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

New studies dismiss signs of life on distant planet
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/...e_code=1.Jk8.-9l7.W-R6_O8ZNN4G&smid=url-share

INTRO: In April, a team of astronomers announced that they might — just might — have found signs of life on a planet over 120 light-years from Earth. The mere possibility of extraterrestrial life was enough to attract attention worldwide. It also attracted intense scrutiny from other astronomers.

Over the past month, researchers have independently analyzed the data, which suggested that the planet, called K2-18b, has a molecule in its atmosphere that could have been created by living organisms. Three different analyses have all reached the same conclusion: They see no compelling evidence for life on K2-18b. “The claim just absolutely vanishes,” said Luis Welbanks, an astronomer at Arizona State University and an author of one of the studies... (MORE - details)
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The black market of publications in Peru: Paper mills and authorship for sale
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/leap.2014

SUMMARY: The black market for publications exists globally, including the purchase and sale of authorship in academic papers. In 2023, cases involving paper mills and authorship commerce in Peru were exposed by mass media and television. In 2024, a report by the Peruvian Congress on alleged scientific fraud through the purchase and sale of scientific research revealed financial transactions of USD 3.05 million. In Peru, legislative changes are proposed to combat misconduct research practices, including authorship trafficking... (MORE - details)

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MIT says it no longer stands behind student's AI research paper
https://goodscience.substack.com/p/academic-culture-and-fraud

EXCERPT: I heard from other people last year that it was a breach of etiquette for me even to ask questions about the AI paper, because the undertone or implication might be that the paper could conceivably, possibly, maybe be fraudulent, and that was the worst possible thing you could ever even remotely hint at.

I disagree with that social norm. It should be completely normal to ask, "so how did you actually get this amazing data anyway?" In fact, we should ask that in EVERY study involving private companies (as well as public sources like IRS that are stingy with data), so that there's no implication that "you, in particular, are suspicious." (MORE - details)

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Predatory journal? How the publishing elite weaponise vocabulary
https://www.researchinformation.inf...ow-the-publishing-elite-weaponise-vocabulary/

EXCERPT: The more one looks into this debate, the clearer it becomes: “predatory” has become less a meaningful descriptor than a convenient label – used, often aggressively, by established actors to discredit newcomers and preserve their turf.

Yes, predatory journals as described above do exist. However, the issue we now face is that these are increasingly – perhaps intentionally – conflated with legitimate, non-predatory journals. Those that seek to challenge the legacy, paywalled model of academic publishing

[...] No due process, no right of reply – just a branding iron. Label a journal “predatory,” and you can dismiss it entirely. No need to assess its editorial quality, its peer-review process, its indexing status, or its rejection rate. Suspicion alone is sufficient... (MORE - details)

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Knowledge under siege
https://www.deseret.com/magazine/2025/05/15/scientific-knowledge-is-under-siege/

EXCERPTS: But serious trouble lurks in the hallowed halls of science. The work of contemporary scientists is sometimes blemished by irreproducible studies, financially conflicted research and outright fraud. Scandalous instances of bad science — often spread through the proliferation of predatory journals — are surprisingly common.

[...] Some alarmists worry that without substantial reform, a tipping point could eventually come wherein “bad science” becomes so pervasive and politically polarized that the public loss of trust in the scientific enterprise leads to a “new dark age” of sorts.

[...] The taxonomy of bad science also includes “conflicted science,” where a scientist has a financial interest in the results of their research or in the content of their presentations made at medical conferences...

[...] Anonymous surveys of academics indicate that the temptation to engage in deceptive practices, presumably as a means of increasing one’s scholarly productivity, is powerful... (MORE - details)
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AI is flooding science with fake research <--link

VIDEO EXCERPT: The crazy tariff formula of the Trump administration, for example, has widely been suspected to have been AI-generated. But I guess it’s okay because the UK tech secretary, too, has used ChatGPT for policy advice. Terrence Howard, the actor who believes that 1 times 1 equals 2, recently put forward a supposed solution to the three-body problem, almost certainly also AI generated. And I have now received half a dozen “theories of everything” that were, by admission, written with the help of AI. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg because AI is about to swamp the science literature...

 
The bad science behind expensive nuclear power
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-bad-science-behind-expensive-nuclear/

How a dubious theory of radiation damage based on fruit flies and a secretive weapons testing program came to be — and why its time may now be up...

