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The article sheds light on a concerning trend in the scientific publishing industry, where fraudulent paper mills are resorting to bribing journal editors to secure publication for questionable research papers. It mentions that the investigation reveals instances of editors, including those affiliated with reputable journals, accepting cash from paper mills in exchange for publishing papers.

The article offers information on scrutiny faced by several research articles co-authored by Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Thomas Südhof, regarding data duplication, image discrepancies, and other issues. Topics include corrections and retractions made by journals for flagged papers; Südhof's denial of wrongdoing; and ongoing investigations into additional articles.

The article discusses a study on the occupation of Earth orbits by large constellations of satellites, with a focus on the filings with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It mentions that these filings have raised concerns about the safety and long-term sustainability of low Earth orbit (LEO) and have emphasized the need for meaningful controls on satellite constellations' growth.

NEWS When neuropsychologist Bernhard Sabel put his new fake-paper detector to work, he was "shocked" by what it found. They have "a huge conflict of interest" regarding paper mills, says Jennifer Byrne of the University of Sydney, who has studied how paper mills have doctored cancer genetics data. [Extracted from the article]

The article focuses on the detection of suspicious acronyms, termed "tortured acronyms," in scientific papers, often indicative of plagiarism or misconduct, leading to the development of automated tools by researchers for identifying such anomalies, which have been integrated into existing systems like the Problematic Paper Screener (PPS) to aid publishers in screening submissions and uncovering potential instances of deception or unethical practices in academic publishing.

The article focuses on the retraction of a paper on cancer microbiome research, published in 2020 in the journal "Nature" that claims of identifying microbial signatures of different human cancers.

The article focuses on Nature retracting a highly cited 2002 paper on adult stem cells due to allegations of duplicated data, raising concerns about scientific integrity and transparency.

The article focuses on a news investigation revealing over 900 medical studies published since 1996 with authors having financial ties to tobacco companies, including 27 papers appearing in journals, most notably from MDPI, that explicitly prohibit authors with such connections.

The article focuses on the challenges faced by Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, like Elicit and Scim, designed to assist scientists in navigating the overwhelming volume of published papers, with technical and legal barriers hindering widespread adoption. Topics discussed include the limitations of generative systems, the issue of papers behind paywalls, and the necessity for sustainable business models in the evolving landscape of AI tools for literature navigation.

The article flags over 100 papers for concern, linked to ethical violations by French microbiologist Didier Raoult and his team, including an illegal clinical trial on hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 patients.

The article offers information on the retraction of papers from a genetics journal due to concerns about informed consent for study participants, particularly from ethnic minorities in China.

The article focuses on a study which found that open-access articles attract more citations from scholars in a wider range of locations, institutions, and disciplines than paywalled papers.

The article reports that paleontologist Robert DePalma has been accused of fabricating data so he could scoop her on a high-profile study by paleontologist Melanie During. It informs that During's study concluded that the asteroid that ended the dinosaur era 65 million years ago struck Earth when it was spring in the Northern Hemisphere.

The article highlights a Chinese team's discovery of a bacterium within mosquitoes' guts that inhibits dengue and Zika viruses, potentially aiding disease control efforts. Topics include the bacterium's efficacy in disrupting viral transmission, the significance amidst rising mosquito resistance to insecticides, and ongoing research to assess its real-world impact alongside existing control measures.

The article discusses possible image misconduct in eight cancer papers co-authored by Italy's Health Minister, Orazio Schillaci, between 2018 and 2022, with duplications found in the images, questions raised about their intent, and concerns about the accuracy of experimental findings from his lab.

The article focuses on the delayed response of scientific journals to retract almost 300 papers by Japanese physicians, Yoshihiro Sato and Jun Iwamoto, containing signs of fabrication and ethical lapses, revealing challenges in the scientific publishing system, including slow retractions, lack of transparency, and the deferment to institutional investigations.

PUBLISHING | Describing uncertainty in findings and conclusions is considered a hallmark of carefully prepared scientific papers, but the frequency of such hedges has fallen over the past 2 decades - perhaps because of pressure to publish, a study asserts. In one of the largest studies of its kind, a research team looked for words conveying doubt and uncertainty - such as "might", "could", "appear to", "probably", "approximately", and "seem" - in research articles published from 1997 to 2021 in Science, which the team chose because it publishes articles from multiple disciplines. The frequency of hedges dropped by close to half, from 115.8 instances per 10,000 words in 1997 to 67.42 per 10,000 words in 2021. [Extracted from the article]

The article offers news brief on topic including Matthew Schrag confronts a mentor after their joint work is flagged on the PubPeer website.

The article discusses the announcement by the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden that by the end of 2025, federal agencies must make papers that describe taxpayer-funded work freely available to the public as soon as the final peer-reviewed manuscript is published by a journal. Topics include the effort by officials to work out details of the policy, reaction from Heather Joseph of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, and the impact of the policy.

