Category: weekend reads

If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Corrections, biases, and humility in science: Q&A with Tuan V. Nguyen
• Up in smoke: Publisher pulls vaping paper nearly two years after complaint
• Fed up, author issues her own retraction after journal ghosts her
• Lawsuit fails to block retraction of paper claiming to link heart-related deaths to COVID-19 vaccines
• ‘Kicking the can down the road’: Science flags insect meta-analysis based on allegedly buggy database
• Fabricated allegations of image manipulation baffle expert

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 400 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 63,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up over 640, and our mass resignations list has 50 entries. We keep tabs on all this and more. If you value this work, please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. Every dollar counts.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: Why 500 retractions per month matter; another EOC for former Stanford president; and an argument for ‘slow science’

If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Professor suspended after Japanese university finds fishy results in sushi paper
• Sage journal retracts more than 40 papers over concerns with peer review, author contributions
• Northwestern to pay $2.3 million for falsified research in NIH grants
• Nature retracts paper for data manipulation by Ph.D. student
• Technobabble papers by professor and editor under scrutiny
• Business management journal holds researcher’s paper hostage

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 400 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 63,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up over 460, and our mass resignations list has 50 entries. We keep tabs on all this and more. If you value this work, please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. Every dollar counts.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: A retraction in Nature; penalties for ‘retraction hotspot’ universities?; an analysis of PISS journals

If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Court: University disclosure of researcher’s misconduct did not violate due process
• Dogged by retractions, Iraqi researcher and publisher uses a different name
• U.K. surgeon’s endeavors include unreproducible data and publications for a price. Related report from the Medical Evidence Project
• ‘I have never been asked to review anything’: Editors resign from materials journal
• History journal retracts paper about killing of German WWI POWs
• Finance professor in Ireland loses 12 papers in journals he edited

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 400 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 63,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up over 460, and our mass resignations list has 50 entries. We keep tabs on all this and more. If you value this work, please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. Every dollar counts.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: Stages of academic ‘enshittification’; Alzheimer’s trial sites faking data, say drug developers; Bill Ackman says he funded Gino defense

Happy 2026! We’re excited to bring you the first Weekend Reads of the new year.  

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• The BMJ retracts clinical trial for ‘severe’ discrepancies in randomization
• Cheers to 2025: In which Retraction Watch turned 15, and The Center For Scientific Integrity really became a center
• Data lost in a flood? The excuse checks out.

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 400 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 63,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up over 460, and our mass resignations list has 47 entries. We keep tabs on all this and more. If you value this work, please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. Every dollar counts.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: Evaluating the benefits of open science, a misconduct investigation in Korea, and what we lose in outsourcing reviews to AI

This is our last Weekend Reads of 2025. Our annual wrap-up at Retraction Watch will come next week, but we’re already looking forward to a new year. If you value the work we do – the in-depth reporting at Retraction Watch, the daily curated links in our newsletter, our comprehensive Retraction Watch Database – please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. Every dollar counts.

Retraction Watch and the Retraction Watch Database are projects of The Center of Scientific Integrity. Others include the Medical Evidence Project, the Hijacked Journal Checker, the Elisabeth Bik Science Integrity Fund and the Sleuths in Residence Program. Help support this work.  

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Professor in India adds coauthors who ‘kindly covered’ publication fee, removes others
• Court tosses out researcher’s bid to overturn funding ban
• The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now has 400 entries

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: Court tosses out challenge to ORI funding ban; prof steps down after AI citation ‘scandal’; senator seeks journal’s COVID-19 manuscripts

Dear RW readers, we look forward to wrapping up the week with Weekend Reads. If you enjoy it too, please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. Retraction Watch and the Retraction Watch Database are projects of The Center of Scientific Integrity. Others include the Medical Evidence Project, the Hijacked Journal Checker, and the Sleuths in Residence Program. Help support this work.  

