Planet Neuroscientists

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A global leader in neurology and neuroscience

in For Better Science on 2025-09-24 05:00:00 UTC.

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Ann Kennedy explains the theoretical neuroscience of survival behaviors

in The Transmitter on 2025-09-24 04:00:49 UTC.

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Local circuit loops within body control fly behavior, new ‘embodied’ connectome reveals

in The Transmitter on 2025-09-24 04:00:33 UTC.

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We Can Stop Teen Suicide

By understanding warning signs and talking to your child, parents can help reduce the risk of teen suicide

in Scientific American on 2025-09-24 03:00:00 UTC.

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Study on apple cider vinegar for weight loss retracted after many raise concerns

Easy fixes for complex health problems can be tempting — but they rarely pan out. That seems to be the case for the investigators on one clinical trial who claimed consuming apple cider vinegar caused obese teens and young adults to lose weight. 

Their article appeared in March 2024 in BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health. The journal is retracting the paper “because the authors’ analyses could not be replicated and multiple errors were identified,” according to the retraction notice.

The retraction, dated September 23, comes more than a year after sleuths pointed out some of these errors and other problems with the analysis. 

The paper was covered widely when it was published, though some outlets gave context for the unreliability of this type of research when they mentioned it. It has been cited three times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. 

The study found that overweight and obese people who consumed apple cider vinegar daily for 12 weeks lost an average of 6 to 8 kilograms and their BMI dropped by an average of 2.7 to 3.0 points.

If the claims were true, apple cider vinegar would be 50 percent more effective than GLP-1 agonists such as Ozempic, said James Heathers, a research integrity consultant and director of the Medical Evidence Project (an initiative of The Center for Scientific Integrity, the parent nonprofit of Retraction Watch). 

Rony Abou-Khalil, corresponding author on both the paper and the response, did not respond to our requests for comment. He is listed as the head of the department of biology at Holy Spirit University of Kaslik, in Lebanon.

Heathers started looking into the paper shortly after it was published, and published an analysis describing flaws in the study in May 2024. He described the nearly identical age and BMI distributions within each 30-person experimental group as “unlikely.”

Although researchers want each group to have similar characteristics, randomly assigning participants would usually result in more variation between the groups than seen in the study. The age, height and weight are “almost identical between the randomized [groups of] participants,” he wrote. “This extreme uniformity likely represents a failure of randomization, although it is unclear how this arose.”

He went on to describe other flaws with the statistical analysis in the paper, and pointed out the authors didn’t include their original dataset with the publication. 

After reading Heathers’ assessment, Vahid Malbouby at Boise State University and Eric Trexler at Duke University wrote to him citing additional problems with the paper. For example, other studies do not support the claim that apple cider vinegar raises basal metabolic rate even at higher doses than used in the study. The three wrote a letter to the journal detailing their concerns, which they submitted in June 2024 and the journal published in February of this year.

Five rapid responses posted on the article in September and October 2024 questioned the statistical analysis conducted in the paper, as well as problems with the study’s design. One such concern is that each experimental group included participants ages 12 to 25 years. This large range of ages including both children and adults could confound the results, “in that BMI and weight change is very different in a 12 year old who is still likely to be growing and a 25 year old,” according to a response authored by Duane D. Mellor, a dietitian at Aston University in England. 

Mellor also pointed out “there is no statement of trial registration, no CONSORT flowchart and now [sic] CONSORT checklist.“ Many publishers, including BMJ, require authors to provide these documents before publishing the research to ensure the validity and transparency of the findings. 

In December 2024, the journal published a letter from two of the paper’s original three authors. The authors cited papers to justify their original statistical analysis, the biological plausibility of such a large effect, and the unusual data distributions. They concluded, “we assert that the methodologies employed in our study were appropriate and supported by existing literature.”

Given how long ago serious flaws were identified, “it is disappointing that an expression of concern had not been posted to the article,” said Andrew W. Brown, an associate professor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and director of biostatistics for the Arkansas Children’s Research Institute, who studies pediatrics, nutrition and obesity. “That left a window of time when a reader may have been misled by the work while it was being evaluated.”

