"Compromised science" news/opines (includes retractions, declining academic standards, pred-J, etc)

Data sleuths’ work is thankless. They must get credit for retractions
https://www.timeshighereducation.co...rk-thankless-they-must-get-credit-retractions

The scientific record should reflect what actually happened, not a sanitised narrative that leaves out the messy bits, say Ivan Oransky and David B. Allison...

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Geographical Disparities in Research Misconduct: Analyzing Retraction Patterns by Country
https://www.jmir.org/2025/1/e65775

This study examines disparities in research retractions due to misconduct, identifying countries with the highest retraction counts and those disproportionately represented relative to population and publication output. The findings emphasize the need for improved research integrity measures...

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Country-wise Retraction Analysis from 2022-2024. Increased Publishing Leading to Higher Retraction Rates.
https://zenodo.org/records/14634334

This analysis looks at country-wise retraction and publication statistics. While not all retractions are due to research misconduct, many of them are. Retractions are thus a good signal of research misconduct. We notice strong geographic localization of countries with higher retraction rates: Arab Countries, China, and the Indian Subcontinent. We also look at the correlation between increased publishing in the countries in the last 5 years and the retraction rates. We find first evidence that higher publishing is leading to higher retraction rates. Urgent steps need to be taken to stop incentivizing quantity in science if one is to stem the scientific pollution.
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Publishers need more help to combat malicious academic networks
https://www.timeshighereducation.co...-more-help-combat-malicious-academic-networks

As manager of peer review and research integrity at IOP Publishing, the rise of malicious academic networks is making the work I oversee considerably harder. It seems that more and more academics are working together to sell authorship or manipulate citations or peer review. And while there’s much I’m grateful for in my work, I find myself wishing for more support to combat such misconduct...

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'Zombie facts' live on after black plastic and other studies get corrected or retracted
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/corrections-retractions-1.7428260

Though regrettable, errors happen, including in studies that have been peer-reviewed. They can range from a typo or miscalculation that gets a correction, to mistakes so large the paper is retracted, to rare but full-blown fraud. The promise of the scientific process is that by exposing work to the scrutiny of others, any problems will be corrected over time. The trouble is, it does take time — and the resulting fixes rarely get the public attention of the original errors, say journal editors.

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How do we democratize scientific research?
https://undark.org/2025/01/10/opinion-democratize-scientific-research/

EXCERPT: Our hypothetical journal has an “Unaffiliated Researcher” section. This is dedicated to the work of independent researchers, those with no formal academic affiliation or credentials. In this scenario, everyday people can formally participate in the research process, even the famously guarded institution of publishing peer-reviewed manuscripts.

Is this a horror story? Or does it represent progress? How would we feel about a world where everyone can participate in the formal enterprise of research? I argue that a future that democratizes research, making both its consumption and production more accessible, would increase the number of quality ideas in circulation and support efforts to defend science in the face of decreasing trust in scientists... (MORE - details)
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New global research reveals strong public trust in science
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1070758

A new international study on public trust in science, conducted across 68 countries, has found that most people trust scientists and believe they should be more involved in society and policymaking. Further, a majority of survey participants believe that scientists should be more involved in society and policymaking...

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Global trust in science remains strong
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1070912

A global survey spanning 68 countries reveals that public trust in scientists is still high. Led by the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, a team of 241 researchers conducted the largest post-pandemic study of trust in science, societal expectations and public views on research priorities...
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Some researchers 'dope' their data – A look back at the cheating scandals of 2024
https://www.sciencenorway.no/fraud-...back-at-the-cheating-scandals-of-2024/2454619

EXCERPTS: Most athletes are honest. Researchers are too. But some athletes dope. And some researchers manipulate their data. [...] When an athlete or researcher achieves good results, the sports team and the university celebrate. There are financial incentives as well. Winners receive funding – athletes through sponsorships, researchers through grants for further research. Institutions benefit too... (MORE - details)

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AI-generated junk science is a big problem on Google Scholar, research suggests
https://gizmodo.com/ai-generated-ju...n-google-scholar-research-suggests-2000549900