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How the beef industry is quietly rewriting climate science for kids
https://sentientmedia.org/beef-industry-is-rewriting-climate-science-for-kids/

Jacquet, who is one of the researchers who has analyzed the NCBA’s archival documents, says the agenda here is clear: “They are certainly shaping the sort of popular discourse around what you can do to address your environmental concerns for children...”

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A reaction to Alzheimer's fraud
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/reaction-alzheimer-s-fraud

INTRO: I wrote here back in 2022 about the revelations of fraud in a series of influential papers in the Alzheimer's field, and it's a topic that has certainly never gone away. The author (Charles Piller) of the piece here at Science that broke this story has since published a book, Doctored, about the entire affair (and here's the Science review of it). Full disclosure: I'm quoted a few times in the book. What I wanted to highlight today has more to do with its reception, but that in turn has to do with the underlying story... (MORE - details)

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The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull, a disputed femur and a bitter feud over humanity’s origins
https://www.theguardian.com/science...nt-skull-disputed-femur-feud-humanity-origins

EXCERPTS: When fossilised remains were discovered in the Djurab desert in 2001, they were hailed as radically rewriting the history of our species. But not everyone was convinced – and the bitter argument that followed has consumed the lives of scholars ever since [...]

Palaeoanthropology is a notoriously disputatious, not to say vicious, field. In part, this is an effect of self-selection: given its prestige, and its philosophical, even metaphysical implications, the study of human prehistory attracts the most ambitious and, as one member of the discipline put it to me, “the most psychotic”, palaeontologists.

There is, additionally, a cultural divide within the field between, speaking very broadly, field workers and laboratory specialists. The former disdain the latter as “armchair palaeontologists”; the latter disdain the former as “fossil hunters”... (MORE - details)
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IQ study retracted in fallout from decades-old misconduct report
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/05...duckworth-stephen-breuning-misconduct-report/

The authors of a paper on how motivation influences intelligence test scores have retracted their paper following the retraction of a 50-year-old study included in their analysis...

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Meet the first two Retraction Watch sleuths in residence
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/05/27/meet-the-first-two-retraction-watch-sleuths-in-residence/

Earlier this year we announced the Sleuth in Residence Program [...] Our goal is to build capacity in this space to emphasize the value of compensating and protecting the critical work of sleuths. We’re pleased to be able to bring on two Sleuths in Residence as part of this effort...

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‘More of the same’: Journals, trade website refuse to correct critiques of book on Alzheimer’s fraud
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/05...forum-critiques-corrections-alzheimers-fraud/

Piller and Schrag say they respect that others are entitled to their opinions, but expressed concern that some of these reviews contain inaccuracies that downplay their findings. And the journals and Alzforum have refused to publish responses they submitted or make corrections they requested...
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When your science is attacked, how do you cope?
https://cen.acs.org/research-integrity/ethics/science-attacked-cope/103/web/2025/06

INTRO: Last year, Nick Franks published a paper that kicked off an almighty row over the biology of what happens to the brain during sleep. Previous studies in mice had consistently shown that the brain flushes out harmful proteins, such as those related to dementia, during sleep. But Franks, a biophysicist at Imperial College London, and his colleagues concluded the opposite; their data suggested that this process of brain clearance is in fact reduced during sleep. It’s an important detail to get right because the answer could greatly influence the success of dementia drug development. But Franks’s findings were not welcomed... (MORE - details)
 
Fourth retraction for Italian scientist comes 11 years after sleuths flagged paper
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/06...briella-marfe-11-years-after-sleuths-flagged/

PLOS One has retracted a 2011 paper first flagged for image issues 11 years ago. The retraction marks the fourth for the paper’s lead author, Gabriella Marfè of the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli,” in Caserta, Italy...

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$900,000 grant to Retraction Watch’s parent organization will fund forensic analysis of articles that affect human health
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/06...opy-center-scientific-integrity-human-health/

The Center for Scientific Integrity, the parent nonprofit of Retraction Watch, has launched a new initiative to investigate and rapidly disseminate problems in the medical literature that directly affect human health...

