Planet Neuroscientists

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OIST and AIST sign Memorandum of Understanding

in OIST Japan on 2025-04-14 12:00:00 UTC.

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Functional MRI can do more than you think

in The Transmitter on 2025-04-14 04:00:13 UTC.

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This Butterfly’s Epic Migration Is Written into Its Chemistry

Painted ladies travel the globe every year on massive journeys—including across the Sahara

in Scientific American on 2025-04-13 13:00:00 UTC.

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This Robot Copies Life—By Decomposing

A new soft robotic arm and its controller break down naturally

in Scientific American on 2025-04-12 13:00:00 UTC.

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Weekend reads: Scientists won’t submit paper for deportation fears; watchdog: oversight lacking at EPA research group; ‘life after paper mills’

Dear RW readers, can you spare $25?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Math journal editors resign to launch open-access title ‘free from pressure or influence’
• Indian university’s channel on publisher’s platform disappears
• A ‘joke’: Paper with ‘completely irrelevant’ citations retracted
• Replication probe finds ‘statistically improbable data’ tied to institute in Bangladesh

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 58,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List — or our list of nearly 100 papers with evidence they were written by ChatGPT?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

• “Fearing paper on evolution might get them deported, scientists withdrew it.”
• “EPA Research Group Lacks Scientific Oversight, Watchdog Says.”
• “Life After Paper Mills“: James Heathers’ blog post about “the case of the journal Bioengineered.”
• Researchers find “hyperprolific authors tend to produce higher-impact publications on average compared to their peers.”
• Time for a letters to the editor preprint server? 
• “Integrity Concordat restates core values while adapting to change” in the UK.
• “Peer-Review for a Blog Post? My Experience with MetaROR.”
• “The American PubMed is the online library for doctors worldwide. What if the US censors it?”
• “Experts warn ‘AI-written’ paper is latest spin on climate change denial.”
• Researcher of paper on racial bias and newborn mortality rate excluded variable that “undermines the narrative,” his notes say.
• Among 143 replications of 56 experiments, less than half of biomedical research from Brazil was replicable, researchers found.
• “Professor sues MSU, administrators for removal from NIH-funded research.”
• Researchers find “many problems that exist in peer reviews of papers…also exist in peer reviews of peer reviews.”
• “Race to the Bottom: Competition and Quality in Science.”
• “A fight with [its journal] over academic freedom has put the ACSA in crisis.” A link to our coverage.
• “A Win in Ukraine’s Academic ‘Metadata War.’”
• Researchers find “lack of standardization and carelessness” in local ethics committees in Turkey. 
• “Threats to research integrity ‘a global, systemic problem.’”
• “German funder hits scientist with three-year ban on grant bids.”
• Should scientists try to repeat studies looking for a link between vaccines and autism?
• “India’s universities must address growing credibility problems.”
• “How much misconduct should there be in research?”
• “UK academia’s lack of language skills ‘imperils research integrity.’”
• “Peer Review Has Lost Its Human Face. So, What’s Next?”

Upcoming Talks

• “Retractions: On the Rise, But Not Enough” with our Ivan Oransky (April 21, Penn State)
• “Scientific Integrity and Retractions” with our Ivan Oransky (April 24, Georgia State University)

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on X or Bluesky, like us on Facebook, follow us on LinkedIn, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

in Retraction watch on 2025-04-12 10:00:00 UTC.

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HIV, Trans Health, and Covid Research Targeted by Trump Cuts to NIH

An analysis reveals which fields of science and U.S. states are being hit hardest by National Institutes of Health grant terminations

in Scientific American on 2025-04-11 20:15:00 UTC.

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We’re Hiring! Software Developers

Join arXiv! Want to make an impact on open science? Be a part of the team working on arxiv.org, one of the most integral websites for open scholarly communications and scientific discovery.

in arXiv.org blog on 2025-04-11 18:59:17 UTC.

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Crows Are Surprisingly Good at Geometry

Crows can tell the shapes of stars from those of moons and symmetrical quadrilaterals from unsymmetrical ones, new results show

in Scientific American on 2025-04-11 18:00:00 UTC.

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JWST Spots Remains of Alien Planet That Fell into a Star

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope provided a closer look at the aftermath of a star that wreaked violence on its planet

in Scientific American on 2025-04-11 17:45:00 UTC.

