Retraction Watch’s 15th birthday; ‘the superstar scientist’ who faked data; sleuths vs. integrity officers on handling misconduct – Retraction Watch

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Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500.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):

• Whistleblowers and “secret lab videos” expose researcher “whose faked data underpins a drug now being given to patients.” How the case shows an independent research watchdog is “a necessity.”
• “How to tackle research misconduct: survey finds stark disagreement.”
• Professor “resigns but now works for the federal agency that was investigating him” for misconduct.
• “No, mRNA vaccines do not cause ‘transcriptomic chaos’”: COVID-19 preprint is “deeply flawed,” say Elisabeth Bik and Reese Richardson.
• University investigating “indications of possible scientific misconduct” in doctoral thesis of controversial legal professor.
• “The overall number of retractions has been continuously rising” with a peak in 2023, researchers find after analyzing all retracted publications in the 21st century (up to June 4, 2025).
• “People want to believe spectacular things in science, and journals often fall prey to the bright, shiny object”: A conversation with our Adam Marcus. 
• U.S. Department of Energy report which “downplays the dangers of climate change” has citations with incorrect authors, broken links, and wrong studies.
• “Artificial intelligence and the death of the academic author.”
• “Déjà vu in Korea’s plagiarism controversy.”
• Collocutors of the phrase show “rather than becoming more critical of the ‘publish or perish’ doctrine, those who have been writing about it have seemed more likely to have passively accepted it,” says Jeffrey Aronson. 
• “[T]ransforming roles and future challenges” in peer review.
• “Errors in Science: Self-Correcting, or Self-Propagating?” ask David Allison and colleagues. 
• “Springer Nature launches new tool to spot awkward, tortured phrases,” based on Guillaume Cabanac’s Problematic Paper Screener. 
• “There’s a Major Publishing Slowdown at CDC’s Flagship Journal.”
• “Researchers value null results, but struggle to publish them.”
• “Detecting fraud ‘is a job for professionals, not peer reviewers.”
• “It’s about time for transparency”: After Nature announces they will publish peer reviews, author says other journals “should follow suit.”
• “Why a hybrid AI-human approach is necessary to uphold research integrity,” says a publishing services company executive.
• Researchers suggest “including specific feedback and reasonable deadlines for editorial decisions” become mandatory for journals.
• “There’s probably no publisher left today that hasn’t published a fake article“: A Q&A with Anna Abalkina, the creator of the Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker. 
• “University staff criticised for fire ant treatment and vaccine misinformation.”
• “Have we already hit the peer review breaking point?”
• “Can I trust this paper?” Researcher reviews “four key problems” in psychology and related disciplines.
• “The Scientists Who Got Ghosted by the NIH: Under Trump, their grant applications disappeared. What now?”
• “Discontinuous ridiculous stools – a preprint full of tortured phrases and stolen data.”
• “After tenure, faculty produce more novel works, though fewer highly cited papers,” study finds.
• The Lancet and the World Conferences on Research Integrity Foundation issue a “Commission on research integrity” which will “work towards innovative solutions regarding the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment” of misconduct issues.
• RIP, Tom Lehrer, who revealed the “secret of success in mathematics: Plagiarize.”

We’re Hiring!

We’re excited to be hiring for three roles:

• Editor, Medical Evidence Project
• Staff reporter, Retraction Watch
• Assistant researcher, Retraction Watch Database

Learn more about each position and apply here. 

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on X or Bluesky, like us on Facebook, follow us on LinkedIn, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].

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