Retraction Watch
@retractionwatch.com
A project of The Center For Scientific Integrity https://centerforscientificintegrity.org/
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Database http://retractiondatabase.org
Tips team@retractionwatch.com (better than @ replies)
Daily newsletter http://eepurl.com/bNRlUn
Database http://retractiondatabase.org
Tips team@retractionwatch.com (better than @ replies)
Last August, a reader alerted the editor of a medical journal to a recent case report “riddled with irreconcilable contradictions, medically impossible claims, fictional terminology, and ethical lapses.”
Journal tags ‘impossible’ case report with short erratum
Last August, a reader alerted the editor of a medical journal to a recent case report “riddled with irreconcilable contradictions, medically impossible claims, fictional terminology, and ethical la…
retractionwatch.com
February 9, 2026 at 5:07 PM
Last August, a reader alerted the editor of a medical journal to a recent case report “riddled with irreconcilable contradictions, medically impossible claims, fictional terminology, and ethical lapses.”
Weekend reads: Largest leucovorin-autism trial retracted; a paper mill detector for cancer research articles; infant opioid poisoning report flagged
Weekend reads: Largest leucovorin-autism trial retracted; a paper mill detector for cancer research articles; infant opioid poisoning report flagged
If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed. The week at Retraction Watch featured: Spanish court rules researcher plagiarized colleague, orders withdraw…
retractionwatch.com
February 7, 2026 at 1:22 PM
Weekend reads: Largest leucovorin-autism trial retracted; a paper mill detector for cancer research articles; infant opioid poisoning report flagged
A former cancer researcher at University of Oklahoma Health Science Center has been barred from participating in federally funded research without supervision for three years after the U.S. Office of Research Integrity found he falsified data in grant applications.
U.S. ORI’s first finding of 2026: Researcher faked data in grant apps
A former cancer researcher at University of Oklahoma Health Science Center has been barred from participating in federally funded research without supervision for three years after the U.S. Office …
retractionwatch.com
February 6, 2026 at 10:14 PM
A former cancer researcher at University of Oklahoma Health Science Center has been barred from participating in federally funded research without supervision for three years after the U.S. Office of Research Integrity found he falsified data in grant applications.
If a plagiarized paper by an author who claims he didn’t write it disappears from a journal’s website with no notice, did it ever exist in the first place?
Journal silently removes paper for plagiarism, author claims identity theft
If a plagiarized paper by an author who claims he didn’t write it disappears from a journal’s website with no notice, did it ever exist in the first place? It’s not just a philosophical question fo…
retractionwatch.com
February 5, 2026 at 9:32 PM
If a plagiarized paper by an author who claims he didn’t write it disappears from a journal’s website with no notice, did it ever exist in the first place?
The Lancet has put an expression of concern on a 2006 case report of a baby’s death purportedly from morphine poisoning through breast milk. The decision comes just days after the New Yorker published a year-long investigation into the death and the controversies that have surrounded it.
Lancet flags long-scrutinized report of infant poisoned by opioids in breast milk
The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto The Lancet has put an expression of concern on a 2006 case report of a baby’s death purportedly from morphine poisoning through breast milk. The decision c…
retractionwatch.com
February 4, 2026 at 11:15 PM
The Lancet has put an expression of concern on a 2006 case report of a baby’s death purportedly from morphine poisoning through breast milk. The decision comes just days after the New Yorker published a year-long investigation into the death and the controversies that have surrounded it.
Heliyon has published fewer papers and ramped up its retractions since a major indexing service put the journal on hold and the publisher launched an audit of all papers published in the journal since its launch in 2016.
Mega-journal Heliyon retracts hundreds of papers after internal audit
Heliyon has published fewer papers and ramped up its retractions since a major indexing service put the journal on hold and the publisher launched an audit of all papers published in the journal si…
retractionwatch.com
February 3, 2026 at 5:39 PM
Heliyon has published fewer papers and ramped up its retractions since a major indexing service put the journal on hold and the publisher launched an audit of all papers published in the journal since its launch in 2016.
Felices is obligated to withdraw the two books and seven articles or to “clearly mark them as plagiarism,” according to the judgment.
Spanish court rules researcher plagiarized colleague, orders withdrawal of works
Spain’s Supreme Court in MadridCberbell/Wikimedia Commons The Supreme Court of Spain has ordered a literary scholar to pursue retractions of nine works it determined were plagiarized. The…
retractionwatch.com
February 2, 2026 at 9:58 PM
Felices is obligated to withdraw the two books and seven articles or to “clearly mark them as plagiarism,” according to the judgment.
