Weekend reads: Senator loses degree for plagiarism; bad colitis poetry; fraud on the big screen

The week at Retraction Watch featured papers by a fake author with a brilliant if profane name, and the unmasking of fraudster Diederik Stapel as a sock puppet. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Nearly 20 Hindawi journals delisted from leading index amid concerns of papermill activity

Nineteen journals from the open-access publisher Hindawi were removed from Clarivate’s Web of Science Monday when the indexer refreshed its Master Journal List.  The delistings follow a disclosure by Wiley, which bought Hindawi in 2021, that the company suspended publishing special issues for three months because of “compromised articles.” That lost the company $9 million … Continue reading Nearly 20 Hindawi journals delisted from leading index amid concerns of papermill activity

Exercise researcher earns more retractions as investigations mount

Retractions are slowly stacking up for an exercise researcher in Brazil whose work has come under scrutiny by data sleuths, including a couple of his erstwhile co-authors. The concerns prompted an investigation by his former institution into one of his academic supervisors, who may be facing sanctions, Retraction Watch has learned.  In June 2020, the … Continue reading Exercise researcher earns more retractions as investigations mount

Digging deeper: Authors retract soil paper so “the error we made does not propagate”

The authors of a 2018 paper on how much carbon soil can store have retracted the work after concluding that their analysis was fatally flawed.  The article, “Soil carbon stocks are underestimated in mountainous regions,” appeared in the journal Geoderma. Its authors are affiliated with the French National Institute for Agricultural Research. According to the … Continue reading Digging deeper: Authors retract soil paper so “the error we made does not propagate”

Weekend reads: A demand for a CRISPR paper retraction; a weak data-sharing policy; can we trust journals?

The week at Retraction Watch featured a study suggesting that 2% of studies in eight medical journals contained suspect data, and the announcement of a retraction on a professor’s blog. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Is an increase in retractions good news? Maybe, suggests new study

In Latin America, retractions for plagiarism and other issues have increased markedly — which may be a positive sign that editors and authors are paying closer attention to publishing ethics, according to a small study published in Science and Engineering Ethics. The authors examined two major Latin American/Caribbean databases, which mostly include journals from Brazil, and have been indexing … Continue reading Is an increase in retractions good news? Maybe, suggests new study