Retraction Watch

The University of Sydney has once again investigated the work of a former research fellow in its physics department, this time resulting in the retraction of two papers over concerns that data in several figures were likely fabricated.

Weekend reads: Journals and the ‘Mathpocalypse’; autism paper earns EOC; Cell Press investigating bribery allegations

Since her leave from Princeton, Porandla has remained in the spotlight, recently meeting with Republican Congresswoman Beth Van Duyne from Texas’ 24th District to discuss American leadership in scientific research, according to a post on X by Van Duyne that has since been taken down.

More than 8,000 papers published by PLOS journals violate the publisher’s policy on author-editor relationships, as well as around 2,500 papers published by MDPI titles, the researchers found.

An investigation by Retraction Watch raises questions about the way Rod Rohrich, who is now editor emeritus at a journal he founded, has promoted preliminary and sometimes misleading research about products to which he has financial ties.

Happening today at 2 p.m ET! We’re partnering with @retractionwatch.com and The Center for Scientific Integrity for a free training on how journalists can find, research, and report on accountability stories. Sign up here: www.theopennotebook.com/2026/09/28/a...

Joseph Raj Xavier, of Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences in Chennai, India, has lost 10 other papers this year alone, according to the Retraction Watch Database. His total is currently 41 retractions, earning him a spot on the Retraction Watch Leaderboard.

"As one participant summarized, AI may simply make researchers more efficient at producing larger quantities of mediocre research, rather than proportionally increasing the number of important discoveries."

Weekend reads: Computer science conferences impose caps; Lancet strikes to continue; Is this the ‘mathocalypse’?

The website for Springer Journals Online, an agency offering authorship slots in articles in exchange for payment, has gone offline, four days after Retraction Watch published its investigation into its activities.

On 3 September 2026, @thetransmitter.bsky.social received a letter from Peixin Yang’s attorney, Alexa Millinger of Hinckley Allen in Hartford, Connecticut, demanding that a 2025 article be corrected or retracted. Yang has had four papers retracted since the publication of that article.

Annals of Internal Medicine has retracted a paper on treatments for Long COVID because the authors did not report dosing information for metformin, one of the drugs tested in the study. The editor-in-chief of the journal called the exclusion “sloppy” and “inaccurate.”

“AI is just the accelerant”, says Ivan Oransky. “The kindling is the publish-or-perish culture.” If scientists want to fix the problems caused by AI slop, fixing incentives is the place to start.

Oransky points out that scientific publishing is fundamentally an unregulated industry, with no clear sanctions. "The only thing that seems to have an effect is contacting the media," he says.

Science Translational Medicine has issued an expression of concern over “a series” of data concerns in a paper lauded by @mdanderson.bsky.social last year for identifying “a new driver” of bone metastasis.

Science Translational Medicine has retracted a paper on COVID-19 vaccines after an institutional investigation revealed a former Ph.D. student fabricated data and falsified images in the article. Ng wrote an article on Giacomo Puccini’s opera “Turandot” for @nytimes.com earlier this year.

The authors’ response also recounted a “similarly aggressive young post-doc.” They made it a point to present the postdoc's comments “in every forum for several years,” and the postdoc “never managed to live down the stupidity and arrogance of his stupid remarks.”

Fateman, professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, retired 18 years ago, so he was alarmed by the offer from a company called “Springer Journals Online.” He thought it was a scam or a phishing attempt to get money.

Weekend reads: OpenAI’s preprint dump; Taylor & Francis to leave Informa; arXiv’s preprint cap

A 2021 paper in Materials Science and Engineering on detecting brain tumors retracted as part of the efforts used the term “cerebral torment” in place of headache. Another from the same year published in Journal of Physics used “armada the board” in place of fleet management.

Less than 24 hours after OpenAI posted over 700 preprints describing major math results by an internal AI model, the company has withdrawn three of the manuscripts for errors.

Nicholas Longrich would like to set the record straight.

In what one sleuth called a “systemic failure,” a wildlife journal has issued corrections to a handful of papers not for an error in the articles but to include an item that wasn’t: ethics statements.

At least three publishers are also investigating alleged data errors in papers in other journals by the former journal editor, Tamer Gheita, and his research group. Gheita has denied the claims, calling the complaints “subjective” and “malicious.” retractionwatch.com/2026/10/06/e...