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Exclusive: In reversal, former vice chancellor in Pakistan who was let off hook for plagiarism faces sanctions
• Dana-Farber settles suit alleging image manipulation for $15 million
• ‘Elite cohort’ of biz school scholars and editors scratch each others’ backs, study finds
• ORI has released just two misconduct findings this year
• World Bank report ‘removed for review’ of nonexistent references after Retraction Watch inquiry

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: ‘How long does it take to kill zombie papers?’; ‘The H-Index of Suspicion’; former Springer editors launch new journal

Dear RW readers, we look forward to wrapping up the week with Weekend Reads. If you enjoy it too, please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. 

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• How to juice your Google Scholar h-index, preprint by preprint
• One of Kazakhstan’s top nuclear physicists also leads his nation in retractions
• COPE’s involvement leads to retraction of paper on homeopathy for lung cancer
• Journal removes funding statement from hormone therapy paper without issuing correction

Did you know that Retraction Watch and the Retraction Watch Database are  projects of The Center of Scientific Integrity?  Others include the Medical Evidence Project, the Hijacked Journal Checker, and the Sleuths in Residence Program. Help support this work.   

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: Springer Nature retracts papers using ‘bonkers’ dataset; preprint server welcomes AI authors; ethics editors’ COI disclosures ‘insufficient’

Giving Tuesday was this week, and, like many organizations, we asked for your support. The work we do is funded in part by your donations. If you value our work in rooting out scientific fraud and misconduct, exposing serial offenders, spotlighting how to fix broken systems — and bringing you this newsletter — please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. 

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Iraqi journal suspected of coercion, two others dropped from major citation databases
• Authors retract Nature paper projecting high costs of climate change
• The case of the fake references in an ethics journal
• Number of ‘unsafe’ publications by psychologist Hans Eysenck could be ‘high and far reaching‘
• Glyphosate safety article retracted eight years after Monsanto ghostwriting revealed in court
• Nature paper retracted after one investigation finds data errors, another finds no misconduct

Did you know that Retraction Watch and the Retraction Watch Database are  projects of The Center of Scientific Integrity?  Others include the Medical Evidence Project, the Hijacked Journal Checker, and the Sleuths in Residence Program. Help support this work.   

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: ‘The fall of a prolific science journal’; Clinical trials by ‘super-retractors’; ‘How to Study Things That May Not Exist’

Dear RW readers, can you spare $25?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Exclusive: ‘Highly problematic’ policy has Saudi university pressuring faculty to cite its research
• Meet the researcher aiming to halt use of ‘fundamentally flawed’ database linking IQ and nationality
• After realizing a fungus contaminated their experiments, researchers retract and redo study

Did you know that Retraction Watch and the Retraction Watch Database are  projects of The Center of Scientific Integrity?  Others include the Medical Evidence Project, the Hijacked Journal Checker, and the Sleuths in Residence Program. Help support this work.   

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: How an MIT student’s AI study ‘Fell Apart’; Egyptian scientists, Russian affiliations; the ‘dangers’ of bibliometrics with ‘polluted data’ 

Dear RW readers, can you spare $25?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Computing society pulls works for ‘citation falsification’ months after sleuth is convicted of defamation
• Research integrity conference hit with AI-generated abstracts
• AI unreliable in identifying retracted research papers, says study
• Lancet journal retracts COVID-19 metformin paper nearly 2 years after authors request correction
• Springer Nature flags paper with fabricated reference to article (not) written by our cofounder
• COVID-19 paper by scientists at Harvard, Duke gets expression of concern for ‘unreliable’ data
• Exclusive: Reviewer recommended against publishing paper on DNA in COVID vaccines

Did you know that Retraction Watch and the Retraction Watch Database are  projects of The Center of Scientific Integrity?  Others include the Medical Evidence Project, the Hijacked Journal Checker, and the Sleuths in Residence Program. Help support this work.   

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: Our cofounder credited in fake citation; ‘Substantial’ undisclosed COIs in psychiatry research; an AI threat to online surveys