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Snakes are often the villains. A new book gives them a fair shake

in Science News: Health & Medicine on 2025-04-11 16:00:00 UTC.

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Dolphins Communicate with ‘Fountains of Pee’

This discovery adds to a growing list of how animals talk with their urine

in Scientific American on 2025-04-11 16:00:00 UTC.

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Dear Breakthrough Prize Billionaires: Fund the Science You’re Watching Trump Destroy

The billionaires behind Facebook and Google can do more than hand out glitzy awards for science. They should fund the research the Trump administration has canned

in Scientific American on 2025-04-11 15:00:00 UTC.

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Three NASA Climate Satellites Are Dying. There’s No Plan to Replace Them

Scientists are increasingly concerned about the future of Earth science under President Donald Trump as three key NASA satellites near the end of their missions with no plan for replacement

in Scientific American on 2025-04-11 14:30:00 UTC.

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An overlooked organ may help the ovary function

in Science News: Health & Medicine on 2025-04-11 14:00:00 UTC.

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Getting Rid of FEMA Will Bankrupt Small Towns

If the Trump administration successfully shutters FEMA, it will bankrupt small towns and force people to move

in Scientific American on 2025-04-11 12:00:00 UTC.

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What Is a Star?

At the lower end, and to the bitter end, defining a star is tougher than you might expect

in Scientific American on 2025-04-11 10:45:00 UTC.

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Noninvasive Prenatal Blood Testing Finds Cancer in Some Pregnant People

Researchers are trying to understand how a common prenatal blood test called NIPT is detecting cancer in some pregnant patients.

in Scientific American on 2025-04-11 10:00:00 UTC.

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Why lead is (still) bad for your brain

Image credit: Ionut Stefan

Talking about lead is boring. I would know, I’ve spent quite a bit of time trudging through papers about lead while writing this post and the best opening I could come up with is just how mind-numbingly boring lead is. Sadly, boredom isn’t a good indicator for importance. While the days of enthusiastically throwing lead into whatever we could (from water pipes to gasoline to cosmetics to paints for houses and children’s toys) are over, the lead we’ve pumped into the environment doesn’t give up so easily. And if that wasn’t enough, we’ve still found some use cases to keep it hanging around (why yes, I’m talking about batteries).

Ok, but how bad can it really be? The levels of lead are surely not as high anymore, so it’s not really that dangerous, right? Well… short answer: it’s a bit more complicated. The long answer is the rest of the article.

What is lead?

Lead is a heavy metal. (Little side note: until the writing of this article, I’ve taken the term “heavy metal” pretty much for granted, because everyone knows what a heavy metal is, right? Right? Well… apparently there’s quite a bit of ambiguity surrounding the term, but lead is one of the few who meets all of the definitions out there. And heavy typically refers to dense and/or less chemically reactive, i.e. not interested in playing well with others.) So lead is a heavy metal and it’s found naturally in the ground. What makes it pretty neat is that it’s both malleable, but also durable and versatile.

What makes it less neat is that it’s so malleable, versatile, durable, and toxic. As I mentioned in the beginning, lead has been used in a lot of products. And it’s been used since as far back as Roman times. The problem is that lead is so durable, it basically doesn’t degrade. You see, unlike other fun toxic metals, such as mercury (which can be converted in less toxic forms by bacteria), lead is resistant to chemical breakdown, so once you’ve got lead particles in the environment, they will stay there kind of forever, unless you actively remove them somehow. In other words, even if we were to completely stop mining for and using lead (which we aren’t, since the lead-acid battery market is projected to increase in the next years), we would still need to deal in a safe manner with what has been put out there.

Of course, since we’ve stopped putting lead in gasoline (and paints, and cosmetics etc.), things have improved. For example, in the US, levels of lead in blood samples have markedly decreased since 1976. But a decrease doesn’t mean they’ve reached zero. And while many things with negative effects don’t really harm you in small doses, lead isn’t one of them. There is no safe level of lead exposure. What’s more, an average decrease in the US population doesn’t translate into a decrease of the same magnitude across the world, or even across various subgroups of the US population.

