A prominent cancer research lab is up to three retractions and six corrections for “highly similar” images in papers published between 2018 and 2022. The lab is led by Kounosuke Watabe at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Watabe holds one of three Wake Forest professorships all funded by a $2.8 … Continue reading Wake Forest cancer lab blames ‘honest mistakes’ for retractions
A dean at an Australian university sought to correct some of his papers. He received a retraction instead. We wrote last year about Marcel Dinger, dean of science at the University of Sydney, who was a coauthor on five papers with multiple references that had been retracted. In May 2024, Alexander Magazinov, a scientific sleuth … Continue reading University dean’s attempt to correct a paper turns into a retraction
Just as a Harvard lab brought in tens of millions of dollars in private equity funding to pursue new treatments for obesity, past research from its lead investigator has come under fresh scrutiny. Last month, the lab of Gökhan Hotamışlıgil, a professor of genetics and metabolism at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, secured … Continue reading Harvard researcher’s work faces scrutiny after private equity deal
A journal has retracted a 22-year-old-paper whose first author is the integrity officer for the Committee on Publication Ethics over concerns about image editing that “would not be acceptable by modern standards of figure presentation.” The 2003 paper, “A recombinant H1 histone based system for efficient delivery of nucleic acids,” was published in Elsevier’s Journal … Continue reading COPE integrity officer loses 22-year-old paper for image concerns
Wiley has issued a mass correction at one of its journals after finding nearly 100 papers with undisclosed conflicts of interest related to submissions by board members and relationships between authors and journal editors. An investigation found conflict of interest issues in 98 papers published from 2020 to 2025 in Geological Journal, although the issues … Continue reading Journal corrects nearly 100 papers after authors fail to disclose they are on the editorial board
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500.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 … Continue reading Weekend reads: Journals are MAGA’s ‘latest target’; a psychedelic retraction; professor sues rival over plagiarism accusations
Brown University physician-scientist Wafik El-Deiry has been a longtime critic of the post-publication forum PubPeer, where 75 of his papers have been flagged. For example, in an April post on X, formerly Twitter, he stated, “It is not good that PubPeer has been weaponized and has become tyrannical.” In July 2024, he referred to the … Continue reading Apparent NCI director candidate wants ‘open, respectful’ post-publication peer review while promoting anonymous site that calls sleuths a ‘mob’
“Gay Advocates Can Shift Same-Sex Marriage Views,” read the New York Times headline. “Doorstep visits change attitudes on gay marriage,” declared the Los Angeles Times. “Cure Homophobia With This One Weird Trick!” Slate spouted. Driving those headlines was a December 2014 study in Science, by Michael J. LaCour, then a Ph.D. student at the University … Continue reading 10 years after the downfall of a same-sex marriage canvassing study, tenure, some better practices — and an engagement
PLOS One has retracted a 2011 paper first flagged for image issues 11 years ago. The retraction marks the fourth for the paper’s lead author, Gabriella Marfè of the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli,” in Caserta, Italy. “Involvement of FOXO Transcription Factors, TRAIL-FasL/Fas, and Sirtuin Proteins Family in Canine Coronavirus Type II-Induced Apoptosis,” has been cited … Continue reading Fourth retraction for Italian scientist comes 11 years after sleuths flagged paper
For years, sleuths – whose names our readers are likely familiar with – have been diligently flagging issues with the scientific literature. More than a dozen of these specialists have teamed up to create a set of guides to teach others their trade. The Collection of Open Science Integrity Guides (COSIG) aims to make “post-publication … Continue reading ‘Anyone can do this’: Sleuths publish a toolkit for post-publication review