Iraqi dean earns another retraction for paper posted for sale on Facebook

Yasser Fakri Mustafa

A dean and professor at a public university in Iraq has lost another paper just weeks after we reported he was up to 16 retractions for authorship manipulation, fake peer review and other problems.

Yasser Fakri Mustafa of the University of Mosul was a coauthor of the newly retracted article, a review of how aerosol boxes affected intubation during the COVID‐19 pandemic. He denied wrongdoing.

As stated in the retraction notice, online September 23, the article’s title matched an authorship ad posted on social media on March 9, 2022, eight months before the paper appeared in Taylor & Francis’ Expert Review of Medical Devices.

Continue reading Iraqi dean earns another retraction for paper posted for sale on Facebook

A peer-reviewed paper claimed a researcher was an expert in sex robots. He’s not.

3dalia/iStock

What would you do if you discovered your name in a list of experts on sex robots despite having never studied sex robots? 

That was the situation for one rather panicked researcher who reached out to us in late September after discovering his name among several singled out in a review article for the “greatest number of published works” on sex robots. 

Published in February in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, the bibliometric analysis of the field aimed “to provide a clearer understanding of the issues surrounding sex robots,” the original article stated. 

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Weekend reads: PubMed during the US shutdown; EU commissioner ‘appears to cite’ discredited study; KPMG corrected ‘phantom’ reference in gov’t report

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Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500.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 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 — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: PubMed during the US shutdown; EU commissioner ‘appears to cite’ discredited study; KPMG corrected ‘phantom’ reference in gov’t report

Soil scientist previously named in citation scandal appointed to editor role at Elsevier journal

Artemi Cerdà

A soil scientist who resigned from several journals in 2017 after being linked to manipulated citations has been appointed to the editorial board of a journal copublished by Elsevier and China Science Publishing & Media.

International Soil and Water Conservation Research announced in April that Artemi Cerdà would serve as an editorial board member, describing him as a “renowned researcher” in the field of soil erosion and land management. The appointment comes eight years after Cerdà, of the University of Valencia, in Spain, was found to have manipulated citations in favor of his own work and journals with which he was associated. 

While Cerdà has not responded to our questions about his appointment, a spokesperson for Elsevier acknowledged Cerdà’s history but defended the decision, writing that researchers “grow into their roles through participation and learning.” The spokesperson continued:

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Deputy minister in Iraq losing papers with signs of paper mill involvement

Hayder Abed Dhahad

A high-ranking official at Iraq’s Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research has earned six retractions over the past two years for issues including citation stuffing and “suspicious” authorship changes after articles were accepted.

Both practices are warning signs of a paper mill at play. At least two of the official’s retracted works appeared in a special issue edited by an academic who has been accused of being part of authorship-for-sale networks.

But Hayder Abed Dhahad, Iraq’s deputy minister for scientific research affairs, who was a corresponding author on two of the articles and a coauthor on the rest, told us the “retractions were not due to fabricated results or research misconduct on my part.” He added that “as a public figure currently involved in national projects,” he had been the target of “politically motivated campaigns aimed at damaging my reputation.”

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‘Cosmic magnet’ study retracted after cleaning agent wipes away results

Electron diffraction patterns of an alloy before (left) and after (right) cleaning revealed the cleaning agent was was responsible for reflections (circle, right) reported in the original study. O.S. Houghton et al/Adv. Sci. 2024

When measuring the properties of a particular material, you want to make sure your sample is as clean as possible. But sometimes a well-intentioned effort to purify can make things worse.

Just ask Lindsay Greer, a professor of materials science at the University of Cambridge. He and his colleagues discovered measurements they reported in 2022 were actually an artifact of a cleaning agent used to prepare their sample.

Greer became aware of the issue during unsuccessful attempts to replicate his lab’s discovery of magnetic properties in an alloy their collaborators had made. Instead, they found oxidation from a cleaning product had contaminated their original results. The error led to a retraction, a declined grant, a commentary describing their troubleshooting — and a story about science working as it should. 

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Editors of criminology journal resign amid concern about review times

The top editors of a criminology journal have stepped down after the society in charge of the publication assessed concerns about manuscript review times. 

The board of the American Society of Criminology decided “a change of leadership was required due to some ongoing operational issues with the Criminology journal,” according to an announcement on the society’s website. “We appreciate the contributions of the prior editors.” 

Kelly Vance, associate director of the society, said the organization had no further comment beyond the announcement. 

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$1.5 million program targets changes to academic incentives

The incentive systems that drive academic research underlie nearly every story we write: publication counts for promotion, pressure to produce positive results, hitting certain metrics, and so on. Critics have long called for change in these systems, but support for such change is hard to come by.

Several organizations are now putting more than $1 million toward reimagining hiring, promotion and tenure at U.S. universities. The program, called the Modernizing Academic Appointment and Advancement (MA3) Challenge, is seeking proposals for “bold, creative strategies to develop academic reward systems that foster a collaborative, responsive, and transparent research environment.”

Organized by the Open Research Community Accelerator (ORCA), the program will offer grants at two funding levels — $50,000 or $250,000 — over two years. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Dana Foundation, Rita Allen Foundation, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have provided the funding, which totals $1.5 million. 

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Weekend reads: Science publishing a ‘hot mess’; AI microscopy ‘indistinguishable’ from real; social media as a bellwether for retractions

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 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 — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: Science publishing a ‘hot mess’; AI microscopy ‘indistinguishable’ from real; social media as a bellwether for retractions

Wiley retracts study stolen by reviewer, following Retraction Watch coverage

A Wiley journal has retracted a paper more than a year after a researcher reported the work was hers and had been stolen by a reviewer for another journal.

As we reported in July, Shafaq Aftab, now a lecturer at the University of Central Punjab in Pakistan, contacted Wiley in September 2024 after discovering a paper published in one of its journals, Systems Research and Behavioral Science (SRBS), was the exact work she submitted to a different journal a year earlier.  

The retraction notice, issued October 1, states an investigation found “significant unattributed overlap with an unpublished manuscript” and data the authors provided to the journal were “insufficient to resolve the concerns.” Subsequently, “additional scientific errors were identified in the manuscript,” according to the notice.  

Continue reading Wiley retracts study stolen by reviewer, following Retraction Watch coverage