EXCERPT: AI-generated scientific research is polluting the online academic information ecosystem, according to a worrying report published in the Harvard Kennedy School’s Misinformation Review. [...] The way Google Scholar pulls research from around the internet, according to the recent team, does not screen out papers whose authors lack a scientific affiliation or peer-review; the engine will pull academic bycatch—student papers, reports, preprints, and more—along with the research that has passed a higher bar of scrutiny. The team found that two-thirds of the papers they studied were at least in part produced through undisclosed use of GPTs. Of the GPT-fabricated papers, the researchers found that 14.5% pertained to health, 19.5% pertained to the environment, and 23% pertained to computing... (MORE - details)
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We're doing AI phrenology again
https://gizmodo.com/were-doing-ai-phrenology-again-2000553600

INTRO: The latest entry into the AI phrenology portfolio comes from a group of economics professors who say they’ve developed a method for algorithmically analyzing a single photo of a person’s face in order to calculate their personality and predict their educational and career outcomes.

Other recent academic forays into AI phrenology—like algorithms that purport to predict a person’s sexuality or the likelihood they will commit a crime based on their facial features—have been widely criticized and debunked. Investigations have also shown that commercial AI tools that claim to measure personality traits are extremely unreliable... (MORE - details)

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Why did the FDA ban Red Dye #3
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/why-did-the-fda-ban-red-dye-3/

EXCERPT (Steven Novella): They are basically saying, we are banning Red No. 3 despite the fact that the science says it is safe at the approved level of exposure. They point out later that Red No. 3 is not widely used in food so higher levels of exposure are unlikely. This is a horrible precedent.

This decision on Red No. 3 turns the relationship between toxicity research and regulations on its head. If Red No. 3 can be banned based upon exposure levels 24 thousand times greater than the highest allowed human exposure, and a mechanism that is relevant in rats but not in humans, then you can get almost anything banned... (MORE - details)
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Thousands demand withdrawal of review article recommending exercise therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/01...xercise-therapy-for-chronic-fatigue-syndrome/

The decision to abandon a process to re-evaluate a review recommending exercise therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) has reignited calls for the article to be withdrawn...

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Researcher alleges group stole thesis data presented at conference
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/01...up-stole-thesis-data-presented-at-conference/

A researcher in India has asked a journal to amend a retraction “for major errors in data” because, he says, the data weren’t wrong – they were stolen...

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‘Foolish mistake’: Guest editor loses three articles published in his own special issues
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/01...articles-published-in-his-own-special-issues/

An Elsevier journal has pulled three articles after the publisher determined an author had been “involved in the peer review and decision making” as managing guest editor of the special issues in which they appeared...

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More than three decades after misconduct ruling, researcher’s IQ test paper is retracted
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/01/20/stephen-breuning-nimh-misconduct-retraction/

A psychology journal has retracted an article on IQ tests nearly 50 years after publication — and more than 35 years after an investigation found the lead author had fabricated data in several other studies...
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7 steps to junk science that can achieve worldly success
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/01/17/7steps/

EXCERPTS: More than a decade after the earthquake that was the replication crisis (for some background, see my article with Simine Vazire, Why did it take so many decades for the behavioral sciences to develop a sense of crisis around methodology and replication?), it is frustrating to see junk science still being published, promoted, and celebrated, even within psychology, the field that was at the epicenter of the crisis.

[...] this got me thinking about what it takes for researchers to put together a successful work of junk science in the modern era, which is the subject of today’s post. Before going on, let me emphasize that [...] you can do bad science without being a bad person, and without committing what would usually be called research misconduct...

[...] So here they are, 7 things that allow junk science to thrive... (MORE - details)

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The devastating legacy of lies in Alzheimer’s science
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/...e_code=1.sE4.AxhV.VwDTzEorqSeN&smid=url-share

EXCERPTS: Over the past 25 years, Alzheimer’s research has suffered a litany of ostensible fraud and other misconduct by world-famous researchers and obscure scientists alike, all trying to ascend in a brutally competitive field. During years of investigative reporting, I’ve uncovered many such cases, including several detailed for the first time in my forthcoming book.

