Some journal articles on the Taylor & Francis website now bear a pop-up notification stating the papers are “currently under investigation.”
The publisher began adding the notices to articles such as this one in June, according to a spokesperson, as a way to inform readers about an ongoing investigation “so that they can exercise appropriate caution when considering the research presented.”
Like the “editor’s notes” posted on Springer Nature articles under investigation, Taylor & Francis’ pop-ups only appear on the publisher’s website, not in databases where researchers might be searching for papers.
In 2009, a now highly-cited study found an average of around 2% of scientists admit to have falsified, fabricated, or modified data at least once in their career.
Fifteen years on, a new analysis tried to quantify how much science is fake – but the real number may remain elusive, some observers said.
The analysis, published before peer review on the Open Science Framework on September 24, found one in seven scientific papers may be at least partly fake. The author, James Heathers, a long-standing scientific sleuth, arrived at that figure by averaging data from 12 existing studies — collectively containing a sample of around 75,000 studies — that estimate the volume of problematic scientific output.
The Pennsylvania State University in May blocked a prominent professor at the school from doing research and making presentations on its behalf, Retraction Watch has learned.
An architecture journal’s “failure to act in a timely and proactive manner” in a case of plagiarism in a now-retracted review article has sparked the resignation of a member of its editorial board, Retraction Watch has learned.
“I am appalled that it took, essentially, from November 2022 until now, September 2024, to resolve what was a fairly straightforward matter,” Dirk H. R. Spennemann, of Charles Sturt University in Albury, Australia, wrote in a Sept. 18, 2024, email to the editor-in-chief of Buildings, an MDPI title.
But in June of that year, Marco Spada, a senior lecturer in architecture at the University of Suffolk in the United Kingdom, informed Buildings the work borrowed heavily from two previous publications without proper citation. Although many sentences had been reworded using synonyms, the plagiarism was extensive and obvious.
Spada had recognized the article, a version of which he had previously reviewed – and rejected – as a referee for Sustainability, a different MDPI journal. Elements such as the title, the order in which the authors appeared and some of the abstract had changed, Spada told us. But it was still the same paper.
“Clearly they managed to outsmart the system,” Spada said.
The University of Iowa found a cardiology researcher violated multiple of its policies, including harassing his former mentees when they tried to leave his lab to establish labs of their own, according to an investigation report obtained by Retraction Watch.
The researcher, Kaikobad Irani, left the school last month with a six-figure settlement, and has a new job lined up, Retraction Watch has learned.
Irani studies the molecular mechanisms of the function and dysfunction of blood vessels. He’s listed as an inventor on four patents, including an active one regarding a compound that could lower the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
One of Irani’s active grants names the Providence VA Medical Center as the awardee organization. A spokesperson for the VA Providence Healthcare System confirmed Irani “is in the process of onboarding and is expected to begin working around November.”
A scientific sleuth and a mother who nearly lost her daughter to a hormonal condition teamed up in January to flag a series of papers that misnamed a medication for pregnant women. They have recently started to see the fruits of their labors: one retraction and three corrections.
In 2014, Tara Skopelitis, a lab manager at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, was given weekly progesterone injections to prevent preterm birth for her daughter, as reported by STAT. Six years later, after her daughter showed symptoms of an unknown hormonal condition which still hasn’t been formally diagnosed, Skopelitis discovered she should have received synthetic progesterone variant 17α-hydroxyprogesterone caproate, often referred to as 17-OHPC, 17P, sold as Makena. When the drug wasn’t available, her doctor had ordered the wrong replacement from a compounding pharmacy. Skopelitis suspects her daughter’s condition could be a result of the mixup.
The confusion lies within the literature, Skopelitis says: Many clinical trials and papers refer to 17P as intramuscular progesterone, as if they are interchangeable or even the same compound.
In 2021, the provost of the University of Maryland, Baltimore sounded the alarm about a troubling batch of papers from the lab of Richard Eckert, the former chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the institution.
The provost sent letters to the editors of seven journals calling out a string of serious issues. Based on the university’s investigation, the papers contained duplicated, fabricated and falsified data, according to emails obtained by Retraction Watch.
But more than three years later, the results of those alerts are mixed: Of the 11 papers the university flagged in 2021, editors corrected three and retracted two. Six still await resolution, with no apparent action taken by the journals.
A Nobel prize-winning genetics researcher has retracted two more papers, bringing his total to 13.
Gregg Semenza, a professor of genetic medicine and director of the vascular program at Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Cell Engineering in Baltimore, shared the 2019 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for “discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.”
Since pseudonymous sleuth Claire Francis and others began using PubPeer to point out potential duplicated or manipulated images in Semenza’s work in 2019, the researcher has retracted 12 papers. A previous retraction from 2011 for a paper co-authored with Naoki Mori – who with 31 retractions sits at No. 25 on our leaderboard – brings the total to 13.