Effects of lead and mechanisms behind them

We’ve already established that no amount of lead is safe, but still, the effects of lead exposure on the nervous system don’t occur in an all or nothing manner. They depend strongly both on the level of lead to which one is exposed (more is worse), and the developmental period when exposure occurs (children are more affected than adults).

Lead usually enters the body via one of two routes: either the gut or the lungs. Children absorb more lead than adults because their gut and lung linings are immature compared to adults, allowing more lead to pass through. They also need more iron, calcium, and zinc, metals with which lead is in direct competition (and obviously winning). In addition, small children can be simply more exposed to lead as they have the tendency to put both their unwashed hands, as well as potentially contaminated objects, in their mouths.

While the half-life of lead in the blood (meaning the amount of time needed for the concentration to drop to half) is relatively short, at only 28 days, that’s not the same as the half-life in the body. Some of the lead in the blood will not be eliminated, but it will actually go into the soft tissue, i.e. kidneys, liver, brain, where the half-life is a few months, and more annoyingly, into the bones, where the half-life is between 10 to 30 years. What’s more, from here, lead can leach back into the bloodstream, from where it can once again get into the soft tissue and cause more damage. This happens particularly in pregnancy, thus affecting the unborn babies, but it also occurs during normal ageing, and even more so in conditions such as osteoporosis.

Now, acute effects of lead exposure are pretty clear. If someone were to chomp down on a piece of lead, it would result in seizures, coma, and possibly death. But obviously that’s an unrealistic scenario and not what most people are exposed to. Chronic lead exposure, on the other hand, causes lead to accumulate in the body and it has been linked to memory problems (including development of Alzheimer’s disease later in life), as well as cognitive and behavioural problems, including attention deficits, increased aggression, learning problems, and decreased IQ. But here’s the kicker: in the past, these problems were thought to appear only above certain concentrations: above 10 μg/dL, above 5 μg/dL, above 3.5 μg/dL… And yes, the higher the concentration, the worse the effects. Nevertheless, as research has progressed, it’s become clearer and clearer that there is no safe exposure to lead. Even very small concentrations can cause neurological effects.

But what are the molecular mechanisms behind that? (Side note: directly relating one specific molecular disruption to one specific behavioural outcome doesn’t really work, but we can correlate the effects we observe at the behavioural level with the in vitro molecular data to get a clearer picture of how lead wreaks havoc on the nervous system.) So far, three main ones have been identified. Lead alters the fluidity of the cellular membrane, it interferes with calcium-based processes, and it generates reactive oxygen species.

Regarding the cellular membrane, it’s important to understand that it is neither static, nor uniform. On the one hand, there are many proteins embedded in the membrane that basically move around to where they’re needed. On the other hand, the cell membrane has a lot of traffic in the sense of vesicles that either fuse with it, or bud off from it. In particular for neurons, think of synaptic transmission: vesicles from inside the membrane fuse with it to release neurotransmitters, then new ones form where more neurotransmitters are packed, and all this happens under strict control from membrane proteins. To ensure optimal functioning of this process, the fluidity of the membrane needs to be just right: either too much or too little will mess things up.

Calcium is an ion which plays a very important role in regulating synaptic transmission and thus facilitating communication between neurons. Sadly for it, calcium resembles lead quite a lot, so proteins can easily mistake them, and lead forms stronger bonds with these proteins. But while lead can easily steal calcium’s spot, due to small differences in chemical behaviour and in shape, it’s not able to perform the same functions. Instead, it kind of remains stuck in there and jams the system.

Finally, reactive oxygen species, or free radicals, as you might know them, appear partly because of lead’s interference with calcium signaling, but also because lead inhibits antioxidant enzymes, and disrupts mitochondrial function. Reactive oxygen species, in turn, can damage DNA, lipids, and proteins, further exacerbating negative effects in the nervous system.

What is there to do?

Panic for the sake of panic is useless (one could even say it’s harmful). So what can we do? First, we said the effects are worse in children, so if they were exposed to lead, is that it? Are they pretty much doomed to suffer the consequences? Not necessarily. Some studies show that enriched environments and early behavioural interventions can reverse some, if not all effects associated with early life lead exposure.

