Did 2023 feel like a year in which you couldn’t keep up, whether that was your to-do list, the news, or email? We know the feeling. Earlier this month, Nature reported that journals retracted more than 10,000 papers this year – so many, in fact, that we have not been able to enter them all … Continue reading The year at Retraction Watch, 2023: Whew!
We are pleased to present an excerpt from The Predatory Paradox: Ethics, Politics, and Practices in Contemporary Scholarly Publishing by Amy Koerber, Jesse C. Starkey, Karin Ardon-Dryer, R. Glenn Cummins, Lyombe Eko, and Kerk F. Kee, published by Open Book Publishers, October 2023. In 2015, Johannes Bohannon, along with three coauthors, published an article titled … Continue reading A closer look at the ‘chocolate with high cocoa content’ hoax
A journal says a content management mishap led to the publication, and subsequent retraction, of a gag essay not intended for wide distribution. Why the retraction happened three and a half years after the paper’s publication remains murky. This story belongs to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, back when Proteins: Structure, Function, and … Continue reading Publisher error claims joke paper, April Fools’ tradition – three years later
On March 12, a senior administrator at a university in India sent a business proposal to a prolific economist in Ethiopia. If he joined the school’s stable of adjunct professors, the administrator promised, easy money could be made. All the economist had to do was “add our affiliation for incentives in your papers,” explained Lakshmi … Continue reading Exclusive: Researcher outs Indian university’s publishing scam after it fails to pay him
Over the past year, amid announcements of thousands of retractions, journal closures and a major index delisting several titles, executives at the troubled publisher Hindawi have at various times mentioned a “new retraction process” for investigating and pulling papers “at scale.” The publisher has declined to provide details – until now. So far in 2023, … Continue reading Hindawi reveals process for retracting more than 8,000 paper mill articles
Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? The week at Retraction Watch featured: Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to over 375. There are more than 45,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains well over 200 titles. And … Continue reading Weekend reads: A new retraction record; corrections by Harvard president; when patents cite retracted papers
The British Medical Journal has retracted an article that found UK households bought 10% less sugar in the form of soft drinks after the government started taxing the manufacturers on the sugar in their products. The authors of the paper found an error in their analysis when following up on the work, and republished a … Continue reading BMJ retracts article about effect of UK sugar tax after authors find error
Several sports physicians at Harvard have earned two retractions and await another after publishing work based on “unreliable” survey data that was misrepresented in the papers. The articles, “Running-related injuries in middle school cross-country runners: Prevalence and characteristics of common injuries” and “Prevalence and factors associated with bone stress injury in middle school runners,” were … Continue reading Third retraction imminent for Harvard-affiliated sports research group
A deluge of bizarre and malicious emails targeting a professor at Harvard Medical School has left him reeling, while raising questions about the smear campaign’s use of a popular online forum where scientists publicly critique research. Joseph Loscalzo sent a letter to PubPeer, the online forum, in September describing an “aggressive cyberstalking and harassment campaign” … Continue reading Cyberstalking pits Harvard professor against PubPeer
Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? The week at Retraction Watch featured: Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to over 375. There are more than 45,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains well over 200 titles. … Continue reading Weekend reads: Hijacked journals polluting an index; special issues take a hit; a data breach at a megajournal