Weekend reads: Autism-vaccine researcher arraigned; ‘accidental watermarks’ in medical literature; mass resignations and zombie 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: Elsevier retracts the least and reinstates the most, new analysis fin…
Nine years after journalist raised concerns, BMJ Group journal retracts stent paper
A BMJ Group journal has retracted a paper nearly nine years after a journalist raised concerns about undisclosed conflicts of interest and the study’s details contradicting those of its trial regis…
Elsevier journal removes two 42-year-old papers on cesium as a cancer treatment
An Elsevier journal has removed two papers on a discredited alternative treatment for cancer nearly half a century after they were published, after researchers found a quarter of patients in case r…
Reviewer finds ‘top pharmaceutical scientist’ has a self-citation problem
Daniel Bar-Shalom, a pharmacist at the University of Copenhagen, was incensed. He’d been asked to review a manuscript by Muhammad Imran Qadir, an associate professor at Bahauddin Zakariya Universit…
Elsevier retracts the least and reinstates the most, new analysis finds
Frequencies of reasons 10 publishers have given for retracting articles (source). While Elsevier outcompetes other publishers in terms of sheer volume, it also has the lowest retraction rate and hi…
Swiss court clears sleuth in defamation case, awards him legal costs
iStock An appeals court in Switzerland has overturned a 2025 defamation conviction against a sleuth who had identified dozens of conference proceedings with signs of citation manipulation. The ruli…
Weekend reads: FDA blocked vaccine findings; ‘Frankencitations Ravage the Academic Countryside’; ‘Publish and Perish’
If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed. The week at Retraction Watch featured: ORI announces 15-year debarment against former Rice University scient…
Russian news outlets hailed a cancer breakthrough, but the retraction went unnoticed
Vladimir Ivanov In August 2021, several news outlets in Russia reported a cancer breakthrough: Researchers at the chemistry and biophysics institutes affiliated with the Russian Academy of Science…
One in 277 PubMed-indexed papers in 2026 shows fabricated references, says analysis
Figure from correspondence to The Lancet by Maxim Topaz and colleagues. Fabricated citations in the biomedical literature have increased 12-fold in two years, according to an audit of nearly 2.5 mi…
ORI announces 15-year debarment against former Rice University scientist
Ariel Fernández The U.S Office of Research Integrity has formally announced a 15-year funding debarment against a former Rice University scientist for research misconduct, resolving allegations tha…
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