In addition to the paper’s analyses not being replicable, the retraction notice identifies other issues as well: “The authors supplied dataset also demonstrated patterns inconsistent with random allocation of participants to treatment groups, improbably small p-values given the limited number of participants included in the study.”

According to the notice, “the authors state that the discrepancies were honest mistakes that arose from version mismatches, data rounding or formatting differences when exporting from statistical software to reporting spreadsheets. However, the authors agree with the decision to retract the work.” 

In a statement, Helen Macdonald, publication ethics and content integrity editor at BMJ Group, said: “While we deal with allegations as swiftly as possible, it’s very important that due process is followed. Investigations are often complex. This one involved detailed scrutiny of data and correspondence with researchers, institutions, and other experts, for example. Reaching a sound and fair and final decision can therefore take several months.”

Regarding the fact that the journal published the study without clinical trial registration, Martin Kohlmeier, editor-in-chief of BMJ Nutrition Prevention & Health, said in the same statement, “In hindsight, this was the wrong decision to make. But the authors come from a scientific environment that is underrepresented in nutritional research and the journal aims to prioritise high quality evidence, which usually comes from clinical trials.”

Flawed clinical trials are not uncommon in the field of nutrition, Brown told us. “I am glad to see the retraction of this paper to uphold the integrity of the field, but we need to do better in the field of nutrition to register, design, conduct, and report trials to a high standard before publication,” he said.

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 2025-09-23 22:30:00 UTC.

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With little proof, Trump links Tylenol to autism and touts a treatment

in Science News: Health & Medicine on 2025-09-23 19:20:57 UTC.

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The Moon Is Rusting—Thanks to ‘Wind’ Blown from Earth

Lunar minerals can rust when bombarded with high-energy oxygen particles, experiments show

in Scientific American on 2025-09-23 17:30:00 UTC.

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Second study using ‘Tin Man Syndrome’ X-ray under scrutiny following Retraction Watch inquiry

Just as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was the first of 14 books in a series, our recent coverage of a paper on “Tin Man syndrome” seems to have sequels. After we wrote about a case study describing a man with his heart in his abdomen retracted for plagiarizing images from an April Fools’ joke, a reader flagged yet another paper using the same image.

As we previously reported, the authors of a “rare case report” appearing in Medicine claimed they had encountered a case of a man with asymptomatic “ectopia cordis interna,” in which his heart was in his abdomen. After the article was retracted, the corresponding author admitted the photos had been taken from a 2015 April Fools’ paper in Radiopaedia describing the same (fictitious) condition.

Following that coverage, a reader did a reverse image search of the X-ray in both papers and found a 2021 article from Scientific Programming, published by Wiley. The study recommends a non-conventional ventilation option for treating neonatal respiratory distress syndrome. The paper has been cited twice, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. 

Figure 2 of the paper purports to show a neonate X-ray where the “heart contour of diaphragm was not seen.” David Sanders, an image expert and biologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., told us it “is indisputable” that the figure “derives from” the Tin Man Syndrome hoax paper. Aside from similarities within the image itself, Sanders pointed to the label in the upper right hand corner, which has helped us identify other instances of reuse. 

On September 9, a spokesperson from Wiley, which publishes Scientific Programming, told us they had initiated an investigation after we flagged concerns.

Sanders said the paper has even more flaws.The references of the paper “are a mess,” including number 8, which describes an algorithm for removing shadows of moving objects. Reference 5, which the authors point to when sourcing the term “white lung,” makes no mention of the condition. 

Corresponding author Xin Chen, a researcher at The First Affiliated Hospital of Bengbu Medical College in China, did not respond to our request for comment. 

Chen and two coauthors on the Scientific Programming article lost a paper in 2022 from the Journal of Healthcare Engineering, a Wiley title formerly owned by Hindawi, which Wiley acquired in 2021. The retraction notice says the paper was investigated by the Hindawi Research Integrity team, which raised concerns “that the peer review process has been compromised.”

Wiley has retracted over 11,000 papers in journals it acquired from Hindawi, a known target of paper mill activity.

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 2025-09-23 15:35:30 UTC.

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The Global Burden of RSV

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) continues to affect infants and older and immunocompromised people around the world. These graphics reveal where the burden lies and what the effects of immunizations are

in Scientific American on 2025-09-23 13:00:00 UTC.

