Women are first authors on 41-45% of biomedical publications between 2008 and 2017, but a study of 878 retracted biomedical publications found that women made up only 16.5% of first authors.

Summary: https://phys.org/news/2025-11-women-authors-retracted-medical-analysis.html

Original paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0335059

#Science #SciComm #Publishing #Integrity #Retractions

“In my opinion, metric-based recognition without integrity screening can inadvertently legitimize problematic practices. That risk is particularly acute in environments where publication is tied to career progression but where research funding, infrastructure, and oversight remain weak. These conditions can – and often do – fuel paper mills, coercive citation policies, and other unethical behaviors.”

Maryam Sayab spoke to Frederik Joelving for Retraction Watch on Clarivate's involvement in Iraqi research awards being granted to individuals with known integrity concerns.

https://retractionwatch.com/2025/10/31/exclusive-clarivate-web-of-science-involved-dubious-awards-iraq/

#Bibliometrics #Scientometrics #Citations #Retractions #ResearchIntegrity #PublicationEthics #Iraq #MENA #RetractionWatch

The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis is seen as falling below contemporary standards for #ResearchEthics for its violations of informed consent and its disregard of the risks to participants.

This paper offers an interesting discussion of whether 19 derived papers should be retracted or receive an expression of concern:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/17470161251353298#table1-17470161251353298

#Retractions #AcademicPublishing

"The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly"

Suspected paper mill products have been doubling every 1.5 years. Suspected paper mill products now outnumber annually retracted articles. Some publishers report that up to 1 in 7 of their submissions are of probable “paper mill provenance.”

Article:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2420092122

Supplementary Data:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2420092122#supplementary-materials

#research #fraud #retractions
#science #medicine

#CharlieKirk #retractions

"Paper Retracts Claim That Suspected Kirk Killer Was ‘Left on Everything’

The Guardian ran and later corrected a piece on Tyler Robinson featuring a source that said they knew Robinson’s political beliefs.

The Guardian has retracted quotes from a source said to have known Tyler Robinson that claimed the alleged Charlie Kirk shooter was 'really leftist.'

The British publication ran an article on Friday outlining new information about Kirk’s alleged shooter delivered by Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, 50, and FBI Director Kash Patel, 45, during a press conference that morning. The paper included quotes from a source claiming to have attended high school with Robinson. The source claimed that Robinson was 'pretty left on everything' and 'the only member of his family that was, like, really leftist.'

The retraction comes amid intense speculation about Robinson’s motives for allegedly killing Kirk. Republican politicians and pundits initially laid blame for Kirk’s killing at the feet of Democrats, with some vowing retribution against the Left before a shooter was even apprehended.

This was not the only high-profile retraction made by a media outlet regarding the case. On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal published comments from cops working the Kirk case that stated etchings on the bullet casings recovered from the suspected murder weapon promoted 'transgender and antifascist ideology.'

The Journal later amended the piece, saying in an editor’s note, 'Justice Department officials later urged caution about the bulletin... saying it may not accurately reflect the messages on the ammunition.'

On Friday, the actual messages on the bullet casings were read aloud by Gov. Cox. One casing read 'Hey, fascist! Catch!', and the rest appear to be memes and video game references. None of them contained 'transgender ideology.'

Errors like these have aggravated social media users as the misinformation has amplified the Right’s moral panic against left-leaning social media users and 'trans mass shooters.'

Some have argued there is more evidence to suggest Robinson held extreme right-wing beliefs. Though Robinson is not a registered Republican or Democrat, he comes from a family of Republicans. Some suspect Robinson’s fluency with online culture, evident in the memes he allegedly scrawled on the bullet casings, suggest he was a 'Groyper,' or a radicalized follower of white nationalist and antisemitic influencer Nick Fuentes, who criticized and trolled Kirk from the right."

https://www.thedailybeast.com/paper-retracts-claim-that-suspected-kirk-killer-was-left-on-everything/

Wake up, babe, new COPE guidelines just dropped!

Version 3 of the Retraction guidelines and brand new Expression of Concern guidelines are out now. I co-authored the long-awaited EoC guidelines and v.2 of the Retraction guidelines.

https://publicationethics.org/guidance/guideline/expressions-concern
https://publicationethics.org/guidance/guideline/retraction-guidelines

#CommitteeOnPublicationEthics #Retractions #ExpressionsOfConcern #PublicationEthics #JournalPublishing #JournalEditing #ScholComm

Modern Ghana: Weaponizing Retractions: It Is Time For Ghanaian Universities To Demand Accountability And Transparency From Authors And Publishers. “I argue that retractions should be guided by objective, transparent, and verifiable criteria. Each stated reason for a retraction ought to be measurable and supported by publicly available evidence, in line with rigorous, quantifiable standards – […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/08/06/weaponizing-retractions-it-is-time-for-ghanaian-universities-to-demand-accountability-and-transparency-from-authors-and-publishers-modern-ghana/

New study: "To test whether the results might sometimes include retracted research, we identified 217 retracted or otherwise concerning academic studies with high altmetric scores and asked #ChatGPT 4o-mini to evaluate their quality 30 times each. Surprisingly, none of its 6510 reports mentioned that the articles were retracted or had relevant errors."
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/leap.2018?campaign=woletoc

#AI #LLMs #Retractions