Ethics

The calculating cat

Biologist reveals flaws in academic metrics by attributing fake studies and manipulated citations to his family pet

Student protection

Universities in England face new obligations to prevent sexual harassment

Data verification

The difficulties of verifying statistical rigor in medical articles

Botanists say no to racism

Racist term to be eliminated from scientific names of plants, fungi, and algae

Tricks to increase prestige

Seventeen journals temporarily stripped of impact factor due to suspicions that citation figures were being manipulated

New legislation establishes punishments for Peruvian scientists who commit misconduct

New legislation establishes punishments for Peruvian scientists who commit misconduct

Article linking vitamin D to milder cases of COVID retracted

Article linking vitamin D to milder cases of COVID retracted

Detours in the labyrinth of Alzheimer’s disease

Author of Nature article cited more than 2,500 times acknowledges image manipulation and requests retraction

Research animal supplier pays record fine for mistreatment of beagles

Research animal supplier pays record fine for mistreatment of beagles

Retired researcher says open-access agreement is discriminatory

Retired researcher says open-access agreement is discriminatory

Care and empathy for animals

Researchers from various disciplines investigate ways to reduce pain and improve the quality of life for species used or consumed by humans

Training that borders on misconduct

Scientific writing companies offer young doctors competing for grants and jobs in the USA the chance to be named as authors of articles produced in workshops

American universities examine sexual violence on campus

American universities examine sexual violence on campus

Tool notifies readers if a paper is suspected of containing errors or fraud

Tool notifies readers if a paper is suspected of containing errors or fraud

The echo of ancient words

Researchers and journals discuss limits on when authors can reuse excerpts from their previous work in new articles

Linguistics journal editors resign and found new journal

Linguistics journal editors resign and found new journal

PLOS ONE changes publication process to reduce number of corrections

PLOS ONE changes publication process to reduce number of corrections

Hell is other people

Researchers tend to overestimate their academic honesty, suggests study of more than 11,000 Swedish scientists and doctoral students

Cash reward for finding errors in influential articles

Scientist who publishes more than one paper per week has had 20 retracted

Signs of forced consent

Suspicion that ethnic groups were coerced into providing data and biological samples calls 96 forensic genetics articles into question

Norwegian minister behind crackdown on student misconduct resigns due to plagiarism

Sandra Borch resigned from her post on January 23 after allegations that she plagiarized at least 20% of her master's thesis

American university museum returns artifacts looted from Greece

Emory University reached an agreement with the Greek Ministry of Culture to return three artifacts held at the institution’s Michael C. Carlos Museum

Shining a light on the dark history of racism

Two-hundred-year-old scientific journal acknowledges its own connections with slavery and complicity in prejudice

Study examines sanctions for misconduct in the USA

A team of researchers analyzed the severity of punishments for scientists accused of misconduct by the US Office of Scientific Integrity

Map of scientific article retractions in the BRICS countries

Researchers from India analyzed 11,764 articles by scientists from BRICS countries that were retracted between 1989 and 2021

Saudi universities suffer from purge of list of highly cited researchers

In just one year, the number of researchers linked to institutions in Saudi Arabia who were named on Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers list fell from 109 to 76

Study shows potential for ChatGPT to fabricate and defraud clinical trial results

AI technology is capable of generating false clinical trial data to support the conclusions of fraudulent scientific articles

High sensitivity

Social psychologists say that controversial research topics may be targeted by covert censorship, calling for more transparency in science

Compromised peer review leads to retraction of 209 articles

Publishing company Sage has announced the retraction of 209 scientific articles