Hazardous materials: Elsevier retracts 11 chemistry papers from Brazilian group, citing fraud

The publisher Elsevier has announced that it is retracting 11 papers from a team of Brazilian researchers over concerns that the scientists committed fraud in the studies. The notice is pegged to an October 2009 article in the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science titled “Immobilization of 5-amino-1,3,4-thiadiazole-thiol onto kanemite for thorium(IV) removal: Thermodynamics and … Continue reading Hazardous materials: Elsevier retracts 11 chemistry papers from Brazilian group, citing fraud

Update on a Best Of retraction: Elsevier edits notice suggesting renaming Israel “historical Palestine” was political

About two months ago, we posted an item on a curious retraction as the first installment in our Best of Retractions series. In the notice of the retraction in Agricultural Water Management, the editor wrote: Reason: During the second revision of the manuscript, the authors modified Figure 1 (changing the label from “Israel” to  “Historical … Continue reading Update on a Best Of retraction: Elsevier edits notice suggesting renaming Israel “historical Palestine” was political

Guest post: In defense of direct replication studies (if they even need defending)

Editor’s note: This guest post by Csaba Szabo is a response to a June 3 post by Mike Rossner on replication studies. We sent a draft to Rossner in advance; find his response below. The recent guest post on Retraction Watch by Mike Rossner takes a peculiar view of reproducibility. Rossner sets the stage talking … Continue reading Guest post: In defense of direct replication studies (if they even need defending)

COPE integrity officer loses 22-year-old paper for image concerns

A journal has retracted a 22-year-old-paper whose first author is the integrity officer for the Committee on Publication Ethics over concerns about image editing that “would not be acceptable by modern standards of figure presentation.” The 2003 paper, “A recombinant H1 histone based system for efficient delivery of nucleic acids,” was published in Elsevier’s Journal … Continue reading COPE integrity officer loses 22-year-old paper for image concerns

Weekend reads: Nobel Prize winners and retractions; Nature to publish peer reviews automatically; ‘AI or Die’?

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 60,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately … Continue reading Weekend reads: Nobel Prize winners and retractions; Nature to publish peer reviews automatically; ‘AI or Die’?

Journal corrects nearly 100 papers after authors fail to disclose they are on the editorial board

Wiley has issued a mass correction at one of its journals after finding nearly 100 papers with undisclosed conflicts of interest related to submissions by board members and relationships between authors and journal editors. An investigation found conflict of interest issues in 98 papers published from 2020 to 2025 in Geological Journal, although the issues … Continue reading Journal corrects nearly 100 papers after authors fail to disclose they are on the editorial board

Weekend reads: French agency’s research director sanctioned; AI data woes at MIT; is disruptive science over?

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 59,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately … Continue reading Weekend reads: French agency’s research director sanctioned; AI data woes at MIT; is disruptive science over?

Weekend reads: MIT rescinds support of AI paper; should AI write science papers, anyway?; another pub steps in for paused NIH journal

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 59,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately … Continue reading Weekend reads: MIT rescinds support of AI paper; should AI write science papers, anyway?; another pub steps in for paused NIH journal

Scopus indexed a journal with a fake editorial board and a sham archive

Editor’s note: We asked Elsevier to respond to some of the findings in this post. In response, a spokesperson told us they will now remove the journal from Scopus. See Elsevier’s response in this story. I received a letter recently pointing me to a questionable journal indexed in Elsevier’s Scopus database. Scopus indexes many problematic … Continue reading Scopus indexed a journal with a fake editorial board and a sham archive

Paper with duplicated images retracted four months after concerns were raised

We write plenty of stories about lengthy investigations and long wait times for retractions. So we are always glad when we can highlight when journals act in a relatively timely fashion. The Kaohsiung Journal of Medical Sciences, published by Wiley on behalf of Kaohsiung Hospital in Taiwan, seemed to exhibit some urgency after a sleuth raised … Continue reading Paper with duplicated images retracted four months after concerns were raised