Still, prevention is better than intervention, but you might be wondering, how big of a thing is lead exposure still? After all, we figured out a long time ago that lead isn’t good for us (even the Romans knew that) and we’ve already done a lot to get rid of it, no? Well, yes and no. There have been real improvements, especially in removing lead from gasoline, paint, and plumbing. But, as with a lot of other issues, it tends to come down to where you live. As you can imagine, there are relatively pronounced differences between countries, but even within the same one, your ZIP code still matters. Older housing, industrial sites, ageing infrastructure, and underfunded communities all play a role in how much lead still lingers in your air, water, soil, and body.

A few steps to keep in mind for protecting yourself against lead exposure are the following. If you think you might have lead in your home paint or pipes, try to get rid of them in a safe way. If you know there’s lead somewhere in your community, try to get involved and push for programs that promote its removal. And even if the issue doesn’t directly impact you, you can still volunteer to help those who might suffer from it.

What did you think about this post? Let us know in the comments below. And if you’d like to support our work, feel free to share it with your friends, buy us a coffee here, or even both.

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References

GlobeNewswire. (2025, March 18). Automotive lead-acid battery market to reach USD 40.60 billion by 2032, driven by sustained demand in conventional vehicles and emerging economies: SNS Insider. Link [Last retrieved: 2025-04-10]

Lee, J. W., Choi, H., Hwang, U. K., Kang, J. C., Kang, Y. J., Kim, K. I., & Kim, J. H. (2019). Toxic effects of lead exposure on bioaccumulation, oxidative stress, neurotoxicity, and immune responses in fish: A review. Environmental toxicology and pharmacology, 68, 101-108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.etap.2019.03.010

Moodie, S., Ialongo, N., López, P., Rosado, J., García-Vargas, G., Ronquillo, D., & Kordas, K. (2013). The conjoint influence of home enriched environment and lead exposure on children’s cognition and behaviour in a Mexican lead smelter community. Neurotoxicology, 34, 33-41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuro.2012.10.004

Rocha, A., & Trujillo, K. A. (2019). Neurotoxicity of low-level lead exposure: History, mechanisms of action, and behavioral effects in humans and preclinical models. Neurotoxicology, 73, 58-80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuro.2019.02.021

Spivey, A. (2007). The weight of lead: Effects add up in adults. https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.115-a30

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2023). Biomonitoring: Lead indicators – America’s Children and the Environment. Link [Last retrieved: 2025-04-10]

Verstraeten, S. V., Aimo, L., & Oteiza, P. I. (2008). Aluminium and lead: molecular mechanisms of brain toxicity. Archives of toxicology, 82, 789-802. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00204-008-0345-3

Wikipedia contributors. (2025, April 10). Heavy metals. Wikipedia. Link [Last retrieved: 2025-04-10]

The post Why lead is (still) bad for your brain appeared first on Neurofrontiers.

in Neurofrontiers on 2025-04-11 07:55:14 UTC.

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Schneider Shorts 11.04.2025 – Many people’s lives depend on it

in For Better Science on 2025-04-11 05:00:00 UTC.

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As federal funders desert mentorship programs for marginalized students, trainee-led initiatives fill the gap

in The Transmitter on 2025-04-11 04:00:14 UTC.

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Replication probe finds ‘statistically improbable data’ tied to institute in Bangladesh

A Bangladesh-based organization focused on development economics and its founder have been churning out papers filled with misstatements, inconsistencies, ethical lapses and “statistically improbable data,” according to researchers involved in an ongoing effort to replicate the work.

One journal has already retracted a paper for falsely claiming to describe a randomized, controlled trial and data collection that failed to adhere to the journal’s ethical guidelines. The study, published in the European Economic Review, was retracted following a March 11 report from the Institute for Replication, or I4R. The group is conducting a broader probe into the Global Development & Research Initiative (GDRI), the organization that implemented the intervention described in the paper.

GDRI’s founder and the study’s sole author is Asad Islam, a developmental economist at Monash University in Australia. Since 2022, Islam has received over $2 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and other organizations, according to a copy of his resume. Islam did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the retraction or the broader concerns about the work. But in a statement posted to his now-deleted account on X, he wrote: 

Given the volume of requests and the complexity of the issues raised, my team and I are diligently reviewing every point to ensure a comprehensive and accurate response. At this stage, these remain allegations, and I urge everyone to allow me the necessary time to address them fully.