"Most people, upon becoming the subject of a Retraction Watch article, might wish to diminish that fact or move on quickly to try and course correct. I’m in the peculiar position of having a Retraction Watch article that largely exonerated my work from the scrutiny that it had faced."

Weekend reads: China intensifies crackdown on misconduct; AI flooding medical journals with ‘meaningless’ research; Sham scientific societies

A paper that called into question many central data linking carbon dioxide to the rapidly warming climate has been retracted for “significant concerns,” including “unsupported conclusions” and “inaccuracies” in the interpretation of the data.

“I was flabbergasted that someone could take the time to generate a paper that I believe is fake,” Rastle told us.

The publisher of a European Heart Rhythm Association journal is investigating a paper that lists the incorrect registration number for a clinical study of the Watchman FLX, a widely used but controversial heart implant.

We're honored to be the subject of a new paper: "[R]etraction Watch remains an illustrative case, a distinct digital‐age organisation that stands as a significant example of the long‐anticipated, but little‐realised, idea of watchdog science journalism," Declan Fahy writes.

Well, this was inevitable: Agents at the spam site iLands are now writing songs about retractions. More on iLands from @jasonkoebler.bsky.social and @emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social at @404media.co: www.404media.co/ai-agent-pla...

Retraction Watch and @theopennotebook.bsky.social are thrilled to introduce our first Research Accountability Reporting Fellows. This program equips journalists at local newsrooms to cover issues of scientific integrity, such as misconduct, data manipulation, fraud, and problematic publishing.

Weekend reads: ‘The Weimar of knowledge’; ‘Could AI Be Better at Peer Review Than Humans?’; guidelines in South Korea ban hidden prompts, restrict AI use

Like many college professors today, Harvard's Sarah S. Richardson has seen AI-hallucinated citations in work submitted by her students. But she was surprised when an editor recently contacted her about a hallucinated citation involving her own work.

"If medical schools and universities don't want the literature to be overwhelmed with garbage," Oransky said, "then they should probably stop giving every applicant ... an incentive to publish a lot of crap."

Investigative records paint the picture of a professor who took financial and personal advantage of his students for years – from manipulating them into paying him rent to making them clean up after his dog – and grew vengeful when they spoke out about his alleged crimes.

The ecologist couldn’t find a record of the 2020 paper, purportedly published in Ambio by “Knijn et al.” She decided to check the other references. She told Retraction Watch she found at least eight that didn’t exist.

Well, here's @neuroskeptic.bsky.social's from 2017.

Elsevier's Science of the Total Environment (STOTEN) has retracted 165 papers this year, most for “suspicious” changes in authorship or editorial conflicts of interest.

The author, Virginia Dignum, a professor in responsible AI at Umeå University, denied references in her book The AI Paradox were fabricated and said she made “ordinary editing mistakes."

Weekend reads: An expression of concern for Nobel Prize winner; DOJ official queried journals on ‘partisan’ views; AI research’s ‘synthetic validity’ problem

Studies produced by a suspected paper mill are frequently cited in patents, clinical guidelines and policy documents, according to a new analysis.

Union members at @thelancet.com and its affiliated journals will go on strike Sept. 22 for one day with further action planned for the following week, after pay negotiations with parent publisher Elsevier fell apart. It's the first strike in the journal's 200-year history.

“People assume, not unreasonably, that acknowledging fraud or errors in science is what leads to lack of trust. But I would submit that it’s the failure to acknowledge those things." An interview with our Ivan Oransky that features a reference to Bruce Springsteen.

A legal challenge by authors over three retracted articles about mifepristone is set for an arbitration conference this month as nationwide debate over the abortion pill heats up at the appellate level.

Tensions between the American Diabetes Association and several editors of its flagship journal — who have boycotted the group over its handling of a protest at the association’s June conference — have again boiled over, this time on the website of the journal.

A psychology journal has retracted a paper on how using generative AI can affect confidence in work tasks after its sole author refused to share data with the editors.

The RW Daily: Editors of French journal on corporate responsibility resign. And Duke removes dissertation by book author.

Weekend reads: The afterlife of retracted articles; ADA denies it censored opinions; a ‘twisted phantasmagory’ of ghostwriting

All 15 editors at a French journal have resigned after it was acquired by an editing service and publisher based in China.