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:

• Critics of birdsong study fight to be named in Nature’s retraction
• Elsevier retracts study tying sudden infant death syndrome to vaccinations
• A researcher’s unusually high h-index gives a window into an expansive citation network
• Under new framework, Vietnam researchers face bans and funding cuts for violating integrity rules
• In what EIC calls an ‘honest mistake,’ journal approves paper without peer reviewing it

Also the deadline for our Ctrl-Z Award is this Sunday! This $2,500 award recognizes scientists who discover substantial errors in their published work and take meaningful steps to correct the scientific record. More details and nomination form here.

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 400 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 65,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up to 650, and our mass resignations list has more than 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: White House proposal prohibits federal funds for APCs; sleuths say Thermo Fisher doctored data; sleuth in China takes to social media

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

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• New rule in Peru restricts authors with retractions from getting special bonuses
• ‘Comically bad’ datasets used to train clinical models for stroke and diabetes
• Feud between physicists ends in defamation verdict
• How the media hypes “research that is absurd on its face”
• Widely criticized keto diet study retracted

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 400 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 65,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up to 650, and our mass resignations list has more than 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: arXiv to ban researchers with hallucinated references; U.S. restrictions on foreign coauthors; retracted papers by Max Planck

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

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Elsevier retracts the least and reinstates the most, new analysis finds
• Reviewer finds ‘top pharmaceutical scientist’ has a self-citation problem
• Elsevier journal removes two 42-year-old papers on cesium as a cancer treatment
• Nine years after journalist raised concerns, BMJ Group journal retracts stent paper

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 400 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 64,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up to 650, and our mass resignations list has more than 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: Autism-vaccine researcher arraigned; ‘accidental watermarks’ in medical literature; mass resignations and zombie 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:

• ORI announces 15-year debarment against former Rice University scientist
• Court orders historian to repay grant funding for “pattern of plagiarism” in books
• Winning science fair project in Vietnam beset by misconduct allegations as major high school competition looms
• Russian news outlets hailed a cancer breakthrough, but the retraction went unnoticed
• One in 277 PubMed-indexed papers in 2026 shows fabricated references, says analysis.
• Swiss court clears sleuth in defamation case, awards him legal costs

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 400 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 64,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up to 650, and our mass resignations list has more than 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: FDA blocked vaccine findings; ‘Frankencitations Ravage the Academic Countryside’; ‘Publish and Perish’

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

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Black marks on published papers don’t change citation rates, new study finds
• Researcher claims his case report was stolen by someone else at his hospital
• Are AI chatbots infiltrating online survey data? Not yet, says new study
• NEJM retracts case study for AI-manipulated imagery

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 400 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 64,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up to 650, and our mass resignations list has more than 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 for top cancer researcher; paper mill ads paired to IEEE proceedings; about that study on ChatGPT and learning

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

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• 10 years ago, Elisabeth Bik published a preprint heard around the world
• Major pharmacology journals flag another 15 papers by scientist facing criminal probe
• ‘I asked him to stop’: Father adds daughter’s name to over 100 preprints without her permission
• A response to: Should universities investigate questionable papers students and faculty wrote elsewhere? Read the original guest post
• Another retraction and two investigations for chemist
• Journal goes dark after impersonating Eric Topol and others
• Buying a first author slot can cost you anywhere from $56 to $5,600

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 400 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 64,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up to 650, and our mass resignations list has more than 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: What paper mills charge for author slots; UK Biobank data breached; what researchers think of the future of 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:

• Scientist who alleged COVID cover-up circulated a faked NIH email, agency says
• BMJ retracts most of a special issue for ‘compromised’ peer review and ‘improbable device use’
• ‘Game-changer’ breast cancer study retracted as Indiana researcher out of his post
• Retraction Watch testifies in Congressional hearing on scientific publishing. Coverage of the hearing in Nature and Inside Higher Ed. 
• 45 editors resign from math journal, former EIC calls Elsevier publisher a ‘mini-dictator’

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 400 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 64,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up to 650, and our mass resignations list has more than 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: An alternative to the impact factor in China; the clinical trials of six ‘superretractors’; Retraction Watch goes to Capitol Hill

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

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Bloodhound code sniffs out copied-and-pasted numerical data
• Publisher changes citation, registration policies following Retraction Watch investigation
• A journal named a sleuth in a correction. The sleuth says that was ‘ethical editorial malpractice’
• Could a national database of scientific misconduct rulings stop repeat offenders? Scientists “are divided over whether this centralized, confidential list would solve the problem or generate new ones,” Nature reports.
• Canadian panel seeks to add more teeth to research oversight

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 400 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 64,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up to 650, and our mass resignations list has more than 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, have metered access or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: LLMs ‘are not the problem’; Cash for peer review ‘doesn’t work,’ project finds; ‘Many Flaws, Few Retractions’ in vaping literature

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

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• A citation alert led researchers to a network of fake articles. But who is benefiting?
• Jury to decide whether Duke retaliated against researcher who reported sexual harassment
• BMJ retracts cardiac stem cell paper, removes authors months after sleuths flag data ‘mismatch’
• Biology journal ghosts researcher after holding paper hostage
• Judge tosses lawsuit over controversial Paxil ‘Study 329’
• Guest post: Should universities investigate questionable papers students and faculty wrote elsewhere?

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 400 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 64,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is up to 650, and our mass resignations list has more than 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: Half of social science ‘doesn’t replicate’; ‘Scientific ghosts: Life after retraction’; multisensory learning paper retracted

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

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Physicists flag over 50 papers on superheavy elements, leading to 3 retractions
• Guest post: A call to end the ‘impact on conclusions’ test for retraction
• Publisher to retract entire conference proceedings, ban editor who wrote most of them
• The Lancet retracts half-century-old commentary on talc for undisclosed industry ties
• Judge upholds 15-year debarment against scientist who once threatened to sue Retraction Watch
• Why don’t journalists circle back to cover retractions? A conversation with Malgorzata Iwaniec-Thompson

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 to 650, and our mass resignations list has more than 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: ‘Illicit AI use’ in hundreds of peer reviews; 49-year-old commentary on talc retracted; co-authorship as a ‘traded commodity’