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The Fight to End Childhood RSV in Indian Country

American Indian and Alaska Native infants experience the highest rates of RSV-related hospitalization in the U.S., but a breakthrough immunization is helping to close the gap

in Scientific American on 2025-09-23 13:00:00 UTC.

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New RSV Preventatives Dramatically Reduce Infant Illness and Death

The year 2023 marked the debut of groundbreaking innovations to prevent severe RSV infections in infants. Now protected babies are way less likely to develop severe infections or to end up in the ICU

in Scientific American on 2025-09-23 13:00:00 UTC.

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How Indigenous Storytelling Is Transforming RSV Care in Native Communities

Abigail Echo-Hawk, a preeminent Native American public health expert, discusses RSV, “data genocide” and positive change driven by Indigenous storytelling

in Scientific American on 2025-09-23 13:00:00 UTC.

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The Promise of RSV Prevention

RSV is the leading cause of infant hospitalizations in the U.S. But that could soon change as research advances lead to new preventative drugs for everyone

in Scientific American on 2025-09-23 13:00:00 UTC.

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A Long Road to an RSV Antibody to Protect the Most Vulnerable

A tragic RSV vaccine trial in the 1960s set the field back for decades. Here’s how scientists finally made breakthroughs in RSV immunization

in Scientific American on 2025-09-23 13:00:00 UTC.

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The Final RSV Frontier Is within Reach

The journey toward an RSV vaccine for children has been wrought with tragedy and setbacks. But six decades after scientists embarked on that path, they are nearing the finish line

in Scientific American on 2025-09-23 13:00:00 UTC.

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James Webb Space Telescope Finds Atmosphere on Lava Planet TOI-561 b

Hot, small and old—exoplanet TOI-561 b is just about the worst place to look for alien air. Scientists using JWST found it there anyway

in Scientific American on 2025-09-23 11:25:00 UTC.

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Save the date & join us for the Copim Conference 2026! Exploring the future of community-led open access books. 26-27 February 2026 @ Loughborough London Campus and online | Copim Community

in Open Access Tracking Project: news on 2025-09-23 05:10:00 UTC.

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‘What Is Intelligence?’: An excerpt

in The Transmitter on 2025-09-23 04:00:44 UTC.

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Impaired sensory learning in a mouse model of fragile X syndrome; and more

in The Transmitter on 2025-09-23 04:00:44 UTC.

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Alzheimer’s paper retracted over apparent image duplication

in The Transmitter on 2025-09-23 04:00:20 UTC.

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Tylenol Is Popular and Safe, Yet Nobody Knows How It Works

The common pain reliever is safe when used as directed, research shows. But scientists remain puzzled by one aspect: how it reduces pain and fever

in Scientific American on 2025-09-22 22:40:00 UTC.

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Zbąszyń

The mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss invented the heliotrope for long-distance surveying in 1821. Just a year later, he proved that least squares regression provided the BLUE estimator for data with uncorrelated Gaussian errors (with mean zero and equal variance). The heliotrope tool and the least squares method allowed Gauss to perform a geodetic survey of the Kingdom of Hanover by triangulation between 1821 and 1825, an unprecedented accomplishment at the time.

Gauss’ approach was scaled up massively by Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, who in 1838 published an epic triangulation based survey of East Prussia and parts of Russia in Gradmessung in Ostpreußen und ihre Verbindung mit Preußischen und Russischen Dreiecksketten. His work included understanding for the first time how to calculate the standard error of the mean (which led him to introduce Bessel’s correction), providing an important assessment of how errors in individual measurements during triangulation contributed to overall errors from the least squares procedure. The scale of his survey (~3x Hanover) was arguably also the first use of statistics for big data. Bessel may have been the first ̶m̶a̶c̶h̶i̶n̶e̶ ̶l̶e̶a̶r̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ AI disruptor in history. And he did it not from silicon valley but from Königsberg (now Kaliningrad).