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‘Anyone can do this’: Sleuths publish a toolkit for post-publication review
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/06/04/cosig-sleuths-publish-toolkit-post-publication-review/

For years, sleuths – whose names our readers are likely familiar with – have been diligently flagging issues with the scientific literature. More than a dozen of these specialists have teamed up to create a set of guides to teach others their trade.,,

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Guest post: NIH-funded replication studies are not the answer to the reproducibility crisis in pre-clinical research
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/06...-reproducibility-crisis-preclinical-research/

As a former biomedical researcher, editor, and publisher, and a current consultant about image data integrity, I would argue that conducting systematic replication studies of pre-clinical research is neither an effective nor an efficient strategy to achieve the objective of identifying reliable research. Such studies would be an impractical use of NIH funds, especially in the face of extensive proposed budget cuts...
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Research Illusions: The Magic Behind Poor-Quality Science
https://beyondtheabstract.substack.com/p/research-illusions-the-magic-behind

INTRO: In a magic trick, the audience believes they've seen everything clearly—every action, every prop, every movement of the magician's hands. Yet the magician, through subtlety, sleight-of-hand, and misdirection, skillfully conceals crucial parts of the process. The audience marvels at what seems astonishing, extraordinary, or seemingly impossible.

Similarly, in poor-quality research, everything on the surface can appear transparent: the methods section seems thorough, the results look robust, the conclusions seem logically derived. Yet beneath this veneer, the researchers—like skilled magicians—have carefully obscured crucial steps or directed attention away from questionable research practices.

This newsletter is where we stop applauding and start investigating. If the science seems too clean, too perfect, or too dazzling, I want to know what’s hidden in the false bottom of the box. At Beyond the Abstract, the goal isn’t just to read the final conclusion—it’s to figure out what’s behind the curtain. Because in science, just like in magic, the real story often lies in what you don’t see... (MORE - details)
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‘Integrity index’ flags universities with high retraction rates
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01727-3

A university-scoring method that highlights research-integrity ‘red flags’ could make it easier to spot institutions that are chasing conventional publishing metrics at the expense of rigorous science, researchers say...

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Ensuring scientific rigor in research: Why sports-related publicly obtained data fall short
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10711007251335700

The use of publicly obtained data (POD) in scientific manuscripts has recently faced compelling criticism.1,2 Data sourced from the Internet is often incomplete, unverified, and lacking documentation, making it impossible to substantiate conclusions drawn from such studies....

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Does collaboration outside academia lead to greater scientific impact?
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoc...e-academia-lead-to-greater-scientific-impact/

Collaborations between researchers and non-academic partners are increasingly encouraged, but do they truly enhance scientific impact? Drawing on survey data from Spanish scientists, Carolin Nast, Oscar Llopis, Dima Yankova and Pablo D’Este show that joint research projects are associated with higher citation impact, especially for scientists with strong academic reputations....

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Aligning scientific values and research integrity: A study of researchers’ perceptions and practices in four countries
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-025-00539-y#Sec8

ABSTRACT: Scientific values are considered to play a significant role in responsible conduct of research education, such as raising awareness, changing cognition, and altering behavior. However, there is still a lack of empirical evidence regarding the relationship between scientists’ subscription of scientific values and research integrity behaviors.

This paper presents a cross-national study that examines researchers’ perceptions and practices regards research integrity. The results show correlations between value adherence, level of acceptance of research misbehaviors, and self-reported research misbehavior.

The study also reveals significant variations in these variables among researchers from different countries, academic positions, age groups, and genders. This cross-national investigation offers valuable insights into researchers’ attitudes and behaviors regarding research misconduct, contributing to the promotion of ethical research practices worldwide and enhancing the credibility and integrity of scientific endeavors.

Further research involving larger samples and more countries would provide deeper insights into the developments in researchers’ perceptions of research misbehavior.
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American science's culture has contributed to the grave threat it now faces
https://www.realclearscience.com/ar...to_the_grave_threat_it_now_faces_1115999.html

EXCERPTS: Over time, the culture of science has become increasingly focused on metrics of prestige: grant dollars, publication volume, high-profile coverage. We’ve come to equate visibility with value. In subtle but important ways, science has absorbed the habits of celebrity—chasing recognition, measuring performance by attention, and celebrating status over service. None of this started with bad intentions, but it has consequences. Most importantly, it has weakened the connection between science and the public.