Abel Brodeur, the chair of I4R and an economist at the University of Ottawa, said the probe into the GDRI began in November, following a tip from a whistleblower. 

Brodeur enlisted expert volunteers and assigned them to small teams to review five studies with ties to GDRI. Their job was to review the publicly available data and analysis code and look for any irregularities.

I4R’s review has since expanded to more than 30 studies and working papers listed on Islam’s personal website, resume, and other sources because of overlap in the data sets and concerns that have arisen along the way, according to Brodeur. I4R has requested data for many of these projects, but it only attempts to reproduce papers once they have been published. The group has completed 10 reports so far, releasing five of them along with a response from the original authors.

“The I4R has reproduced hundreds of studies over the past three years, and we’ve never seen anything of this scale,” said Brodeur.

Since the probe began, Islam and his coauthors have withdrawn two studies that had been accepted for publication at Economic Development and Cultural Change and Journal of the European Economic Association and another study that had recently been submitted, according to I4R’s correspondence with the journals.

Several of Islam’s coauthors have either withdrawn their names from published studies, citing the problems raised by I4R, or they have indicated that Islam is no longer involved in research initiated with him. For example, when I4R requested a replication package for a manuscript in review on gender norms in the workplace, development economist Emily Beam of the University of Vermont responded, “Asad [Islam]… is no longer involved with this project, and the three of us are completing it without him.” (Beam did not respond to a request for comment.) 

For a 2021 study published by PLOS One, I4R was unable to reproduce the study’s result regarding the correlation between food insecurity and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. After I4R shared its findings with the authors, all three authors, including Islam, withdrew their authorship, according to correspondence with I4R. 

Asked about the status of the paper, David Knutson, head of communications for PLOS, said that he was unable to comment on it because it was an “ongoing case,” but he noted that “withdrawal of authorship is not considered by PLOS or by COPE to be a suitable means of responding to concerns about the integrity, validity, or reproducibility of published results.”

The one paper retracted so far, published in 2019 European Economic Review, an Elsevier journal, has been cited 21 times. It claimed to show parent-teacher meetings were a “low-cost strategy” that could produce dramatic gains in students’ test scores.

When Brodeur’s team examined the Islam’s statistical analysis code published with the original paper, they noticed an annotation that read “try to balance the baseline.” 

“This remark prompted us to investigate the study closely for data irregularities, especially in the baseline data,” Brodeur and his colleagues wrote in their report, which the journal published April 3. Indeed, the baseline scores appeared to have been altered to generate significant results during the follow-up. As the team put it:

Our analysis uncovered several data irregularities that severely question the validity and, thus, the credibility of the original study’s findings. First and foremost, we find that the school-level treatment allocation has a clear non-random spatial pattern. We demonstrate using permutation tests that the observed allocation is extremely unlikely to have occurred by the school-level randomization described in Islam (2019). Second, baseline test scores for the same students differ systematically across datasets, with discrepancies varying between the treatment and control groups.

In his response to the replication report, Islam said he stood by the study and its results. He claimed the contractor on the project had failed to follow his instructions to randomize the schools and stated the comment about balancing the baseline was written by an undergraduate student and was “never acted upon.”

When Brodeur’s team asked Islam to provide the underlying data and code from another study, Islam pointed them to the GDRI, which he described as “an NGO that helped us collect the data, but it does not store the data for an extended period.” He added, “we might not have alternative options available at this time.”

Islam is the founder of GDRI and its predecessor, the Initiative for Development Research and Implementation, according to archived versions of the organization’s website, his resume and his personal homepage from 2018 and 2019.

“I grew up in a rural village in Bangladesh,”  he wrote on his personal homepage. “I believe my childhood in a remote rural village and experience working with NGOs and development research organization [sic] helped me to understand better of what I do [sic], and what works in development!”

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on X or Bluesky, like us on Facebook, follow us on LinkedIn, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

in Retraction watch on 2025-04-10 20:57:45 UTC.

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Measles Outbreak in U.S. May Undo Formal ‘Elimination’ Status

The U.S. formally eliminated measles in 2000 thanks to widespread vaccination, but public health experts fear the current growing outbreak of the disease may allow it to reclaim its hold

in Scientific American on 2025-04-10 20:30:00 UTC.