[...] Collectively, the experts identified nearly 600 dubious papers from the group that have distorted the field — papers having been cited some 80,000 times in the scientific literature. Many of the most respected Alzheimer’s scholars — whose work steers the scientific discourse — repeatedly referred to those tainted studies to support their own ideas. This has compromised the field’s established base of knowledge... (MORE - details)

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The myth of a loneliness epidemic
https://www.yahoo.com/news/myth-loneliness-epidemic-123000776.html

INTRO: No one would blame you for thinking that we’re in the midst of an unprecedented global loneliness emergency. The United Kingdom and Japan have named “loneliness ministers” to tackle the problem. In 2023, the World Health Organization declared loneliness a pressing public-health concern, and then-President Joe Biden’s surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, issued an advisory warning about an “epidemic of loneliness.” American commentators have painted a bleak portrait of a nation collapsing into ever more distant and despairing silos. And polls do suggest that a lot of people are lonely—some of the time, at least. But a close look at the data indicates that loneliness may not be any worse now than it has been for much of history... (MORE - details)
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The attack on the NIH has begun
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-attack-on-the-nih-has-begun/

Donald Trump has been sworn in, and his new administration has immediately turned its sights on the NIH. The danger to US biomedical research has never been more acute....

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Trump’s CIA now backs controversial Covid-19 lab leak theory
https://gizmodo.com/trumps-cia-now-backs-controversial-covid-19-lab-leak-theory-2000555181

The CIA says both a natural origin and a lab leak "remain plausible" as potential sources of covid-19, following a review of the pandemic's origins...
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When industry manipulates science to prevent a PFAS ban
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decod...-science-to-prevent-a-pfas-ban_6737106_8.html

A scientific article funded by an American lobbying organization for the chemical industry, widely quoted by stakeholders to influence decision-makers, illustrates a wider strategy to create doubt...

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New research platform seeks to reform academic peer review process
https://www.thecollegefix.com/new-research-platform-seeks-to-reform-academic-peer-review-process/

A new open review system called MetaROR aims to reform the “broken” peer review academic publishing process by allowing scholars to pre-publish their research for peers to review. Kathryn Zeiler, editor-in-chief at MetaROR and professor of law at Boston University, recently told The College Fix more about the impetus for the online platform, which launched in the fall...

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Flying blind: How thorough are IRBs when assessing scientific value?
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-024-09286-5

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) in the United States play a crucial role in ensuring the ethical conduct of clinical trials, including assessing the scientific merit of studies to justify the risks to participants. However, prior research suggests that many IRBs do not systematically evaluate scientific merit, raising concerns about the approval of low-quality trials. Objective: To investigate whether IRBs provide adequate guidance on assessing scientific merit in their Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and other relevant materials...

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(game) Fancy publishing 'nonsense' and sabotaging your fellow scientists?
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...nsense-and-sabotaging-your-fellow-scientists/

Created by social psychologist Max Hui Bai, Publish or Perish simulates the experience of building a career in scientific research. The game is to publish as many papers as possible and rack up citations – even if your papers are rubbish or you have to sabotage other players’ publications. Or as Bai puts it: “Players race to publish useless nonsense while sabotaging each other and delivering snarky comments.”

The real life inspiration (wikipedia): Publish or perish
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The slow cancellation of innovation: A critical look at modern funding
https://goodscience.substack.com/p/the-slow-cancellation-of-innovation

EXCERPTS: Fisher observed that despite rapid technological advancement, cultural production had become trapped in a loop of nostalgia and recycled forms, unable to generate genuinely new possibilities. [...] A decade later, Fisher's observation about cultural stagnation finds an unexpected parallel in the world of innovation funding. Just as popular culture became trapped in cycles of reproduction rather than creation, the institutions responsible for funding scientific and technological progress appear increasingly bound by their own forms of temporal paralysis... (MORE - details)

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Research to Ruin: The Worsening Spectre of Academic Fraud
https://c2cjournal.ca/2025/01/research-to-ruin-the-worsening-spectre-of-academic-fraud/

INTRO: Rather than breaking barriers to knowledge, these days universities seem more adept at breaking the norms of academic conduct. An apparently endless stream of cases involving data manipulation, plagiarism, retractions and other errors and deceptions by researchers ranging from obscure graduate students to world-famous scientific names is plaguing academia in Canada and around the world.