The article discusses that the nonprofit publisher Company of Biologists will plant a tree for each peer review and each paper it publishes to acknowledge the contributions of authors and peer reviewers and impart environmental education.

The article offers information on the genetics papers. Topics include male genetic landscape of China, a set of almost 38,000 Y-STR sequences, Y-STR stands for Y-chromosomal short tandem repeat polymorphism, bits of repetitive DNA often used in forensic investigations, Springer Nature, launched an investigation, consent problems in China and the potential for abuse of the data, the Charité University Hospital in Berlin fired for hosting the genetic database used in several papers.

The article informs that a study published in October 4, 2022 issue of "JAMA Open Network" reveals that retracted papers about COVID-19 have been pulled from journals faster than those on other topics.

The article reports on the announcement by the journal "BMC Medicine" in September 2022 that it will not retract a controversial 2013 paper by botanist Steven Newmaster of the University of Guelph questioning the purity of herbal remedies.

The article reports on a study which indicates that reviewers of papers tend to recommend acceptance if the author is famous in science. It discusses the Matthew effect, which describes how high-status researchers, or those who already have many citations and grants, tend to get disproportionately more of the same. It explains the steps taken by the researchers to avoid bias in their own study.

The article focuses on aim to transform how scientists share research results launched a new experiment. Topics include considered eLife is a nonprofit, selective, online as only journal that focuses on the life and medical sciences which announced it will cease accepting or rejecting manuscripts for publication instead offers only peer reviews of manuscripts.

The article discusses the Committee on Publication Ethics, that encourages members to publish critiques. Among the majority that do run critical letters, commentaries, or online comments, many impose deadlines and limit length.

The article presents the discussion on administrators of arXiv, a preprint server used by many physicists recently refusing to post several papers from opposing sides of a debate over claims of room temperature superconductivity.

The article discuses that LGBTQ scientists who don't disclose their sexual orientation in the workplace publish fewer papers than their peers.

The article reports that the 2019 paper co-authored by scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab about a food computer it suggested could revolutionize agriculture has been retracted by the journal "PLOS ONE."

The article reports that two journals have retracted four papers by authors in China that used genetic data from Uyghurs and other Chinese minorities without evidence of proper informed consent.

The article reports that the journal "Vaccines" on July 2, 2021 retracted a peer-reviewed article after the resignations of several editors who were protesting the publication of a study one week earlier that had misused data in a Dutch vaccine adverse events registry to make the claim that COVID-19 vaccines kill. Topics covered include the background of the paper's authors, how the authors computed COVID-19 deaths prevented by vaccines and the fears of the editors who resigned.

A personal narrative is presented which explores the authors experience of having research paper relating to a project after finishing master's degree.

A former Meta employee warned, "Facebook researchers will answer every question they get from the professors honestly; they are ethical professionals. SPECIAL SECTION: Social media & elections In the spring of 2020, pressed by internal research staff and with support from the highest levels of the company, Facebook (now Meta) began a collaboration with outside academics to study the 2020 US presidential election. Meta project lead and outside academic PI conversations also focused on how the work would be received by reporters, other academics, and the public, as well as legal and privacy issues within Meta. OBSERVATION OF COLLABORATION My observations of research team meetings for each of the individual papers and weekly planning meetings between the lead Meta researchers and the lead outside academic researchers revealed a deep commitment to high-level social science scholarship. [Extracted from the article]

The article presents the research papers published in various journals. Papers published in "Science" include genetics underlying the coat color changes in white-tailed jackrabbits, scanning tunneling microscopy to study the vicinity of defects causing the formation of localized metallic puddles in an insulator, and a method to print three-dimensional objects precisely out of silicone-based materials by using densely packed emulsions.

In this study, we examined China’s Young Thousand Talents (YTT) program and evaluated its effectiveness in recruiting elite expatriate scientists and in nurturing the returnee scientists’ productivity. We find that YTT scientists are generally of high caliber in research but, as a group, fall below the top category in pre-return productivity. We further find that YTT scientists are associated with a post-return publication gain across journal-quality tiers. However, this gain mainly takes place in last-authored publications and for high-caliber (albeit not top-caliber) recruits and can be explained by YTT scientists’ access to greater funding and larger research teams. This paper has policy implications for the mobility of scientific talent, especially as early-career scientists face growing challenges in accessing research funding in the United States and European Union [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From microcircuits to metamaterials, the micropatterning of surfaces adds valuable functionality. For nonplanar surfaces, incompatibility with conventional microlithography requires the transfer of originally planar micropatterns onto those surfaces; however, existing approaches accommodate only limited curvatures. A microtransfer approach was developed using reflowable materials that transform between solid and liquid on demand, freely stretching to yield transfers that naturally conform down to nanoscale radii of curvature and arbitrarily complex topographies. Such reflow transfer helps generalize microprinting, extending the reach of precision planar microlithography to highly nonplanar substrates and microstructures. With gentle water-based processing, reflow transfer can be applied to a range of materials, with microprinting demonstrated onto metal, plastic, paper, glass, polystyrene, semiconductor, elastomer, hydrogel, and multiple biological surfaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sabel et al. propose a classifier for identifying fake papers. In the News In Depth story "Fake scientific papers are alarmingly common" (9 May, https://scim.ag/2KD), J. Brainard describes a medRxiv preprint by Sabel et al. (1) alleging that nearly 30% of all scientific articles may be the fake products of paper mills. Brainard eventually cites details from the preprint showing that the algorithm misclassified more than a third of real papers as fake. [Extracted from the article]