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Why Trump Just Axed a Major Climate Program

The dismemberment of the U.S. Global Change Research Program was outlined in Project 2025 as a way to elevate the “benefits” of climate change when fighting regulations in court

in Scientific American on 2025-04-10 19:30:00 UTC.

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AI Will Drive Doubling of Data Center Energy Demand by 2030

Data centers accounted for about 1.5 percent of global electricity consumption in 2024, an amount expected to double by 2030 because of AI use

in Scientific American on 2025-04-10 19:15:00 UTC.

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Trump’s Immigration Tactics Leave U.S. Vulnerable to Bird Flu Spread

As the bird flu outbreak continues, public health outreach to farm workers is meeting fear and resistance amid Trump’s attacks on immigrants

in Scientific American on 2025-04-10 18:05:00 UTC.

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Denisovan Fossil Shows Enigmatic Hominins Lived from Siberia to Subtropics

The third confirmed location of extinct hominins known as Denisovans shows these human cousins adapted to an impressive range of environments

in Scientific American on 2025-04-10 18:00:00 UTC.

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Jared Isaacman, Trump’s Top NASA Nominee, Sets a Course for Mars

Billionaire entrepreneur and private astronaut Jared Isaacman told the U.S. Senate that, under his leadership, NASA will return humans to the moon while also prepping for crewed voyages to the Red Planet

in Scientific American on 2025-04-10 16:00:00 UTC.

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Biggest Brain Map Ever Shows Mouse Neurons in Stunning Detail

Neuroscientists have created the largest and most detailed map of a mammal’s brain in a landmark achievement

in Scientific American on 2025-04-10 15:30:00 UTC.

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A shadowy market for weight-loss drugs has emerged online

in Science News: Health & Medicine on 2025-04-10 15:00:00 UTC.

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Long after Her Tragic Death, We Follow in the Footsteps of the Dominican Republic’s First Female Doctor

The regime of dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo all but erased Andrea Evangelina Rodríguez Perozo’s legacy after she died. But since his assassination in 1961, Dominicans have been gradually reclaiming her story

in Scientific American on 2025-04-10 15:00:00 UTC.

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A Day on Uranus Is Longer Than We Thought, Hubble Telescope Reveals

A new way to measure the length of Uranus’s day could also help determine the rotation rates of other celestial objects—including exoplanets

in Scientific American on 2025-04-10 14:00:00 UTC.

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Memory manipulation is the stuff of sci-fi. Someday it could be real

in Science News: Health & Medicine on 2025-04-10 13:00:00 UTC.

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New tapeworm species discovered in oval squid

in OIST Japan on 2025-04-10 12:00:00 UTC.

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Black Communities Affected By Opioids Have Been Mostly Ignored in Settlements

The settlements that have come out of opioid lawsuits should be going to communities affected most. This isn’t what’s happening for Black communities

in Scientific American on 2025-04-10 12:00:00 UTC.

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Scientists Need to Speak Out beyond the Classroom and the Lab

Science cannot operate like a black box and expect the trust of the public

in Scientific American on 2025-04-10 11:30:00 UTC.

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Split gene therapy delivers promise in mice modeling Dravet syndrome

in The Transmitter on 2025-04-10 04:00:51 UTC.

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U.S. human data repositories ‘under review’ for gender identity descriptors

in The Transmitter on 2025-04-09 20:51:36 UTC.

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AI Report Highlights Smaller, Better, Cheaper Models

A state of the AI industry report shows that 2024 was a breakthrough year for small, sleek models to rival the behemoths

in Scientific American on 2025-04-09 20:45:00 UTC.

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Trump Freezes Cornell Funding, Compromises U.S. Military Safety

Cornell is being slammed with stop-work orders that will seriously impact department of defense research linked to the Air Force and military safety, sources tell Scientific American

in Scientific American on 2025-04-09 20:30:00 UTC.

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A ‘joke’: Paper with ‘completely irrelevant’ citations retracted

A paper that made the rounds last year for its blatantly “irrelevant” citations has now been retracted. 

Elsevier’s International Journal of Hydrogen Energy published “Origin of the distinct site occupations of H atom in hcp Ti and Zr/Hf” in November 2024.