But is this avalanche of academic malpractice – what one scientist bemoaned as “corrupt, incompetent, or scientifically meaningless research” – a sign of weakening standards? Or are we now just paying more attention? Examining several troubling examples and interviewing experts from the frontlines, Lynne Cohen probes the dark underbelly of academic fraud... (MORE - details)

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The Broken Science Initiative 2025
https://johnathanedwardsmd.substack.com/p/the-broken-science-initiative-2025

EXCERPTS: For the most part, science is indeed broken. From the top, most people see the perceived arrogance of scientists, the bias and misconduct in research, the sensationalism in the media, and the politicization of science. Simply read the endless articles of image manipulation, fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism by individuals and organizations...

[...] Research has devolved into paper mills, scientific chop-shops, publish or peril culture, only publishing positive results, and ghostwriting. Indeed, not all science is broken, and upstanding people are doing good research. But the water’s less clear where there’s vast riches. ... When researchers don’t aim for the truth, they spend years justifying their lies, eventually destroying themselves...

[...] The Broken Science Initiative brings people together to talk about how science is truly broken and fundamental ways to fix it. ... The BSI highlights scientific misconduct and fraud at academic institutions, government agencies, and the private sector. The BSI’s mission is to change the fundamentals about how we think about the statistics, predictive models, and data in science... (MORE - details)
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C C said:
The infamous Stanford prison experiment was flawed – so why is it still so influential today?
https://theconversation.com/the-inf...o-why-is-it-still-so-influential-today-246881

EXCERPTS: Investigating the Stanford Prison Experiment: History of a Lie, published recently in English, documents serious limitations of the study – including that student “guards” were actually coached to dehumanise their “prisoners” – and asks how such a flawed experiment became so influential.

[...] Since it was conducted over five decades ago, the lessons from the Standford prison experiment have been applied to a burgeoning number of situations beyond prison. By 2007 Zimbardo used it to explain corporate fraud, military torture, cult behaviour and even genocide.

[...] Le Texier’s book raises important questions about the cultural and political factors that shape research. For example, Zimbardo’s study was conducted during a period of intense anti-authoritarianism and against the backdrop of the 1971 Attica prison riot, the deadliest prison uprising in the United States... (MORE - details)
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COMMENT: The soft sciences are a sloppy mess, and the literary intellectual output of the humanities isn't science at all. Yet both of these academic territories can influence the formation and direction of political and administrative policies.
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Click to expand...
OK
(if you'll pardon a metaphor)
I think that Thibault Le Texier is trying to throw the baby out with the bath water.
It seems (to me) that Zimbardo proved his point with his limited experiment.
(I doubt that any major university would give permission for such an experiment ion today's academic climate)
 
Sage journal retracts another 400 papers
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/01/31/sage-journal-retracts-another-400-papers/

Sage has retracted 416 articles from the Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems (JIFS), which had a mass retraction of over 450 papers last August. Before the mass retraction last year, which we covered, Sage paused publication of new articles from the journal, which it acquired when it bought IOS Press in 2023. The journal is now accepting new submissions, according to a Sage spokesperson...

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Former student was running a paper mill, says University of Manchester
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/01...g-a-paper-mill-says-university-of-manchester/

An English university has issued a finding of research misconduct against a former graduate student and is requesting 10 retractions of his published work, which they say bears the marks of being papermilled...

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Anatomy of a retraction: When cleaning up the literature takes six years
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/01...n-cleaning-up-the-literature-takes-six-years/

In 2018, a biochemist in Scotland became aware of image irregularities in two of his papers through comments on PubPeer, each in a different journal. The researcher, Dario Alessi, a professor at the University of Dundee, said he alerted his home institution immediately. In July and October 2024, the papers were retracted...

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Journal updates retraction notice to include plagiarism following Retraction Watch report
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/01...plagiarism-following-retraction-watch-report/

The editor-in-chief of a journal updated a retraction notice to acknowledge the data in the paper were “completely plagiarized” following allegations in a letter to the editor that were the subject of a Retraction Watch post last week...
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The Life and Death of a Medical Study
https://quillette.com/2025/01/27/th...y-systemic-racism-greenwood-infant-mortality/

A 2015 study found that black newborns attended by white doctors die at twice the rate of those in the care of black doctors. The study’s refutation last year has not altered the progressive narrative of systemic racism in medicine...