Bessel’s work enabled the completion of the first cross-country rail line linking a Western European capital to an Eastern European capital. The rail line, between Berlin and Warsaw, was completed in 1848 and was a quantum leap after the first national long-distance rail between Leipzig and Dresden in the Kingdom of Saxony was completed in 1839. At ~500km, Berlin-Warsaw was much longer than any previous international crossings. The distance was long enough that Bessel was able to use his triangulation to show that the earth is an oblate spheroid (the method dates to 1825) and in 1841 he established the ellipsoid major and minor axes a = 6377397.155 m, b = 6356078.962822 m. His accuracy was amazing; the WGS84 modern world geodetic system from 1984 is almost the same with a = 6378137.0 m, b = 6356752.30 m. As of 2010 the Bessel ellipsoid was still the geodetic system of choice in Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic.

The Berlin-Warsaw line of 1848 crossed the Prussian-Russian border near the Prosna river, west of the town of Łowicz, which is just under 100km west of Warsaw. Warsaw at the time was part of Congress Poland formed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, although by the mid 19th century the territory was fully under Russian administration ruled directly by the Tsar. The border moved in 1919 as a result of the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, when a new Polish Republic was established. At that time the border crossing on the Berlin-Warsaw rail line shifted to the town of Zbąszyń (a medieval Polish name for the town, which the Germans had renamed to Bentschen when the town came under Prussian control in 1793).

In the 19th century Zbąszyń was what today we might today call a “multicultural town”. Out of a population of ~1,300 in 1833, there were 336 Jews (~25%), about 35% Germans, and approximately 40% Poles. In other words, there were more Poles than Germans, but Poles were a minority with respect to Jews and Germans. The percent Jewish population in Zbąszyń, which dates back to at least 1437 when it is known that a Jew named Palto sued a nobleman for failure of repaying a loan, peaked in the early 19th century. The reasons for a decline in Jewish population over a century were manifold, but a major factor was antisemitism, including regular blood libels and pogroms in neighboring cities of which a partial list is the “forgotten” Warsaw pogrom in 1805, pogroms in Gdańsk in 1819 and 1821, the Kalisz pogrom of 1878, the Warsaw pogrom of 1881, the Łódź pogrom of 1892, the Częstochowa pogrom in 1902, and the Białystok and Siedlce pogroms in 1906. Many Jews, including in Zbąszyń, fled west, or even abroad. By 1919 when Zbąszyń became part of the Polish Republic (it was deemed Polish in the Versailles treaty on the basis of a majority Polish population), the Jewish population had declined to under 10%, part of a mass migration from Eastern Europe totaling around 3 million Jews.

One couple that emigrated was Zindel Grynszpan and Rivka Grynszpan, who lived in Dmenin near Radomsko just south of Łódź, and moved to the city of Hanover in the Kingdom of Hanover, Prussia in 1911. The Grynszpans started a family in Hanover and eventually had six children, although only three survived into adulthood. The youngest was a boy named Herschel Feibel born in 1921. The Grynszpans were never German citizens; after the Polish Republic was established in 1919 they were recognized as Polish citizens, since they had been born in what was deemed in 1919 to be Polish territory (although in the 19th century Radomsko was part of the Russian empire). Herschel was born in Hanover, but due to the jus sanguinis principle of the German Citizenship Law which came into effect in 1914 (citizenship by descent, not birthplace), he was a Polish, not German, citizen.

On the 28th of October, 1938, the members of the Grynszpan family, along with thousands of other Polish Jews living in Germany, were deported via train to Zbąszyń, the town that happened to be the border town on the Berlin-Warsaw line.

The conditions of this deportation were horrific. Deportation notices technically gave 24 hours to leave but many individuals were deported minutes after receiving a knock on the door, and were not allowed to bring much more than the clothes on their back. How this came about is a sad and sordid story. On March 31, 1938, a Polish law came into effect that revoked the citizenship of Poles who had lived abroad for more than five years. This law was enacted specifically to prevent Jewish Poles from returning to Poland after the Anschluss, i.e. the German annexation of Austria on March 12, 1938. On the 9th of October Polish authorities added a regulation that required passports issued outside of Poland to receive a special consular stamp in order to be valid. In other words, Polish Jews were being stripped of their citizenship. This served as a pretext for German authorities to kick Polish Ostjuden (eastern Jews) out of Germany, and in what has come to be termed “Polenaktion”, they proceeded to dump Polish Jews, many of whom had just been rendered stateless, at Zbąszyń. Below are two first-hand accounts of what the deportation and arrival in Zbąszyń was like:

Your parents were Ost Juden [East European Jews]. Was your family involved in the expulsion to Zbąszyń?