Light pollution is also beginning to be addressed by the EU block itself; the EU's Green Public Procurement Criteria for Street Lighting and Traffic Signals provides street-lighting recommendations, which includes addressing light pollution (5), for policymakers and lighting professionals. Light Pollution Reduction Measures in Europe, Working paper for the international workshop Light Pollution 2022, during the Czech Presidency of the Council of the European Union; https://czech-presidency.consilium.europa.eu/media/oo5cwlmn/light-pollution-reductionmeasures-in-europe.pdf. SPECIAL SECTION: Light pollution Artificial light at night (ALAN), or light pollution, causes a broad spectrum of problems. [Extracted from the article]

The article focuses on the impending retraction of a third paper by physicist Ranga Dias from the University of Rochester, known for his controversial superconductivity research. It mentions the paper in question, published in Nature, claimed to have discovered a room-temperature superconductor, but is facing retraction following concerns about the data's reliability and Dias's treatment of co-authors.

The article focuses on the retraction of a landmark 2002 paper on adult stem cells due to data duplication concerns, highlighting ongoing issues in scientific integrity and transparency. It covers a successful diversity initiative at a Dutch university that increased the hiring of women through temporary gender-exclusive job applications, and the expanded approval by the FDA for gene therapy to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

The article focuses on the retraction of a research paper published in Science due to errors in the analysis method, which significantly impacted the statistical significance of certain conclusions, leading all authors to agree on its retraction.

The article focuses on the decision to retract a landmark Alzheimer's disease research paper published in Nature in 2006 due to allegations of image manipulation, highlighting the acknowledgment by the senior author, Karen Ashe, and the subsequent agreement by all authors except the first author, Sylvain Lesné, amidst ongoing investigations and debates about the validity of the findings and the integrity of scientific research.

The article offers information on a new potential red flag for identifying fraudulent papers in cancer research: findings about human cell lines that do not exist.

The article focuses on a study revealing that Scopus, a prominent scientific paper database, listed hundreds of papers from 67 "hijacked" journals, which are legitimate publications taken over by unscrupulous operators, posing a threat to scholarly legitimacy.

Harmful cyanobacteria are a global environmental problem, yet we lack actionable understanding of toxigenic versus nontoxigenic strain ecology and toxin production. We performed a large-scale meta-analysis including 103 papers and used it to develop a mechanistic, agent-based model of Microcystis growth and microcystin production. Simulations for Lake Erie suggest that the observed toxigenic-to-nontoxigenic strain succession during the 2014 Toledo drinking water crisis was controlled by different cellular oxidative stress mitigation strategies (protection by microcystin versus degradation by enzymes) and the different susceptibility of those mechanisms to nitrogen limitation. This model, as well as a simpler empirical one, predicts that the planned phosphorus load reduction will lower biomass but make nitrogen and light more available, which will increase toxin production, favor toxigenic cells, and increase toxin concentrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on paper from cognitive psychologist Itiel Dror according to which forensic pathologists to pronounce child's death a murder and role of bias in forensics. Topics discussed include forensic scientists influened by cognitive biases, ethical misconduct alleged by National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME), and mental imagery used by U.S. Air Force pilots to recognize enemy jets traveling speeds.

These tools primarily work by automating the identification of fake authors and fake papers with the use of a set of variables common in publications, such as author email address and affiliation. A private email address could be considered a flag for further scrutinizing a publication, but private email addresses are often used by legitimate researchers, many of whom are nonnative English speakers or use non-Latin writing scripts. In the News In Depth story "Fake scientific papers are alarmingly common" (9 May, https://scim.ag/2KD), J. Brainard draws attention to a number of new tools and technologies that researchers and publishers are developing in an effort to increase the integrity of research. [Extracted from the article]

To date, 15 of Pruitt's papers on social behavior in spiders have been retracted, work that had earned them a prestigious Canada 150 Research Chair title. RESEARCH MISCONDUCT | McMaster University last week released results from its investigation into former faculty member Jonathan Pruitt, finding that the internationally acclaimed behavioral ecologist engaged in fabrication and falsification of data reported in eight papers. McMaster placed Pruitt on leave in 2021, and they resigned in 2022 in a settlement. [Extracted from the article]