COMMENT: But critical theory and its specific offshoots like CRT were formulated long before purported research endeavors in the soft sciences began catering to and supporting (i.e., theory-ladeness) these schools of thought outputted by the humanities. Thus, the expectation that retractions should alter the "narrative" seems unfounded, since the academic storytelling tradition of literary intellectuals is not dependent upon science to begin with.
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Fake papers are contaminating the world’s scientific literature, fueling a corrupt industry and slowing legitimate lifesaving medical research
https://theconversation.com/fake-pa...legitimate-lifesaving-medical-research-246224

INTRO: Over the past decade, furtive commercial entities around the world have industrialized the production, sale and dissemination of bogus scholarly research, undermining the literature that everyone from doctors to engineers rely on to make decisions about human lives.

It is exceedingly difficult to get a handle on exactly how big the problem is. Around 55,000 scholarly papers have been retracted to date, for a variety of reasons, but scientists and companies who screen the scientific literature for telltale signs of fraud estimate that there are many more fake papers circulating – possibly as many as several hundred thousand. This fake research can confound legitimate researchers who must wade through dense equations, evidence, images and methodologies only to find that they were made up... (MORE - details)

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Invasion of the journal snatchers: How indexed journals are falling into questionable hands
https://zenodo.org/records/14766415

ABSTRACT: In recent years, a substantial number of established journals have received buyout offers from obscure entities, with some journals being acquired. Despite mounting circumstantial evidence of irregular behaviour exhibited by these journals post-acquisition, comprehensive analyses on this matter are lacking.

To address this gap, this article examines the practices of Oxbridge Publishing House Ltd., a company registered in the UK in 2022. Through an analysis of publicly available documentation, it becomes apparent that this entity is part of a complex network of recently established companies. Since 2020 this network has acquired, with the help of intermediary firms, at least 36 scholarly journals originally published in countries such as Spain (7), United Kingdom (7), USA (5), India (4), Turkey (4), among others.

Targeting journals indexed in prestigious scientific databases like Web of Science and Scopus, many of these journals see significant transformations upon acquisition, such as the introduction or substantial escalation of publication fees, often coupled with increases in publication volumes. This increase stems from a surge in contributions originating outside the journal’s original academic community.

Their disregard for proper publishing standards is evident in their widespread use of fake DOIs or the appropriation of DOIs from unrelated documents. Drawing parallels to the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, we refer to journals caught in this predicament as pod journals. This type of predatory publishing practice not only contributes to over-publication but also disenfranchises legitimate academic communities and poses a threat to academic bibliodiversity. (MORE - details)

RELATED: Hijacked Journal Checker
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The trashing of science by Robert F Kennedy Jr
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-trashing-of-science-by-robert-f-kennedy-jr/

EXCERPT: Kennedy will continue exploiting the trashed science he helps create for his own benefit. He will further drive down US vaccine rates like happened in Samoa. We will see outbreaks of measles, pertussis and meningitis that will hospitalize and kill our infants and children. And it will be horrible.... (MORE - details)

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Revised and Extended: What's Happening Inside the NIH and NSF
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/what-s-happening-inside-nih

EXCERPTS: Regrettably, I have to extend this post due to even more news. The assault on scientific funding and agencies continues, for one thing. Since I posted this, Elon Musk's team has entered the offices of NOAA, since their remit of weather forecasting and climate science has made them a target for the sort of people who believe that any talk of climate change is some sort of liberal plot.

[...] This is all having exactly the results you would expect in the scientific community: fear and disruption, which I'm afraid are two of the goals from the start. My prediction that what is being done to the NIH, NSF et al. was just a preview of what the new administration intends to do to the rest of the government appears to be accurate... (MORE - details)
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The rise and fall of scientific journals and a way forward
https://publichealth.realclearjourn...all-of-scientific-journals-and-a-way-forward/

ABSTRACT: Scientific journals have had enormous positive impact on the development of science, but in some ways, they are now hampering rather than enhancing open scientific discourse. After reviewing the history and current problems with journals, a new academic publishing model is proposed. It embraces open access and open rigorous peer review, it rewards reviewers for their important work with honoraria and public acknowledgement and it allows scientists to publish their research in a timely and efficient manner without wasting valuable scientist time and resources... (MORE - details)