I am so surprised that nobody mentions this, which happened on the 28th of October, 1938, ten days before the pogrom. In our Jewish school the boys were praying in the morning. The girls didn’t have to, but they had to prepare breakfast for the boys to eat after praying. It was the turn of my friend and I to make the tea and we had to be at school at 7:00 instead of 8:00. I was already dressed and ready to leave the house when I heard knocking at our door. When I opened the door, two tall policemen were standing at the door. They asked, “Where are your parents?” I told them they were asleep. “Wake them up, you are going to Poland.” I answered, “What? What do I have to do with Poland? I was born in Germany.” He said, “Take me to the bedroom of your parents.” They both went into their bedroom and put on the light and said, “Get up. You are going to Poland.” My mother thought it was a bad dream. They said, “Don’t ask questions, you are going to Poland.”

My father thought there was a problem with his income tax returns. My mother told me to wake up my 16-year-old brother. My parents asked why they were going to Poland – could they take something with them? The policemen said, “You are going to such a cultural land.” (When Germans talked about Poland they said “dirty Poles”). “No,” he said, “don’t take anything with you.” My father phoned his brother and asked him to take the keys to our apartment. He asked my father, “What have you done?” My father answered, “Nothing.” My aunt came and took the keys but when she got home, the police were in her house, and they really were sent immediately to Poland.

I will never forget my neighbor. She was a widow. She was wearing her nightgown, had hastily put on her overcoat and was carrying a little handbag. When I asked her why she wasn’t dressed, she told me the police didn’t give her time.

We were taken and crammed in to the gymnastics hall of the Jewish school. We saw all the people we knew from the neighborhood who were of Polish origin. My father had very high blood pressure and he couldn’t breathe. He called a doctor who said, “This man has to go hospital, he can’t be transported.” My brother said, “We will never see you again. We will be in Poland and you will be in Germany.” Every half hour a bus came to take the people to the railway station. My mother didn’t want to push, so we took the next bus and as we got in people were pushed in with us. We were all standing and that way we arrived at the Leipzig railway station. On the way, one woman became crazy. They took us to a siding where they take animals, horses and cows. There were soldiers with bayonets standing every ten meters to make sure we didn’t run away. So you see, at 7:00 in the morning I was a student, and at 5:00, I was a criminal. It was terrible (source: Yad Vashem interview with Miriam Ron)

My dear ones!

You have probably already heard of my fate from Cilli. On October 27 of this year, on a Thursday evening at 9 o’clock, two men came from the Crime Police, demanded my passport, and then placed a deportation document before me to sign and ordered me to accompany them immediately. Cilli and Bernd were already in bed. I had just finished my work and was sitting down to eat, but had to get dressed immediately and go with them. I was so upset I could scarcely speak a word. In all my life I will never forget this moment. I was then immediately locked up in the Castle prison like a criminal. It was a bad night for me. On Friday at 4 o’clock in the afternoon we were taken to the main station under strict guard by Police and SS. Everybody was given two loaves of bread and margarine and was then loaded on the freight cars. It was a cruel picture. Weeping women and children, heart-breaking scenes. We were then taken to the border in sealed cars and under the strictest police guard. When we reached the border at 5 o’clock on Saturday afternoon we were put across. A new terrible scene was revealed here. We spent three days on the platform and in the waiting rooms, 8,000 people. Women and children fainted, went mad, people died, faces as yellow as wax. It was like a cemetery full of dead people. I was also among those who fainted. There was nothing to eat except the dry prison bread, without anything to drink. I never slept at all, for two nights on the platform and one in the waiting room, where I collapsed. There was no room even to stand. The air was pestilential. Women and children were half dead. On the fourth day help at last arrived. Doctors, nurses with medicine, butter and bread from the Jewish Committee in Warsaw. Then we were taken to barracks (military stables) where there was straw on the floor on which we could lie down….

