A journal that appeared to be involved in a scheme in which authors were paid bonuses to cite its papers has said it “will not entertain cash requests from the individuals who claim to have cited our articles, nor shall we pay up.” The comments come about a month after a Retraction Watch post detailing … Continue reading Journal distances itself from cash for citations scheme after Retraction Watch report
A marine ecologist at Oregon State University now helping lead the Biden White House’s climate and environmental initiatives violated the conflict of interest policy at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences when she edited a paper in the journal last year. Jane Lubchenco, who served as administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric … Continue reading Leading marine ecologist, now White House official, violated prominent journal’s policies in handling now-retracted paper
As Retraction Watch readers likely know, there’s ample evidence that retracted papers — 2,500 per year and growing — continue to attract citations that do not mention the fact the paper has been retracted. Some of that may be because it’s not clear on publishers’ sites and databases that these papers have been retracted or … Continue reading How one US organization hopes to make retractions more visible
Although it’s never too late to say sorry, sometimes the apology turns out to be worse than keeping quiet. Consider the case of a group in China, who admitted that their 2020 paper on brain tumors was the work of a paper mill. The article, “LncRNA SNHG16 Promotes Proliferation, Migration, and Invasion of Glioma Cells … Continue reading Here’s what happened when a publisher looked more closely at a paper milled paper
The corresponding author of a new paper in an Elsevier journal that claims “there are five times the number of deaths attributable to each inoculation vs those attributable to COVID-19 in the most vulnerable 65+ demographic” says he “fully expected” the criticisms — and that the “real-world situation is far worse than our best-case scenario.” … Continue reading Author defends paper claiming COVID-19 vaccines kill five times more people over 65 than they save
An Elsevier journal has corrected a retraction notice after we asked questions about what exactly it was saying — but not before the journal’s editor tried to defend what turned out to be a mistaken passage. The article, “Measurement of performance parameters and improvement in optimized solution of WEDM on a novel titanium hybrid composite,” … Continue reading Elsevier corrects a retraction notice following questions from Retraction Watch
The authors of a study comparing hydroxychloroquine and the antiviral agent favipiravir as treatments for COVID-19 have lost the paper after post-publication peer review determined that the data did not support the conclusions. “Safety and efficacy of favipiravir versus hydroxychloroquine in management of COVID-19: A randomised controlled trial” appeared in March in Scientific Reports, a … Continue reading Study comparing hydroxychloroquine and antiviral drug for COVID-19 retracted
A conference proceedings for the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) has retracted a 2021 paper which appears to have been produced in part by the fake article generator SCIGen — an allegation the corresponding author denies. “Estimate The Efficiency Of Multiprocessor’s Cash Memory Work Algorithms” appeared earlier this year in the 2021 IEEE … Continue reading “[T]hese shit comments”: Author of a nonsense paper responds on PubPeer
Two years ago, we reported on a website based in Russia that claimed to have brokered authorships for more than 10,000 researchers. (Apparently, neither our coverage nor a cease-and-desist letter from Clarivate Analytics had any effect on the site’s operations.) And now, we bring you news of what look like two very similar sites — … Continue reading Introducing two sites that claim to sell authorships on scientific papers
It’s happened to all of us: You’re putting the final touches on your manuscript and run plagiarism detection software against it. Somehow, part of the software’s report ends up in your abstract — and neither you nor the peer reviewers nor the publishing team notices. Well, it’s happened to one group of researchers, anyway. Here’s … Continue reading Pro-tip: Before submitting your manuscript, delete the plagiarism detection report text