Weekend reads: India institutes face penalties for retractions; editors resign after publisher sold; should the Tuskegee Study be retracted?

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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Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500.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: India institutes face penalties for retractions; editors resign after publisher sold; should the Tuskegee Study be retracted?

Director of Cambridge toxicology institute retracts paper for potential image manipulation

Twelve years after sleuths flagged problematic images in a 2009 paper, the authors — including the head of a UK research institute — have retracted the article.  

The paper, published in Genes & Development, has been cited 126 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

According to the June 1 retraction notice, the authors retracted the paper because of “anomalies in the data presented” in multiple figures. “The issues relate to potential instances of image manipulation, including undisclosed splicing, lane flipping, and lane and panel duplications in the preparation of these figures.”

Continue reading Director of Cambridge toxicology institute retracts paper for potential image manipulation

‘Biased’ and ‘unethical’: Journal objects to Scopus delisting 

A home economics journal delisted from Scopus last year has called the decision “biased against journals from developing countries.”

Elsevier delisted the journal Nurture, published by “Nurture Publishing Group,” from the publisher’s citation database in June 2024, after indexing it for a dozen years. In an editorial published this April, Sadie Ahmad, the editorial manager for Nurture, wrote Scopus delisted the journal for three reasons: an increase in the number of scientific articles published, papers in topics beyond the scope of the journal, and an uptick of authors from different countries. 

A representative from Elsevier told us Scopus’ decision was also a result of “weak quality” of papers and “low citation metrics compared to what one would expect of a journal with such history and scope.” The journal has been publishing since 2007.

Continue reading ‘Biased’ and ‘unethical’: Journal objects to Scopus delisting 

Springer Nature to retract machine learning book following Retraction Watch coverage

A screenshot from June 26 shows the book had been accessed 3,782 times.

Springer Nature is retracting a book on machine learning that had multiple references to works that do not exist, Retraction Watch has learned. 

The move comes two weeks after we reported on the book’s fake references.

The link to the information page for the book, Mastering Machine Learning: From Basics to Advanced, now returns “Page not found,” and the text is no longer listed under the book series on computer systems and networks. 

Continue reading Springer Nature to retract machine learning book following Retraction Watch coverage

Wake Forest cancer lab blames ‘honest mistakes’ for retractions

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 million donation for cancer research in 2016. 

Each of the retractions and corrections came after sleuth Kevin Patrick raised concerns about the articles on PubPeer in May 2024. Patrick, who identified instances of images in Watabe lab papers being “more similar than expected,” told Retraction Watch he wasn’t confident whether the image duplication could be attributed to misconduct. “I am never sure which is worse, misconduct or a pattern of errors. Neither seem to inspire confidence in the published results,” he said. 

Watabe did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Continue reading Wake Forest cancer lab blames ‘honest mistakes’ for retractions

University dean’s attempt to correct a paper turns into a retraction

Marcel Dinger

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 and software engineer based in Kazakhstan, had flagged the papers on PubPeer for “references of questionable reliability.” Magazinov credited the Problematic Paper Screener with helping him find them. 

Dinger told us at the time he intended to work with editors to determine whether the five papers should be corrected or retracted.  

Continue reading University dean’s attempt to correct a paper turns into a retraction

Weekend reads: Western publishing at a ‘breaking point’; NIH to cap publisher fees; sleuths say their work is being ‘weaponized’ 

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: Western publishing at a ‘breaking point’; NIH to cap publisher fees; sleuths say their work is being ‘weaponized’ 

Retraction for ‘unsound’ analysis was ‘disproportionate and discouraging,’ author says

The editors of Scientific Reports have retracted an article on burnout because the statistical analysis of its main finding was “unsound.” But the authors dispute the editors’ take on the statistics and claim a mistake in the paper triggered an unfair review.

For the paper, published in November, the authors measured concentrations of cortisol in hair samples from nearly 500 healthcare workers in Buenos Aires to study the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on chronic stress and burnout. The analysis hinged on a statistical method called mediation analysis.

“Mediation analysis is a method to understand how one thing causes another by looking at what happens in between,” said lead author Federico Fortuna, of the Institute of Physiopathology and Clinical Biochemistry at the University of Buenos Aires. “In our study, we examined whether depersonalisation mediates the relationship between hair cortisol — a biological stress marker — and emotional exhaustion, a key psychological symptom of burnout.”

Continue reading Retraction for ‘unsound’ analysis was ‘disproportionate and discouraging,’ author says

Do you need informed consent to study public posts on social media? 

The retraction of a paper looking at posts in a Reddit subforum about mental illness has once again raised questions about informed consent in research using public data. 

To study the experience of receiving a diagnosis of schizophrenia, a U.K.-based team of researchers collected posts from the Reddit subforum r/schizophrenia, which is dedicated to discussing the disorder. They analyzed and anonymized the data, and published their findings in June 2024 in Current Psychology, a Springer Nature journal. 

The paper prompted backlash on X in the subsequent months, and in the Reddit community used for the study. People on the subreddit were concerned about the lack of consent, potential lack of anonymity, and the hypocrisy of discussing ethics in the paper while not seeking consent, a moderator of that subreddit who goes by the handle Empty_Insight told Retraction Watch.

Continue reading Do you need informed consent to study public posts on social media? 

When it comes to conflicts of interest, affiliations are apparently no smoking gun

Seven papers on various aspects of vaping and cigarettes published in Toxicology Reports listed each authors’ affiliation –  the tobacco company Philip Morris International – when they originally appeared in the journal between 2019 and 2023. And all but one article disclosed the funding for the research originated from the company. 

That apparently wasn’t enough for the journal.

Toxicology Reports has issued a correction to add those affiliations as a conflict of interest. The statements were “missing or incorrect” in the original papers, according to the correction notice, published in the June 2025 issue of Toxicology Reports. In addition to reiterating that the authors work for PMI, the correction also adds to the conflict of interest statements that the authors were funded by the company and used its products in the research.

Continue reading When it comes to conflicts of interest, affiliations are apparently no smoking gun