the 2019 special issue, seven were retracted, including an editorial that “almost exclusively” referred to the other now-retracted papers, according to a statement from the journal.

According to the retraction notice published today, the journal’s investigation found the guest editor for the issue selected the peer reviewers, the majority of whom were affiliated with Nanjing University in China. The guest editor is not named in the issue. The publisher’s investigation also found evidence of compromised peer review in almost all articles, the notice states.

Could a national database of scientific misconduct rulings stop repeat offenders?

*Mark Barnes (courtesy of Ropes and Gray LLC)*

In an editorial published today in Science, Michael Lauer and Mark Barnes call for greater transparency in investigations of scientific misconduct with an aim toward making sure prospective academic employers know of applicants’ past misdeeds. As we’ve reported, in the absence of transparency around findings of misconduct, some universities have discovered too late they hired someone who has turned out to be a serial offender.

Lauer, who served as Deputy Director for Extramural Research at the National Institutes of Health from 2015-2025, and Barnes, a partner at Ropes and Gray LLC in Boston who has served as acting research integrity officer at several U.S. institutions, propose a tracking system similar to the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB). That database logs adverse actions and malpractice payments as a way to inform decisions about individual physicians by hospitals. As Lauer and Barnes note, federal law “requires a hospital to query the NPDB whenever it is considering a new applicant for medical privileges, as well as to conduct repeat queries every 2 years to make sure information on staff is up to date.” We asked Barnes to elaborate on the ideas presented in the op-ed. (He notes he is speaking only for himself here.)

Retraction Watch: You write in your op-ed universities may avoid sharing personal information — presumably including results of misconduct investigations — for fear of legal claims of defamation or violations of privacy. Are those fears valid?

Publisher changes citation, registration policies following Retraction Watch investigation

*Wolters Kluwer global headquarters in the Netherlands*

The Dutch publisher Wolters Kluwer has scrapped some of its citation and study-registration requirements at a top-ranked surgery journal founded by the U.K. plastic surgeon Riaz Agha, Retraction Watch has learned.

The move follows our investigation last month that found mandatory citation of reporting guidelines developed by Agha and published in the International Journal of Surgery (IJS) had inflated the impact factor of the open-access title, making it more attractive to authors and readers.

A blanket requirement to register all human studies before manuscript submission, contrary to recommendations from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, appeared to serve another of Agha’s business interests: a paid research registry he founded in 2015.

Judge tosses lawsuit over controversial Paxil ‘Study 329’

A judge has dismissed a legal challenge aimed at forcing Elsevier to retract a long-criticized study that concluded the antidepressant Paxil was safe and effective for teens.

The 2001 paper, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP), has faced scrutiny for more than 20 years by critics who say the study has led to unwarranted and potentially harmful prescribing of the drug to youth. As we reported last October, the journal placed an expression of concern on the paper shortly after a lawsuit was filed by attorney George W. Murgatroyd III against the journal’s owner, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), and Elsevier, which publishes the title.

In his complaint, filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, Murgatroyd claimed the journal is violating the D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act (CPPA) by continuing to “publish, distribute, and sell a fraudulent scientific article that contains material facts” that mislead the public and endanger adolescent mental health and safety. AACAP and Elsevier are profiting from the article by charging readers to buy access to the paper, according to the complaint.

BMJ retracts cardiac stem cell paper, removes authors months after sleuths flag data ‘mismatch’

The BMJ has retracted a paper on stem cell therapy for heart failure after sleuths flagged the work for “serious” inconsistencies in data.

Published in October, the paper reported the results of a phase III clinical trial of more than 400 patients in Shiraz, Iran, looking at whether stem cell therapy lowers the risk of heart failure after a heart attack. The journal announced the results in a press release, and news of the findings appeared in several outlets. New Scientist called the study the “strongest evidence yet that stem cells can help the heart repair itself.”

A week after the study was published, sleuths took to PubPeer to point out inconsistencies between the data reported in the article and the dataset uploaded with it. The concerns included a “curious repeating pattern” of records in the dataset and a high number of integers for the height and weight of patients.

The Lancet retracts half-century-old unsigned commentary on talc for undisclosed industry ties

The Lancet has retracted a 49-year-old unsigned commentary on the safety of cosmetic talc after two researchers discovered the author was a paid consultant to Johnson & Johnson, at the time a leading producer of talc products.

The anonymous commentary has been used for decades by corporate defense attorneys to claim scientific proof of talc products’ safety, according to critics. But one such attorney says the paper “would not be relied upon to any significant degree.”

Published in 1977, the article argued against government-mandated regulatory testing for asbestos in cosmetic talc. Around that time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was considering such monitoring, a task that ultimately became the responsibility of cosmetics companies.

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