A Wiley journal has retracted more than two dozen articles in the last few months for peer review issues. The articles, which appeared in Environmental Toxicology, have been retracted in batches, the latest on February 16-17, with previous sets in January and November. The retraction notices of all 26 papers read in part:
The phrase was so strange it would have stood out even to a non-scientist. Yet “vegetative electron microscopy” had already made it past reviewers and editors at several journals when a Russian chemist and scientific sleuth noticed the odd wording in a now-retracted paper in Springer Nature’s Environmental Science and Pollution Research. The ludicrous phrase … Continue reading As a nonsense phrase of shady provenance makes the rounds, Elsevier defends its use
Dear RW readers, can you spare $25? The week at Retraction Watch featured: Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 55,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 titles. … Continue reading Weekend reads: Alzheimer’s researcher resigns; bad stats in biology; ethical reasoning in open science
Several top editors of the Journal of Clinical Immunology, a Springer Nature title, have jumped ship to start a new, nonprofit journal with Rockefeller University Press. Jean-Laurent Casanova, the resigning coeditor-in-chief, told Retraction Watch the move followed pressure from Springer to publish more papers as the journal prepared to become fully open access. Editors from … Continue reading Editors resign from Springer immunology journal to launch nonprofit title
Dear RW readers, can you spare $25? The week at Retraction Watch featured: Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 55,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 titles. … Continue reading Weekend reads: ‘Invasion of the journal snatchers;’ our paper mill investigation; highly cited, highly retracted
The first weeks of the second Trump administration have brought unprecedented shock and awe to science. In response, the leaders of the scientific community must cease their hand-wringing and align behind two strong approaches to dealing with the chaos: protest and candor. I write these words as an attorney representing whistleblowers of scientific fraud. Prior … Continue reading How academic leaders should respond to shock and awe
An English university has issued a finding of research misconduct against a former graduate student and is requesting 10 retractions of his published work, which they say bears the marks of being papermilled. The former student, Sameer Quazi, was enrolled at the University of Manchester in 2021 in the school’s “PGCert” program in clinical bioinformatics, … Continue reading Former student was running a paper mill, says University of Manchester
In 2018, a biochemist in Scotland became aware of image irregularities in two of his papers through comments on PubPeer, each in a different journal. The researcher, Dario Alessi, a professor at the University of Dundee, said he alerted his home institution immediately. In July and October 2024, the papers were retracted. Emails obtained by … Continue reading Anatomy of a retraction: When cleaning up the literature takes six years
Dear RW readers, can you spare $25? The week at Retraction Watch featured: Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 450. There are more than 55,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 titles. … Continue reading Weekend reads: ‘The Temporal Crisis’; researcher sues university that fired him; ‘Devastating Legacy of Lies’
Nearly 20 years after the publication of a paper on phytoestrogens in postmenopausal women, one of the authors said the study had never been performed, according to a recently published retraction notice. The retraction is the second for two of the authors. It comes after sleuth Ben Mol and his colleagues initially discovered data similarities … Continue reading Paper retracted after author told journal study was ‘not actually performed’