Dear Retraction Watch readers, could you support us with $25? This week on Retraction Watch, we covered: - A Q&A with authors exploring how retractions affect researchers' careers and collaborations. - Clarivate’s decision to exclude citations of retracted articles from journal impact factors. - The retraction of dozens of Elsevier papers due to fake companies and questionable authorship changes. - Retraction of a paper with duplicated images, four months after concerns surfaced. - Removal of a journal with a fake editorial board and sham archive from Scopus following our inquiry. Our COVID-19 retracted or withdrawn papers list now exceeds 500 entries. The Retraction Watch Database, integrated with Crossref, contains over 59, 000 retractions. The Hijacked Journal Checker lists more than 300 titles. Check out our latest leaderboards of authors with the most retractions and the top 10 most cited retracted papers, plus the Mass Resignations List and nearly 100 papers suspected to be written by ChatGPT. Elsewhere in research news (some articles may require registration or be paywalled): - MIT no longer supports a student’s AI research paper. - Researchers are divided on whether AI-writing in science papers is acceptable, per a Nature survey. - NIH halts manuscript acceptance; Toxicological Sciences steps in. - A university closes a research center amidst plagiarism allegations. - Cuts at the National Cancer Institute threaten peer review, registries, and patient information. - Debates over plagiarism in Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s senior thesis. - Early career researchers caution about risks of unchecked AI use without strong policies. - Podcast: “A Primer on Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics. ” - A researcher criticizes publication delays damaging careers. - Ethical examinations of local clinical trial misconduct. - University administrators remain silent on misconduct allegations against a professor. - Planetary scientists protest the deletion of research records, calling it “Orwellian. ” - Calls for action against South Korea’s first lady over plagiarism claims. - Seven practical tips for editors to intercept misconduct. - Concerns about shoddy study designs and false findings in large public health datasets, with AI and paper mills posing future risks. - Cancellation of a university grant aimed at teaching research ethics by the Trump administration. - University disciplinary actions for academic misconduct involving a professor and daughter. - Analysis of a study challenging abortion pill safety. - Discussions on evolving academic pressures: “From ‘publish or perish’ to ‘be visible or vanish. ’” - Warnings that AI-assisted research may be weakening scientific quality. - Emphasis on the necessity of ethical oversight in science amid federal funding cuts. - Researchers link decreases in spelling errors to increased large language model use. - Questions about the credibility of the Highly Cited Researchers list. - Findings that Democrats and left-leaning think tanks cite scientific studies more than Republicans. - The impact of DEI crackdowns on scientific publishing. - Germany’s initiative for an open and independent PubMed safety net. - A paper referring to “New Crown Epidemics” instead of “COVID-19 Pandemic” was retracted. - A retraction titled: “A Sincere Apology To The Pangolin Community. ” If you appreciate Retraction Watch, please consider a tax-deductible donation to support our work.

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