H.J. Fliedner, Die Judenverfolgung in Mannheim 1933-1945 (“The Persecution of the Jews in Mannheim 1933-1945”), II, Stuttgart, 1971, pp. 72-73 (source: Yad Vashem).

In total, around 17,000 Polish Jews living in Germany were deported and left stateless on the Polish border; about 8,000 of those arrived in Zbąszyń. Herschel Grynzspan was not with the rest of his family when they arrived in Zbąszyń, as he had left for Paris in 1936. The story of how Herschel arrived in Paris is briefly as follows: his family had intended for him to emigrate to British Mandate Palestine, but he was refused entry by the British for being too young. His parents therefore decided that he ought to emigrate to Paris instead, where they expected he could find refuge with an uncle and aunt (he was 14 in 1935). He eventually left for Paris, albeit his entry to France was illegal because he had no financial support and it was illegal for Jews to take money out of Germany by the mid 1930s.

On the 3rd of November, 1938, just five days after the arrival of his family in Zbąszyń, Herschel received a postcard from his sister Berta detailing their plight. While the Germans had discarded thousands of Jews in Zbaszyn, Poland was unwilling to accept them into the country. The Jews at the border were therefore effectively stateless and unwanted, squeezed into a border town where they were dumped in horse stables, a flour mill, military barracks, or left to sleep outside in fields. Emanuel Ringer, a social worker who went to Zbąszyń to help wrote the following on December 6, 1938 (full letter here):

“Jews were humiliated to the level of lepers, to citizens of the third class, and as a result we are all visited by terrible tragedy. Zbąszyń was a heavy moral blow against the Jewish population of Poland. And it is for this reason that all the threads lead from the Jewish masses to Zbąszyń and to the Jews who suffer there.”

The text in the postcard from Berta to her brother Herschel is reproduced below (source: Federal Archives, Berlin, R 55/20991, letters to and from Herschel Grynszpan):

Dear Hermann [German rendering of Herschel]!

You will surely have heard of our great misfortune. Let me describe what happened. On Thursday evening, rumours were circulating that all Polish Jews were to be expelled from a city. Even so, we found them difficult to believe. On Thursday evening at 9, a policeman came to us and told us that we should go to the police station with our passports. All together, as we were, we went to the police station accompanied by the policeman. We found almost our entire district gathered there. A police car immediately took us to the city hall. Everyone was taken there. No-one told us what was going on. However, we could see what they had in mind.

Each one of us was handed an expulsion order. We were told we had to leave Germany before the 29th. We were no longer allowed to return home. I begged them to allow me to go home to at least collect a few things. I then left for home, accompanied by a policeman, and packed the most important items of clothing in a suitcase. That’s all that I was able to save.

We don’t have a single penny on us. […] I’ll tell you more next time

Love and kisses from us all

Berta

Zbąszyń, 2nd barracks, Grynszpan

The letter left Herschel distraught and desperate, and his first instinct was to send all his savings to his family. He ended up arguing with his uncle over this plan, and he was persuaded not to do it, due to the low likelihood that the money would make it to his family. Just two days later, on the 6th of November, Herschel departed his uncle’s house announcing he would not return, slept in a hotel, and the next morning, at 9:30am on November 7th, 1938, managed to enter the German embassy in Paris by pretending to have to deliver an important message. Upon entering the office of diplomat Ernst vom Rath, he shot him. He had bought the gun that morning on his way to the embassy.

Two days later, on November 9, 1938, vom Rath died of his wounds. At his funeral he was declared a “blood witness” (Blutzeuge), i.e. a martyr who shed blood for the Nazi cause. In his funeral oration, Joachim von Ribbentrop declared “We understand the challenge, and we accept it.”

The same evening that vom Rath died, the 9th of November, 1938, Joseph Goebbels gave a speech inciting violence against Jews and instructing party officials not to to restrict anti-Jewish riots. Later that night, Reinhard Heydrich sent a teletype from Berlin to Gestapo and police office instructing police not to interfere with demonstrators acting against Jews, telling them to target only Jewish businesses and synagogues, ordering the seizure of Jewish property and instructing fire brigades to let synagogues burn.