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Is the Male Female Divide a Social Construct or Scientific Reality? (Richard Dawkins)
https://richarddawkins.substack.com/p/is-the-male-female-divide-a-social

EXCERPTS: In November 2024, the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) published a silly article by one of their staffers, Kat Grant (“they, them”) called What is a Woman? The indefatigable Jerry Coyne took the trouble to write a reply, called Biology is not Bigotry, which the co-directors of FFRF reluctantly agreed to publish, albeit with a disclaimer, making clear that it did not represent their views. [...] The leaders of FFRF caved in and took down Jerry’s article, almost as soon as they put it up...

[...] Science, according to these social scientists, is no more than a “social construct”. What is a social construct? The perfect example is money. ... If reality is a mere social construct, society has the power to change reality. Like the joke about legally repealing the Laws of Thermodynamics so that we can have perpetual motion machines.

I would argue that legally declaring a man to be a woman, just because he wants to be a woman, or vice versa, has much in common with the perpetual motion joke, and the calendar riots joke.

[...] unfortunately it is no joke. It’s the law in several countries. There are not just males and females, so the claim goes. They are but the extremes of a spectrum. Where you place yourself in the spectrum, man or woman or somewhere in between, it’s all a matter of personal choice. This entails a denial of genetic reality, and a Marxist-like faith in the malleability of nature. A bullying lobby today thinks your sex is not genetically determined but is malleable under your personal whim, sometimes backed up by law.

[...] Medical students are to be taught that both sex and gender are “social constructed”. And, “It is appropriate to affirm each individual’s self-determination regarding both sex and gender labels.” ... It is no idle whim, no mere personal preference, that leads biologists to define the sexes by the UBD. It is rooted deep in evolutionary history...

[...] A watered down version of the ideology concedes that sex may be binary but “gender” is not. The word gender enters the discourse trailing clouds of confusion....

[...] The current fashion for transsexualism belongs in a cluster of inter-related “woke” vogues, facilitated by the philosophy of postmodernism, partly stemming from a sincere concern for social justice, but misguided and scientifically ill-informed....

[...] A feeling of being in a body of the wrong sex seems to be a real psychological condition, even if much rarer than the current vogue would suggest. Such “dysphorics” can feel genuine distress. When anorexics look in the mirror, they see an emaciated body that they think is too fat. “Gender” dysphorics look in the mirror and see what they perceive as the wrong genitals. Both deserve sympathy and understanding. Nobody is phobic about anorexics. Why should anyone be phobic about gender dysphorics? “Transphobia” is a pernicious fiction. I have seen “Be kind” advanced as a reason to accept propositions such as “Trans women are women”. “Be kind” may be an admirable maxim for civilised living, but it cannot be regarded as scientific evidence for anything. You could as well adduce “Be kind to creationists” as evidence for the proposition that the world is young... (MORE - missing details)
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Editors resign from Springer immunology journal to launch nonprofit title
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/02...mmunology-journal-human-immunity-rockefeller/

Editors from more than 20 other journals have taken similar actions in the past couple of years, as Retraction Watch has logged. Reasons for the walkouts vary, but editors often cite publishers’ perceived focus on paper quantity over quality...

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Researcher removed from journal masthead, loses three more papers
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/02/06/emerald-employee-relations-shalini-srivastava-retractions/

We reported last month that two articles she coauthored — one in Employee Relations and another in the Journal of Organizational Change Management, also an Emerald journal — were retracted because “a large portion of this article’s models, samples, and results are taken, without full and proper attribution, from” earlier work, both retraction notices read...

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‘The fraud was not subtle’: Chemist blames students after ten papers retracted
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/02...t-blames-students-after-ten-papers-retracted/

While reviewing a manuscript for the Journal of Organic Chemistry, Caroline Kervarc-Genre and her colleague, Thibault Cantat, researchers at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, noticed something unusual...

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Undisclosed conflicts, lightning-fast peer review: One Alzheimer’s journal’s role in a failed drug
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/02...ne-alzheimers-journals-role-in-a-failed-drug/

Matthew Schrag first raised an eyebrow about the journal in August 2021 while examining possible misconduct in studies behind Cassava Sciences’ simufilam for the citizen petition to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)...