Weekend reads: Did a researcher ‘Obscure a Baby’s Poisoning?’; ‘Critical social media posts linked to retractions’; arXiv ‘clamps down on AI slop’
Weekend reads: Did a researcher ‘Obscure a Baby’s Poisoning?’; ‘Critical social media posts linked to retractions’; arXiv ‘clamps down on AI slop’
If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed. The week at Retraction Watch featured: Study is stolen, sold, published. Now the victim is accused of plagia…
retractionwatch.com
January 31, 2026 at 12:36 PM
Weekend reads: Did a researcher ‘Obscure a Baby’s Poisoning?’; ‘Critical social media posts linked to retractions’; arXiv ‘clamps down on AI slop’
Forget pickles and ice cream. I published a fake paper on pregnancy cravings for prime numbers.
Guest post: Forget pickles and ice cream. I published a fake paper on pregnancy cravings for prime numbers
Image generated by Google Gemini I had grown weary of the constant stream and abuse of spam invitations to submit manuscripts to journals and to attend fake conferences on the other side of the wor…
retractionwatch.com
January 30, 2026 at 6:19 PM
Forget pickles and ice cream. I published a fake paper on pregnancy cravings for prime numbers.
The journal joins 75 others with at least 145 retractions.
Journal retracts nearly 150 articles for compromised peer review
A journal published by an organization that develops technical standards is retracting 147 papers for problematic peer review — and the publisher expects more to follow. The American Society F…
retractionwatch.com
January 29, 2026 at 3:46 PM
The journal joins 75 others with at least 145 retractions.
What do you do for an outing when you're Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus, the co-founders of Retraction Watch?
See a play called Retraction, of course.
www.retractionplay.com
See a play called Retraction, of course.
www.retractionplay.com
January 29, 2026 at 3:38 AM
What do you do for an outing when you're Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus, the co-founders of Retraction Watch?
See a play called Retraction, of course.
www.retractionplay.com
See a play called Retraction, of course.
www.retractionplay.com
“The authors have stated that these non-existent references resulted from the use of generative AI to convert the PubMed IDs of cited articles into a structured reference list."
Medical journal publishes a letter on AI with a fake reference to itself
We’ve seen all kinds of articles that got published despite having references that don’t exist. But this was a new one: a paper with a made-up reference to the journal in which it appears. While no…
retractionwatch.com
January 28, 2026 at 11:01 PM
“The authors have stated that these non-existent references resulted from the use of generative AI to convert the PubMed IDs of cited articles into a structured reference list."
While plagiarism can sometimes be difficult to prove, stolen figures and identical metadata were the death knell for a recent article involving chicken mortality.
Engineering journal plucks poultry paper for plagiarism
Bob Nichols/USDAgov/Flickr While plagiarism can sometimes be difficult to prove, stolen figures and identical metadata were the death knell for a recent article involving chicken mortality. In Sept…
retractionwatch.com
January 28, 2026 at 11:30 AM
While plagiarism can sometimes be difficult to prove, stolen figures and identical metadata were the death knell for a recent article involving chicken mortality.
The man who discovered that S’s paper was probably sold on Telegram knew about paper mills because he had previously paid 10,000 INR with the hope of receiving help in publishing quickly in a journal indexed by Scopus.
Study is stolen, sold, published. Now the victim is accused of plagiarism
The year 2026 did not start off kindly for Vijayalakshmi S, an economics researcher at RV University in Bengaluru, India. She received a rejection letter from a journal noting that a paper of hers …
retractionwatch.com
January 26, 2026 at 9:44 PM
The man who discovered that S’s paper was probably sold on Telegram knew about paper mills because he had previously paid 10,000 INR with the hope of receiving help in publishing quickly in a journal indexed by Scopus.
Weekend reads: Why 500 retractions per month matter; another EOC for former Stanford president; and an argument for ‘slow science’
Weekend reads: Why 500 retractions per month matter; another EOC for former Stanford president; and an argument for ‘slow science’
If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed. The week at Retraction Watch featured: Corrections, biases, and humility in science: Q&A with Tuan V. Ng…
retractionwatch.com
January 24, 2026 at 2:20 PM
Weekend reads: Why 500 retractions per month matter; another EOC for former Stanford president; and an argument for ‘slow science’
“I have looked at thousands of @pubpeer.com allegations, and this is the first time I have come across what appear to be fabricated allegations."
Fabricated allegations of image manipulation baffle expert
The fabricated claim about image manipulation raises a question: Why bother? Mike Rossner had never seen anything like it. At first, the anonymous comment on PubPeer, which claimed a lane of a west…
retractionwatch.com
January 23, 2026 at 8:59 PM
“I have looked at thousands of @pubpeer.com allegations, and this is the first time I have come across what appear to be fabricated allegations."
The notice, published today, applies to a 2020 meta-analysis measuring population patterns of freshwater and terrestrial insects and predicting what might drive changes in population numbers.
