Announcing the Elisabeth Bik Science Integrity Fund

We’re thrilled to be partnering with foremost scientific sleuth Elisabeth Bik on a new way to support scientific integrity: The Elisabeth Bik Science Integrity Fund. Bik is a renowned science integrity advocate and microbiologist who investigates and exposes research misconduct, including image duplication and data manipulation, to uphold transparency and ethical standards in scientific publishing. … Continue reading Announcing the Elisabeth Bik Science Integrity Fund

‘The fraud was not subtle’: Chemist blames students after ten papers retracted

While reviewing a manuscript for the Journal of Organic Chemistry, Caroline Kervarc-Genre and her colleague, Thibault Cantat, researchers at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, noticed something unusual.  The nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra buried in the supplementary information had striking irregularities: The baseline was interrupted in some parts, and the noise was … Continue reading ‘The fraud was not subtle’: Chemist blames students after ten papers retracted

Anatomy of a retraction: When cleaning up the literature takes six years

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

‘Foolish mistake’: Guest editor loses three articles published in his own special issues

An Elsevier journal has pulled three articles after the publisher determined an author had been “involved in the peer review and decision making” as managing guest editor of the special issues in which they appeared.  The author, botany researcher Vijay Kumar of Lovely Professional University in Punjab, India, told Retraction Watch his apparent involvement in … Continue reading ‘Foolish mistake’: Guest editor loses three articles published in his own special issues

Pair of management papers retracted for similarities to earlier work

Two management journals from the same publisher have retracted a pair of articles for taking “models, samples, and results” from each other and earlier work.  A tip from an anonymous account sent in November to Retraction Watch, sleuth Elisabeth Bik, and others called out duplications in the papers. Bik then posted the two articles on … Continue reading Pair of management papers retracted for similarities to earlier work

Science paper by Toronto lab retracted

A 2014 paper in Science by a lab in Toronto has been retracted after a December expression of concern raised “potential data integrity issues.” The paper, “Mitosis Inhibits DNA Double-Strand Break Repair to Guard Against Telomere Fusions,” is from the lab of Daniel Durocher, a professor of molecular genetics at the University of Toronto.  The … Continue reading Science paper by Toronto lab retracted

Journals investigating dozens of papers by leading Canadian urologists

A high-profile Canadian urologist received an editorial expression of concern for one of his papers this month, after anonymous comments on PubPeer flagged suspected data duplication in dozens of his articles.  By our count, sleuths have flagged 30 papers co-authored by Martin Gleave, a professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada and co-founder … Continue reading Journals investigating dozens of papers by leading Canadian urologists

Former Harvard researcher, now at Moderna, loses paper following postdoc’s report

PLOS Pathogens has retracted a paper by a former group at Harvard following a postdoc’s allegations the work contained manipulated data. The retracted paper, “Pseudomonas aeruginosa–induced nociceptor activation increases susceptibility to infection,” appeared in 2021 from the lab of Mihaela Gadjeva, an immunologist previously based at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in … Continue reading Former Harvard researcher, now at Moderna, loses paper following postdoc’s report

Science places expressions of concern on two articles as Toronto’s Sinai Health investigates

Science has issued expressions of concern for two articles from the lab of Daniel Durocher, a professor of molecular genetics at the University of Toronto.  The notices, and two more editor’s notes on Nature articles, follow PubPeer comments on several of Durocher’s papers pointing out potentially duplicated images, as described by ForBetterScience. Durocher has responded … Continue reading Science places expressions of concern on two articles as Toronto’s Sinai Health investigates

University of Newcastle investigating top melanoma researchers

The University of Newcastle in Australia is investigating the work of two prominent skin cancer researchers, Retraction Watch has learned.  Commenters on PubPeer have posted questions about the data in 42 papers by Peter Hersey and Xu Dong Zhang, both well-known in Australian melanoma research. So far, two of the papers have been retracted and … Continue reading University of Newcastle investigating top melanoma researchers