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Mass resignations hit psychotherapy journal after publisher replaced editors
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/02...apy-journal-after-publisher-replaced-editors/

The majority of the editorial board of a top psychology journal have resigned en masse after the publisher replaced the journal’s editors without warning. Also departing are the honorary editor and statistical consultants...
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The RFK Jr. Playbook
https://pauloffit.substack.com/p/the-rfk-jr-playbook

For years, RFK Jr. had been paid by his organization, Children’s Health Defense, to convince the public and the media that vaccines cause autism. During his confirmation hearing, he used three strategies typical of personal-injury lawyers paid to represent a position....

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The End of Science’s Peacetime (opinion)
https://undark.org/2025/02/06/opinion-end-of-science-peacetime/

Science and politics have a long history of conflict. But before 2020, science had — in my lifetime, at least — operated mostly in peacetime, as measured by public support and abundant resources. But with this long peace has come naïveté and an unwillingness to fix flaws that have plagued American science for many decades, attitudes which have left it vulnerable to nefarious political agendas...

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White House budget proposal could shatter the National Science Foundation
https://arstechnica.com/science/202...ould-shatter-the-national-science-foundation/

... the budget request is just a starting point for negotiations with the US Congress, which sets budget levels. Even so, such cuts could prove disastrous for the US science community.

"This kind of cut would kill American science and boost China and other nations into global science leadership positions," Neal Lane, who led the National Science Foundation in the 1990s during Bill Clinton's presidency, told Ars. "The National Science Foundation budget is not large, of the order 0.1 percent of federal spending, and several other agencies support excellence research. But NSF is the only agency charged to promote progress in science."
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The Square One Fallacy: Pretending we need to study something that’s been exhaustively studied is proving popular these days
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking/square-one-fallacy

EXCERPTS: I recognized on the spot that this was a very bad argument—either born of ignorance or slyness—and came up with a name for it: the square one fallacy.

[...] The square one fallacy is arguing that we have no data to illuminate a particular question, that we’re starting from scratch, when there is an actual body of evidence that we are ignoring, either deliberately or cluelessly. It’s contending that we need to study something that has already been studied, sometimes to death.

It is related to (and might be a subset of) what we call “just asking questions” or “JAQing off,” when someone pretends to want to know more but ignores the answers to keep on badgering an expert with the same question, over and over. A person “just asking questions” doesn’t want to be pinned down to a specific position; they’re simply playing Devil’s advocate ad nauseum without contending with the answers provided.. (MORE - details)

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The most controversial paper in the history of psychedelic research may never see the light of day
https://reason.com/2025/02/09/the-m...elic-research-may-never-see-the-light-of-day/

EXCERPTS: Researchers gave psilocybin to two dozen religious clergy. Was it guided by science, religion, or some awkward combination? [...] What happened is still mostly a mystery, as the paper has yet to be released. Just as the finishing touches were being finalized, Griffiths was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. [...] Five months after Griffiths died peacefully at his home in October 2023, The New York Times published a bombshell exposé that called the study's integrity into question. The article drew on two ethics complaints filed by a former protégé, a psychologist named Matthew Johnson whom Griffiths had groomed to be his replacement... (MORE - details)

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The NIH’s drastic cut to indirect cost rates is a critical threat to U.S. research infrastructure
https://www.statnews.com/2025/02/08/nih-indirect-research-cost-rate-cuts-universities-threat/

INTRO: The National Institutes of Health has made a landmark decision that could irreparably damage the backbone of American scientific innovation: a dramatic reduction in the indirect cost rate for research grants. This sweeping policy change sets the indirect rate to 15%, a stark contrast with the 60% or more that many institutions currently rely on for essential administrative and operational costs.

As we contemplate this new era of science funding, it’s essential to understand the role that indirect costs play in research. These funds are not a luxury — they are vital for supporting the infrastructure that makes groundbreaking discoveries possible. Indirect costs cover expenses like research administration, the maintenance of lab facilities, and the overall operations that enable research to thrive. Without them, universities and research institutions simply cannot function at their full capacity... (MORE - details)
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