by reason for retraction – Retraction Watch

Harvard cancer researchers earn retraction for image duplication

A group of researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston have lost a paper for image duplication following an investigation by the two institutions.

The paper, published in September 2019 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, described a treatment for tumors caused by a disorder called tuberous sclerosis complex. Several of the article’s 12 authors are affiliated with Brigham and Women’s Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine division. Corresponding author David Kwiatkowski is an oncologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and a professor at Harvard Medical School.

The research was partially funded by two grants from the U.S. Department of Defense and a National Institutes of Health grant, the latter of which was awarded to Kwiatkowski.

ORI sanction and news coverage prompts sleuthing, retraction

Four months after the Office of Research Integrity sanctioned a former postdoc for falsifying images in grant reports, a Science journal is retracting a paper by the researcher for image duplication.

After reading our story about the ORI’s findings, sleuth Paul S. Brookes took a look at the researcher’s ORCID profile and ran his papers through an AI tool that spots duplicate images.

Brookes’ analysis showed a 2019 paper in Science Signaling contained an image identical to an earlier study in Scientific Reports with the same first author — Chen-Yeh Ke, the former postdoctoral fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York who was sanctioned by ORI in March for falsifying images in an unpublished manuscript supported by federal funds and reporting the fabricated results in two research performance progress reports.

A student claimed to have a Ph.D. in at least eight letters to journals. Two have been retracted.

This past year, Zhihao Lei has signed his name to at least 35 letters to the editor of medical journals, weighing in on topics from ICU care to breast cancer. In eight of them, he identified himself as a Ph.D. at Cornell University, although he held only a bachelor’s degree at the time.

Two of those letters, one in JAMA Oncology and another in JAMA Pediatrics, were retracted last month after Lei himself acknowledged in the notices he had “falsely reported” his degree as a Ph.D. and implying he was an employee at the university when he was not. When he published the letters, he held a bachelor’s degree and was enrolled at Cornell as a master’s student in the School of Professional Studies. The retractions relate to Lei’s false credentials and not the content of the letters. In at least six others Lei published in the past year, he also signs off as a Ph.D., although none of these has been corrected or retracted.

Lei, who has served as a peer reviewer at Cancer Gene Therapy and the British Medical Journal, said he didn’t understand why Retraction Watch was interested in this case. “I am not entirely clear about the purpose of your inquiry,” he wrote in an email, adding that the retractions involved only author metadata and credentials, not fabrications, falsification or plagiarism.

‘Disappointed’: Cochrane journal asked researchers to publish article, then retracted it for conflicts

A developer of an AI tool for conducting literature reviews said he and his team were “excited and honored” when a Cochrane journal had extended a “specific and individual invitation” in January 2025 to submit an article describing their system.

Kevin Kallmes, the chief executive officer at and founder of Nested Knowledge, and five of his colleagues wrote the manuscript and submitted their paper describing the procedure for using AutoLit. They included their affiliations and a note they held equity in the company. Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods published the paper in October.

A few months later, the journal retracted it.

Judge dismisses Splenda lawsuit, says courts wrong place for research debate

A North Carolina judge has scrapped a defamation suit by the maker of Splenda against a scientist, ruling the research dispute doesn’t belong in court.

TC Heartland LLC, which manufactures the artificial sweetener, sued researcher Susan Schiffman in 2023 alleging she made defamatory remarks to the public about the product following a study she authored about sucralose. The paper, published that same year in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part B, found “sucralose to be genotoxic” and called for a review of its regulation. A spokesperson for Taylor & Francis, which publishes the title, told Retraction Watch the article is under investigation.

The paper does not mention “Splenda,” but TC Heartland claimed Schiffman “relentlessly” disparaged the sweetener during media interviews to “promote” the paper and warned the public it was dangerous to consume, according to the company’s lawsuit. Schiffman, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, countersued TC Heartland for defamation after the company created a webpage that challenged her research and “essentially accused her of being a publicity hound,” according to court documents.

Springer Nature un-retracts Planck papers, citing “human error”

Today the Retraction Watch list of Nobelists who have retracted papers bids Verabschiedung to Max Planck.

After days of scrutiny, Springer Nature has restored two papers by Planck, who won the Nobel for Physics in 1918, reversing a 2011 decision to retract the articles for “copyright violations.”

Both articles are back, and now carry the following statement:

Former acting director of national research lab in India adds another retraction

A cancer journal has retracted a paper by a former acting director of an institute in India, bringing her retraction total to nine.

Chitra Mandal, a former senior researcher at the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research’s Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (CSIR-IIC) at Kolkata, served as acting director in 2014-15. She also headed the CSIR’s Innovation complex between 2010 and 2015. She received multiple awards, and was also appointed a Science and Engineering Research Board Distinguished Fellow in 2018.

Mandal has now lost nine articles to retraction and more than two dozen of her papers have been flagged on PubPeer, most for image irregularities or data issues in graphs. In March, Wiley’s Molecular Biology International retracted a 2011 article Mandal coauthored, also for image issues. We previously wrote about an expression of concern on a 2016 paper in which Mandal was a co-author.

The latest retraction involves a 2011 paper in Leukemia Research about the movement of lymphoblasts from the bone marrow to peripheral blood in childhood leukemia. The journal retracted the paper on May 30, citing concerns that some of the data in figures appear to have been manipulated.

Sex pay ban paper earns a retraction after a long and winding road for an unhappy author

In March 2024, Riccardo Ciacci, an economist at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Spain, published a paper claiming Sweden’s ban on buying sex had increased reported rapes by as much as 62%. The finding gained attention on social media, and quickly drew criticism from others in the field.

In particular, a group of three economists took their concerns to social media and to the journal editors, and eventually published a critique of Ciacci’s work. They claimed his analysis reports a statistical relationship not relevant to the finding described in the paper. They concluded there was no large or statistically significant finding.

What followed was a year-long effort to fix the paper, and then ultimately, a decision to retract it. Ciacci, who was not accused of misconduct, said the retraction, which he disagrees with, has cost him a promotion and funding for future research. He also alleges he experienced an onslaught of harassment on social media. In the end, Ciacci maintains the retraction was unjustified, and critics say it came far too late.

Physicist in Iraq fired over publishing scam claims fake Columbia affiliation in new paper

Five months after he was fired by ministerial order, an Iraqi professor of physics at the center of a massive publishing scam submitted a manuscript to a Wiley chemistry journal claiming affiliation with Columbia University in New York City.

The paper also stated the physicist, Oday A. Al-Owaedi, was affiliated with the University of Babylon in Hilla, Iraq, although he was permanently dismissed from his position last year.

As we reported at the time, Al-Owaedi defrauded “researchers by collecting money from them under the pretext of publishing their papers in reputable international journals as promised, while in fact falsifying and forging publication in fake websites,” according to a ministerial order we obtained.

Springer Nature to start issuing expressions of concern for books

Springer Nature will start issuing expressions of concern notices for books after investigating hundreds of its books for integrity-related problems in recent years.

The publishing giant has seen an uptick in the number of investigations for books. In 2022, Springer Nature carried out 124 such investigations. In 2023, that number grew to 207 in 2023 and 217 in 2024, Svetlana Kleiner, a research integrity adviser with the publisher, told attendees of the World Conference on Research Integrity in Vancouver, Canada, last month.

Springer Nature carried out 210 book-related probes last year, she added, and 81 in 2026 as of mid-April.

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