Paragraph seven of the introduction consists of a single sentence: “As strongly requested by the reviewers, here we cite some references [35-47] although they are completely irrelevant to the present work.” One of the authors told us they included the references as a “joke” after reviewers pressured them.

All 13 of the references include Sergei Trukhanov as an author, and all but one also includes Alex Trukhanov. 

According to his most recent paper, Alex Trukhanov is affiliated with the Scientific-Practical Materials Research Centre of NAS of Belarus in Minsk. Sergei Trukhanov is listed as a researcher at the National University of Science and Technology in Moscow on his most recent paper. Neither responded to our request for comment. 

According to the retraction notice, “the authors were requested by two of the reviewers to insert redundant references. The peer review process is deemed to have been compromised.” The notice also states the reviewers responsible for the citation prompting have been removed from the “journal database, so that they cannot review papers in the future.”

Qing-Miao Hu, one of the corresponding authors of the paper and a professor at the Institute of Metal Research Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shenyang, told us in an email he did not want to speculate who the reviewers were. “There are quite a few such kind of reviewers, and the authors suffer from them a lot in recent years,” Hu added.

Hu said the reviewers asked the researchers to add the citations during their second round of edits. He said the phrasing was “to make a joke with the reviewers,” and that they didn’t expect the manuscript “with such a statement” to be accepted for publication. “We were annoyed but did not felt [sic] pressured to add the citation,” Hu said. 

A spokesperson for Elsevier told us they were “currently investigating this matter and cannot comment on open investigations.” 

The International Journal of Hydrogen Energy has appeared in Retraction Watch before. In 2023, we reported the journal was one of a handful that published papers by an apparently nonexistent author. In 2017, the journal retracted several papers over fake peer reviews.   

The authors have already resubmitted the paper to the same journal, Hu said, and agreed with the retraction “because it was indeed published without a normal peer review.”

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on X or Bluesky, like us on Facebook, follow us on LinkedIn, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

in Retraction watch on 2025-04-09 18:27:52 UTC.

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Trump's Executive Orders on Coal Call for More Mining and Weaker Pollution Limits

President Donald Trump signed executive orders on Tuesday that keep aging coal generators running and undermine efforts to rein in pollution, including mercury and arsenic emissions

in Scientific American on 2025-04-09 16:30:00 UTC.

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Firing the Scientists Who Make Working Safe Is Foolish

The Trump administration’s mass federal firings include the scientific investigators who make dangerous workplaces safe for millions of people

in Scientific American on 2025-04-09 15:30:00 UTC.

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Inhibitory cells work in concert to orchestrate neuronal activity in mouse brain

in The Transmitter on 2025-04-09 15:00:25 UTC.

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Why Social Media Screen Time Is So Bad for Sleep

Scrolling on social media at bedtime is particularly disruptive to sleep. Here’s why

in Scientific American on 2025-04-09 14:15:00 UTC.

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Mpox Outbreak in Africa Traced Back to Squirrels

A team of researchers traced the wild animal source of the mpox virus to the fire-footed rope squirrel

in Scientific American on 2025-04-09 13:00:00 UTC.

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人工進化が生んだ超高親和性 RNA–タンパク質ペアの構造基盤解明

in OIST Japan on 2025-04-09 12:00:00 UTC.

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This More Than 380-Year-Old Trick Can Crack Some Modern Encryption

A little math from the 1600s can make what people send to a printer more vulnerable

in Scientific American on 2025-04-09 12:00:00 UTC.

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Why People Feel More Energized with Less Sleep

People on TikTok and other social media say they feel more alert when they have had fewer hours of sleep—but sleep scientists warn this is a false sense of energy

in Scientific American on 2025-04-09 11:30:00 UTC.

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JWST Spots Giant Spiral Galaxy Shockingly Early in Cosmic History

Nicknamed the “Big Wheel,” a giant, spiral-shaped disk galaxy was spotted in an unusually crowded part of the early universe just two billion years after the big bang

in Scientific American on 2025-04-09 11:00:00 UTC.

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If Bacterial Vaginosis Acts like an STI, Should It Be Treated like One?

Bacterial vaginosis is an irritating overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria. A new study has found that some cases of the condition should be treated like a sexually transmitted infection.

in Scientific American on 2025-04-09 10:00:00 UTC.