[...] These aren’t just optics problems. They reflect a deeper question about whether science still appears to be accountable to the public—and whether it is seen as a shared enterprise or a professional class. This erosion of trust makes it easier for lawmakers to treat science funding as negotiable and to treat scientific research as a political football... (MORE - details)

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5 things in Trump’s budget that won’t make NASA great again
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/06/5-things-in-trumps-budget-that-wont-make-nasa-great-again/

INTRO: If signed into law as written, the White House's proposal to slash nearly 25 percent from NASA's budget would have some dire consequences. It would cut the agency's budget from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion. Adjusted for inflation, this would be the smallest NASA budget since 1961, when the first American launched into space.

The proposed funding plan would halve NASA's funding for robotic science missions and technology development next year, scale back research on the International Space Station, turn off spacecraft already exploring the Solar System, and cancel NASA's Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft after two more missions in favor of procuring lower-cost commercial transportation to the Moon and Mars... (MORE - details)
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Paper rejected for AI, fake references published elsewhere with hardly anything changed
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/06...ished-elsewhere-with-hardly-anything-changed/

One journal’s trash is another’s treasure – until a former peer reviewer stumbles across it and sounds an alarm...

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Apparent NCI director candidate wants ‘open, respectful’ post-publication peer review while promoting anonymous site that calls sleuths a ‘mob’
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/06...te-science-guardians-twitter-pubpeer-sleuths/

Brown University physician-scientist Wafik El-Deiry has been a longtime critic of the post-publication forum PubPeer, where 75 of his papers have been flagged. For example, in an April post on X, formerly Twitter, he stated, “It is not good that PubPeer has been weaponized and has become tyrannical.” In July 2024, he referred to the emails authors receive when someone posts a comment about their papers as being “under attack by PubPeer and their anonymous mob...”

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Journal tells author it’s retracting three papers for concept that ‘violates’ law of thermodynamics
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/06...anal-kumar-journal-retraction-thermodynamics/

A physics journal has informed an embattled rocket scientist that it will retract three of his papers, citing concerns raised by the retraction of another of his papers last year...
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Critical gaps in ethical publishing knowledge among researchers in China, reveals new survey
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1087586

EXCERPTS: A new survey has revealed a widespread lack of clarity among researchers in China regarding ethical publishing practices, particularly when third-party manuscript services are involved. Analyzing the results of the survey, the authors of a study published in the Journal of Data and Information Science highlight the urgent need for all researchers to receive comprehensive and fit-for-purpose ethics education.

[...] “It is no wonder that 80% of those who responded to our survey are currently concerned about the impact of research integrity issues on the trustworthiness of research publications,” Alam added. “Partnerships between publishers and research institutions will be key to tackling global research integrity challenges, including the development and implementation of comprehensive training in research integrity and publishing ethics. A key motivation for establishing our collaboration with the National Science Library at CAS was to explore critical issues and we believe these results from our Joint Lab show the benefits of working together in this way.” (MORE - details, no ads)
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Mistake! Law firm asks us to hype their baby food scaremongering
https://www.acsh.org/news/2025/06/1...-us-hype-their-baby-food-scaremongering-49554

INTRO: There’s a secret about the modern news cycle many people don’t know: Much of it is manufactured by public relations (PR) firms trying to gin up favorable media coverage for their clients. Each week, an untold number of press releases and story pitches go out to major news outlets, podcast hosts and political commentators, all asking these opinion molders to promote new books, dietary supplements, and even pending litigation.

That’s right, trial lawyers send out marketing materials hoping journalists will cover their lawsuits favorably. You didn't think all those chemical scare stories in the news were organic, did you? I get at least a dozen of these emails weekly. Here’s just one recent example from a law firm prevaricating about the supposed dangers of heavy metals in baby food... (MORE - details)
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Editors won’t retract talc and cancer article J&J says is false in court
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/06...-johnson-and-johnson-jacqueline-moline-court/

A journal will not retract a paper linking use of talc-based baby powder to cancer, despite legal pressure from the pharmaceutical giant that made the product. [...] The lawyer alleged many of the patients had other exposures to asbestos than cosmetic talc, rendering the article’s fundamental claims “false.”

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Citation issues cost these 20 journals their impact factors this year
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/06...suppression-list-2025-self-citation-stacking/

Twenty journals lost their impact factors in this year’s Journal Citation Reports, released today, for excessive self-citation and citation stacking. Nearly half of the journals on the list are from well-known publishers MDPI, Sage, Springer, Taylor & Francis and Wiley...

