Soft Computing, a Springer Nature title, has retracted at least 335 papers this year, many from issues with guest editors.
The mass retractions began in July, with the latest appearing November 4.
The retraction notes contain identical language to notices in Environmental Science and Pollution Research and Optical and Quantum Electronics, which have also been retracting articles en masse this year:
Continue reading Another Springer Nature journal has retracted over 300 papers since July
The sudden death of a 27-year-old woman in the Romania offices of MDPI, a major open-access publisher with a worldwide presence, has grabbed national headlines and raised questions about the conditions under which the firm’s employees work.
Local news reports said the woman had initially fainted in MDPI’s Bucharest office on Friday, October 4, but that her superiors refused to call an ambulance or let her go home after she revived. She later collapsed again and died from a heart attack after efforts to resuscitate her failed, according to the reports.
A business consultant in Romania also wrote about the case in a blog post, quoting emails from anonymous MDPI employees describing a “toxic” work environment and “constant pressures” to perform.
But in an interview with Retraction Watch, a colleague of the deceased woman, identified as Maria Alexandra Anghel, contested the media’s account of events.
Continue reading Young employee’s death puts workplace culture in spotlight at publisher MDPI
Optical and Quantum Electronics, a Springer Nature journal, has retracted more than 200 papers since the start of September, and continues issuing retraction notices en masse.
According to the notices, which have similar wording, the retractions come after the publisher identified problems with the articles including compromised peer review, inappropriate or irrelevant references, and nonsensical phrases, suggesting blind use of AI or machine-translation software.
“These investigations are based on intelligence from past work alongside whistleblower information,” Chris Graf, director of research integrity at Springer Nature in Oxford, UK, told Retraction Watch. But Graf declined to share the specifics of the inquiry: “We need to keep details of these investigations confidential to ensure that we do not inform the efforts of individuals who may engage in unethical activities.”
Continue reading Springer Nature journal has retracted over 200 papers since September
A public health journal has retracted an article on unintentional pesticide poisonings a year after the authors enlisted a lawyer’s help to fight the decision.
Last year, we reported BMC Public Health had decided to retract the article, “The global distribution of acute unintentional pesticide poisoning: estimations based on a systematic review,” which appeared in December 2020. The article has been cited nearly 300 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, including more than 100 since the journal told the authors it would be retracted.
The authors listed affiliations with the Pesticide Action Network, a collection of organizations opposed to pesticides. In their review, they declared unintentional pesticide poisoning “a problem that warrants immediate action.”
The retraction notice cites a letter to the editor from employees of pesticide manufacturer Bayer, and the trade organization CropLife International, which criticized the analysis. The authors stood by their findings in a response, stating the critics “do not seem to have understood our estimation method.”
Continue reading Journal pulls pesticide article a year after authors engaged lawyer to fight retraction decision
In January 2022, The Oncologist switched publishers from Wiley to Oxford University Press.
Last month, the journal issued an extensive correction for one of its most popular articles, a 2020 paper that describes results of a clinical trial the authors claimed found a homeopathic intervention improved quality of life and survival for people with advanced lung cancer.
The article page that remains on Wiley’s website, however, does not reflect the recent correction.
Continue reading A journal switches to a new publisher, then corrects a paper. What should happen to the old version?
A paper that claimed to show a homeopathic intervention improved quality of life and survival for people with advanced lung cancer has received an extensive correction two years after a research integrity watchdog asked the journal to retract the article over concerns about manipulated data, Retraction Watch has learned.
The two scientists who sounded the alarm on the paper are not satisfied with the correction, they told us.
The article, “Homeopathic Treatment as an Add‐On Therapy May Improve Quality of Life and Prolong Survival in Patients with Non‐Small Cell Lung Cancer: A Prospective, Randomized, Placebo‐Controlled, Double‐Blind, Three‐Arm, Multicenter Study,” appeared in The Oncologist in November 2020. Michael Frass, the lead author of the paper, is a homeopathic practitioner who was working at the Medical University of Vienna, at the time the work was published.
Continue reading Homeopathy for cancer paper extensively corrected after watchdog agency requested retraction
Some journal articles on the Taylor & Francis website now bear a pop-up notification stating the papers are “currently under investigation.”
The publisher began adding the notices to articles such as this one in June, according to a spokesperson, as a way to inform readers about an ongoing investigation “so that they can exercise appropriate caution when considering the research presented.”
Like the “editor’s notes” posted on Springer Nature articles under investigation, Taylor & Francis’ pop-ups only appear on the publisher’s website, not in databases where researchers might be searching for papers.
Continue reading Publisher adds temporary online notifications to articles “under investigation”
An architecture journal’s “failure to act in a timely and proactive manner” in a case of plagiarism in a now-retracted review article has sparked the resignation of a member of its editorial board, Retraction Watch has learned.
“I am appalled that it took, essentially, from November 2022 until now, September 2024, to resolve what was a fairly straightforward matter,” Dirk H. R. Spennemann, of Charles Sturt University in Albury, Australia, wrote in a Sept. 18, 2024, email to the editor-in-chief of Buildings, an MDPI title.
The offending paper, “A Review on Building Design as a Biomedical System for Preventing COVID-19 Pandemic,” was published in April 2022 in a special issue Spennemann had edited.
But in June of that year, Marco Spada, a senior lecturer in architecture at the University of Suffolk in the United Kingdom, informed Buildings the work borrowed heavily from two previous publications without proper citation. Although many sentences had been reworded using synonyms, the plagiarism was extensive and obvious.
Spada had recognized the article, a version of which he had previously reviewed – and rejected – as a referee for Sustainability, a different MDPI journal. Elements such as the title, the order in which the authors appeared and some of the abstract had changed, Spada told us. But it was still the same paper.
“Clearly they managed to outsmart the system,” Spada said.
Continue reading Exclusive: Editorial board member quits over journal’s handling of plagiarized paper
The journal Nature Synthesis has pulled a high-profile article describing the creation of a new type of carbon after a university investigation found some data were made up.
“The authors of the original paper claimed to have created an entirely new form or carbon, graphyne, which is fundamentally different common diamond or graphite,” said Valentin Rodionov, an assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, whose team has been investigating the now-retracted work for the past two years.
“If true, this would have been a groundbreaking discovery,” Rodionov told Retraction Watch. His team described its findings in a commentary published on September 2 in the journal.
Continue reading Faked data prompts retraction of Nature journal study claiming creation of a new form of carbon
A Springer Nature journal has rescinded the acceptance of a paper criticizing the publishing giant’s controversial retraction last year of an article that surveyed parents of children with gender dysphoria, leading an associate editor to resign, Retraction Watch has learned.
According to emails we obtained, the blocked paper was slated to appear as a commentary in a special issue of Springer Nature’s Current Psychology that aimed “to stimulate discussion of all aspects of the ‘unpublication’ of scientific articles.”
“This is the only time I’ve had an accepted paper overruled in 4 years” as an associate editor at this journal, Christopher Ferguson of Stetson University in Florida, one of two guest editors of the special issue, told us by email.
Continue reading Exclusive: Editor resigns after he says publisher blocked criticism of decision to retract paper on gender dysphoria