‘Kicking the can down the road’: Science flags insect meta-analysis based on allegedly buggy database
An insect meta-analysis published in Science in 2020 has been hit with an EOC. (Photo credit: Aron Sousa) Science has issued a permanent expression of concern for a paper reporting a meta-analysis …
retractionwatch.com
January 22, 2026 at 7:31 PM
The notice, published today, applies to a 2020 meta-analysis measuring population patterns of freshwater and terrestrial insects and predicting what might drive changes in population numbers.
A Taylor & Francis journal has retracted a widely-read paper linking cardiac-related mortality to COVID-19 vaccines after an unsuccessful legal attempt by the lead author to block the withdrawal. That author says he is considering further legal action against the publisher.
Lawsuit fails to block retraction of paper claiming to link heart-related deaths to COVID-19 vaccines
Greg J. Marchand in a photo from his research institute’s website. A Taylor & Francis journal has retracted a widely-read paper linking cardiac-related mortality to COVID-19 vaccines afte…
retractionwatch.com
January 21, 2026 at 7:05 PM
A Taylor & Francis journal has retracted a widely-read paper linking cardiac-related mortality to COVID-19 vaccines after an unsuccessful legal attempt by the lead author to block the withdrawal. That author says he is considering further legal action against the publisher.
At wit’s end after a publisher ignored her repeated requests for a correction, Ursula Bellut-Staeck took the extreme step of issuing her own retraction. But is that even a thing?
Fed up, author issues her own retraction after journal ghosts her
At wit’s end after a publisher ignored her repeated requests for a correction, Ursula Bellut-Staeck took the extreme step of issuing her own retraction. But is that even a thing? Bellut…
retractionwatch.com
January 21, 2026 at 12:52 PM
At wit’s end after a publisher ignored her repeated requests for a correction, Ursula Bellut-Staeck took the extreme step of issuing her own retraction. But is that even a thing?
Another expression of concern for former Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne. Four of his papers have been retracted.
retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSe...
retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSe...
Editorial Expression of Concern: En passant neurotrophic action of an intermediate axonal target in the developing mammalian CNS - Nature
Nature - Editorial Expression of Concern: En passant neurotrophic action of an intermediate axonal target in the developing mammalian CNS
www.nature.com
January 20, 2026 at 9:27 PM
Another expression of concern for former Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne. Four of his papers have been retracted.
retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSe...
retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSe...
MDPI has retracted a study about vaping that one expert said seemed “like a joke” almost two years after the publisher received a complaint about the flawed work.
Up in smoke: Publisher pulls vaping paper nearly two years after complaint
MDPI has retracted a study about vaping that one expert said seemed “like a joke” almost two years after the publisher received a complaint about the flawed work. The paper, published in Neurology …
retractionwatch.com
January 20, 2026 at 12:08 PM
MDPI has retracted a study about vaping that one expert said seemed “like a joke” almost two years after the publisher received a complaint about the flawed work.
Corrections, biases, and humility in science: Tuan V. Nguyen escaped Vietnam in 1981 as part of the mass “boat people” exodus of refugees, taking to dangerous waters just a few months after his older brother tried the same and disappeared. Today, he's a professor and bone researcher in Australia.
Corrections, biases, and humility in science: Q&A with Tuan V. Nguyen
In a new memoir, Kangaroo Dreams, Tuan V. Nguyen, D.Sc., Ph.D., provides a unique perspective on medical research. Nguyen escaped Vietnam in 1981 as part of the mass “boat people” exodus of refugee…
retractionwatch.com
January 19, 2026 at 1:54 PM
Corrections, biases, and humility in science: Tuan V. Nguyen escaped Vietnam in 1981 as part of the mass “boat people” exodus of refugees, taking to dangerous waters just a few months after his older brother tried the same and disappeared. Today, he's a professor and bone researcher in Australia.
Science journals retract 500 papers a month. This is why it matters
Science journals retract 500 papers a month. This is why it matters
A small team of volunteers is tracking thousands of falsified studies, including cases of bribery, fraud and plagiarism
www.thetimes.com
January 18, 2026 at 11:38 AM
Science journals retract 500 papers a month. This is why it matters
Weekend reads: A retraction in Nature; penalties for ‘retraction hotspot’ universities?; an analysis of PISS journals
Weekend reads: A retraction in Nature; penalties for ‘retraction hotspot’ universities?; an analysis of PISS journals
If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed. The week at Retraction Watch featured: Professor suspended after Japanese university finds fishy results in …
retractionwatch.com
January 17, 2026 at 1:21 PM
Weekend reads: A retraction in Nature; penalties for ‘retraction hotspot’ universities?; an analysis of PISS journals
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Retraction Watch covers science and research integrity through the lens of retractions. Its staff of three full-time journalists, as well as its two founding editors and a network of freelance writ…
retractionwatch.com
January 16, 2026 at 11:06 PM
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