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Journal corrects nearly 100 papers after authors fail to disclose they are on the editorial board
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/06...uthors-fail-to-disclose-conflict-of-interest/

Wiley has issued a mass correction at one of its journals after finding nearly 100 papers with undisclosed conflicts of interest related to submissions by board members and relationships between authors and journal editors...

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Springer Nature psycholinguistics journal retracts over a dozen articles for authorship, peer review issues
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/06...ractions-authorship-peer-review-manipulation/


A journal has retracted 16 papers after a whistleblower flagged it for “irregularities” in peer review, among other concerns. [...] Thirteen of the 16 articles have been cited one to five times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science; one article has been cited 19 times, the highest of the bunch....

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When PubMed got it right, Elsevier got it wrong, and Retraction Watch helped clear it up
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/06/16/contraception-implanon-pubmed-elsevier-retraction-watch/

More than 20 years after publishing a letter saying a set of papers should be retracted — and PubMed marking them as such — the journal has finally retracted the articles, following a Retraction Watch inquiry. Let’s back up...
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The Zombie Scientific Archive
https://magazine.qs.com/qs-insights-magazine-30/the-zombie-scientific-archive

How AI-generated content and misinformation are corrupting online academic resources, creating a "zombie" internet where errors and fake science perpetuate....

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The pressure to quantify research is erasing conceptual depth
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoc...uantify-research-is-erasing-conceptual-depth/

As universities increasingly prioritise research that can be measured, academics face a pressure to translate complex ideas into quantifiable outputs. Igor Martins explores how metrics shape not only how knowledge is evaluated but how it is formed, raising questions about whether depth and ambiguity are sacrificed for comparability and clarity...

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Meaningless Means #4: Correcting scientific misinformation
https://datacolada.org/127

Meta-analyses almost always include bad studies – those that are poorly designed, confounded, bad tests of the meta-analytic hypothesis, plagued by errors, etc. – and averaging bad studies together with good (or bad) studies will produce a bad average. Meta-analyses almost always include studies that are very different from each other, that test different specific hypotheses. Averaging across such different studies gives you a meaningless mean...

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To ‘publish or perish’, do we need to add ‘AI or die’?
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/publish-or-perish-do-we-need-add-ai-or-die

INTRO: There’s a particular sinking feeling that many Central Europeans are no doubt familiar with. It arises when, listening to a British or American scholar at a conference or seminar, you realise that no matter how many books you read or how solid your ideas are, you will never speak or write as stylishly or confidently in English as they do.

Native fluency in academia’s lingua franca, elite education and early immersion in academic norms give them a kind of structural advantage – one that others learn to live with but can rarely overcome.

Or so I thought. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with generative AI – not to outsource my thinking but to sharpen how I communicate it. The result? My writing has become faster, clearer and more precise. It’s a strange feeling: I’m still me, but with a kind of intellectual exoskeleton... (MORE - details)

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Transparent peer review to be extended to all of Nature’s research papers
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01880-9

From today, all new submissions to Nature that are published will be accompanied by referees’ reports and author responses — to illuminate the process of producing rigorous science...

Nature looks to open up 'black box' of science by publishing peer review files
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/sci...ience-publishing-peer-review-files-rcna213359

The scientific journal Nature wants to show people the nitty gritty of academic publishing. In a Monday editorial, the journal announced it would include peer review files with the papers it publishes, offering access to once behind-the-scenes processes in which reviewers critique scientific papers and authors respond with changes. Publishing peer review files at Nature has been optional since 2020; starting Monday, it is now automatic...

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NIH plan to remove ideological influence from science. How does this fit in the junk science being promoted by the U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services?
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia....by-the-u-s-dept-of-health-and-human-services/

EXCERPTS: A couple weeks ago we discussed the ridiculousness of the government mandating so-called gold standard science while at the same time promoting fraudulent, debunked, and flat-out fake research. [...] Since then I came across an interesting new development of a more positive kind.

The director of the National Institutes of Health writes: "We’re working to remove ideological influence from science. NIH funding must be based on provable, testable hypotheses, not ideological narratives. Projects that don’t meet that bar are discontinued so we can focus on rigorous, impactful research."

I don’t think we could or should remove all ideological influence from science. The people who care about a topic enough to research it will often have ideological motivations. The ideological influence is there. That doesn’t mean it’s bad science.

[...But...] this does not mean that I think that we should let ideologically-motivated bad research off the hook... (MORE - details)
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