Article Retraction Watch Updates

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Cancer researcher admitted faking data
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/11/27/c...king-data/

A former researcher at Nemours Children’s Health in Wilmington, Del., admitted to falsifying and incorrectly reporting data in at least two published studies, both of which were supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health. The studies have been retracted....

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Company linked to cloned journals of major publishers denies cloning journals of major publishers
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/11/26/c...ublishers/

After we reported on a new scam to publish papers on webpages remarkably similar to those of Elsevier, Springer, the American Medical Association and other major publishers, the company linked to the clones denied any role in producing the content they contain...

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Exclusive: New hijacking scam targets Elsevier, Springer Nature, and other major publishers
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/11/25/e...ublishers/

Until recently, journal hijackers do not appear to have targeted titles from big publishers, in part because their well-known website designs made such clones easy to detect. [...] But earlier this month, William Black, founder and CEO of PSIref, an online platform aggregating scholarly publication data which offers advertising opportunities for publishers, sent me evidence of a new, more sophisticated scam...

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Smithsonian Magazine pulls article for ‘errors’ after criticism of linked map of Israel
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/11/24/s...of-israel/

Smithsonian Magazine has retracted a two-year-old article about an interactive online map describing indigenous lands in North America because the map “did not meet the standards of scholarship we expect of academic projects we cover as part of our editorial purview.” The move followed sharp criticism from a pro-Israel group about a map produced by a nonprofit organization that formed the basis of the article...

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Russia accused of weaponizing science in Ukraine
https://cen.acs.org/policy/publishing/Ru...eb/2024/12

Papers in scientific journals are increasingly citing universities based inside occupied Ukrainian territories as being affiliated with Russia, a new analysis has found. [...] “It is a problem in our opinion, because it means that the scientific community accepts them as being part of Russia, even though legally, in most countries, as well as in United Nations resolutions, these territories belong to Ukraine,” says Hryn’ova, who was born in Ukraine...

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‘It felt very icky’: This scientist’s name was used to write fake peer reviews
https://www.science.org/content/article/...er-reviews

In May, behavioral ecologist and ecotoxicologist Michael Bertram received some disconcerting news: His identity had been used, apparently by another researcher, to produce dozens of fake peer reviews on papers submitted to the journal Science of the Total Environment (STOTEN). Elsevier, the journal’s publisher, had opened an investigation, says Bertram, who works at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Now, this scandal has burst into the open...

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‘Systematic reviews’ that aim to extract broad conclusions from many studies are in peril
https://www.science.org/content/article/...-are-peril

The junk papers are likely the products of paper mills—businesses that produce fake science to order. The size of the problem is not clear, but a manuscript posted to the Center for Open Science’s OSF preprint server in September suggests up to one in seven published papers are fabricated or falsified. Aquarius and Wever’s group plans to sum up the problems in papers it analyzed by the end of this year; the results are “grim,” Aquarius says. Just in the past 4 weeks he has flagged 130 suspect papers on the postpublication peer-review site Pubpeer, bringing his total over the past 10 months to more than 690—many related to the stroke project, as well as others. Other researchers echo Aquarius’s experience...

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(paper) Metrics fraud on ResearchGate
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...60#sec0028

ABSTRACT: The academic social networking site ResearchGate (RG) allows members to post refereed papers and non-refereed preprints on the service. RG provides service-specific metrics and altmetrics for authors and publications posted on the service such as Reads, Citations, Recommendations, h-index, and RI Scores.

This paper identifies problems based on a review of examples of questionable practices, which raises concerns about the lack of transparency and the validity of RG's metrics and altmetrics to assess scientific reputation. The paper describes a scheme that small groups of researchers use to deliberately inflate each other's metrics on RG. Additionally, a comparison is made between an unethical physics researcher's RG metrics and those of several Physics Nobel Laureates.

Based on the problems found, the paper proposes several corrective actions RG could implement to mitigate metrics fraud on the service...

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Exclusive: Researcher who received settlement to leave University of Iowa won’t be starting new job
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12/13/r...g-new-job/

A cardiology researcher who left the University of Iowa with a six-figure settlement earlier this year won’t be starting the new job he’d lined up [...] Justyn Charon, a spokesperson for the Providence VA, previously told us the researcher, Kaikobad Irani, would begin his new position “around November.” When we followed up, Charon confirmed, “there is currently no plan for Dr. Irani to be employed by VA Providence.”

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Bribery offers from China rattle journal editors. Are they being scammed?
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12/12/b...g-scammed/

On November 12, Richard Addante, an associate editor at the journal "Frontiers in Psychology", received an alarming email from someone purporting to be a faculty member at a university in China.  “I have a lot of papers to publish, papers on computers, medicine, materials, and so on,” the email, signed by a “Wei Yang” of Zhengzhou College of Business and Industry, stated. “If you can help me publish my paper, I’ll pay you $1500 as a referral fee.”

To Addante, a psychologist at Florida Institute of Technology, in Melbourne, the message suggested the field of scientific publishing needed a thorough clean-up...

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19 months and counting: Former Hindawi journal still hasn’t marked paper
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12/11/1...ked-paper/

A journal formerly published by Hindawi has yet to publish any sort of notice on a paper sleuths reported for containing duplicated images 1.5 years ago. ...

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Dean in Bulgaria accused of plagiarism
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12/10/d...lagiarism/

Earlier this year, Milen Zamfirov, dean of the faculty of educational sciences at Sofia University in Bulgaria, was named an exceptional scientist in the social sciences and humanities. As part of the accolades at the prestigious Pythagoras Science Awards from the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science, Zamfirov received a commemorative plaque, diploma, and a cash prize of 8,000 BGN (US $4,300).  Now, he is accused of plagiarising past research in a paper he co-authored with Margarita Bakracheva, who received a certificate of excellence from the Union of the Bulgarian Scientists earlier this year...

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Former Harvard researcher, now at Moderna, loses paper following postdoc’s report
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12/09/f...cs-report/

PLOS Pathogens has retracted a paper by a former group at Harvard following a postdoc’s allegations the work contained manipulated data....

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Journal won’t retract paper that involved human organ transplants in China
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12/20/j...-in-china/

The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation (JHLT) has decided against retracting a November 2024 paper that violated the ethics policy of the publication...

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Journal that published viral study on black plastic removed from major index
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12/18/j...jor-index/

Chemosphere, the Elsevier title which in September published an article on “unexpected exposure to toxic flame retardants in household items” such as black plastic cooking utensils, has been removed from Clarivate’s Web of Science index in its December update...

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Researcher linked to paper mill activity mysteriously reappeared on list of journal’s editorial board
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12/18/r...ial-board/

An engineer accused of being involved in paper mill activities mysteriously reappeared on a list of editorial board members at Springer Nature’s Scientific Reports earlier this year...