That night and the following day More than 1,200 synagogues and prayer halls were burned and/or destroyed across Germany and two hundred or so more in Austria. Jewish cemeteries and schools were desecrated. Thousands of Jewish businesses were looted and sacked. Around 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps. 91 Jews were murdered. The next day Goebbels wrote in his diary “This is one dead man who is costing the Jews dear. Our darling Jews will think twice in the future before simply gunning down German diplomats.”

Below is an example of what remains now of one of the destroyed synagogues (the one in Eisenach, Germany, shown smoldering after Kristallnacht above). This site and others like it are marked on Google Maps these days as “ehemalige Synagoge” (one time synagogue).

In Zbąszyń, the 1851 synagogue (see photos above) is now gone and in its stead there is an apartment building:

The Jewish cemetery in Zbąszyń is today a patch of grass. It was desecrated in 1939, although some of the grave remnants were still there at the end of World War II. Those remains were razed to the ground and liquidated completely in the 1970s. Now, a small memorial stone from 1992 commemorates what the lawn once was. It asks that one honor the site. I visited the place last week on September 13, 2025 and found it to be littered with broken glass bottles and beer cans. While cleaning up the trash I wondered about the futility of the act.

The Gryzbowski brothers were Jews who owned a flour mill in Zbąszyń that they used to house some of the Polenaktion Jews. Two Stolper stones mark the last place they lived in the town. The Polish inscription underneath Rafał Grzybowski’s name translates to “helped the deported during the Polenaktion, deported to the Kutno-Konstancja camp, murdered”.

In 1939, several months after their internment, some of the Jews in Zbąszyń started to be allowed to leave farther east into Poland. Like Rafał Grzybowski, the vast majority of them were almost certainly murdered. Kristallnacht was a prelude to the holocaust, which was a genocide in many acts with many actors. The Nazis found eager partners among the Poles, as evident already in the Białystock and Jedwabne pogroms of 1941 (this history is being erased today). 90% of the Jews in Poland were murdered in the holocaust, amounting to 3 million souls.

The Nazis relied on the high-precision geodetic surveys they had throughout the war. When US Army Major Floyd Hough entered Aachen, the first German city to fall to the Allies, on October 21st, 1944, he found a treasure trove of German maps bundled for evacuation, evidently left behind by German soldiers as they undertook a hasty retreat. The surveys were immediately useful to the Allies, helping artillery units on the front improve their targeting.

But it was the Red Army that liberated Zbąszyń during the Vistula-Oder offensive in January 1945. By the time they arrived there was no longer a Jewish community in Zbąszyń and there has not been one since. More than five centuries of a Jewish community erased by the German-Polish antisemitic vise that squeezed its Jews to death.

in Bits of DNA on 2025-09-22 22:08:17 UTC.

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Autism experts question HHS statements on Tylenol, leucovorin

in The Transmitter on 2025-09-22 21:15:58 UTC.

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Announcing the #SciAmInTheWild Photography Contest Short List

To celebrate Scientific American’s 180th anniversary, we invited readers to place our magazine covers in the wild. See our staff’s favorite submissions

in Scientific American on 2025-09-22 21:00:00 UTC.

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Does Tylenol Use during Pregnancy Cause Autism? What the Research Shows

President Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., have tied Tylenol use during pregnancy and folate deficiencies to rising autism rates—but the evidence is thin

in Scientific American on 2025-09-22 17:30:00 UTC.

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Lung cancer plugs into the mouse brain

in Science News: Health & Medicine on 2025-09-22 17:00:00 UTC.

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Magnitude 4.3 Earthquake Strikes San Francisco Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay Area was rattled early this morning by a magnitude 4.3 earthquake along the Hayward fault line

in Scientific American on 2025-09-22 14:30:00 UTC.

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University email addresses no longer effective bulwark against fake peer review

To guard against identity theft, academic publishers have been using institutional email addresses to verify authors and reviewers are who they say they are. Now, however, findings appearing in a preprint last month on arXiv.org suggest bad actors have found a way to breach this defense – and are routinely doing so.

From a pool of thousands of reviewer profiles set up as part of AI conferences in 2024 and 2025, staff at the nonprofit OpenReview, a platform connecting authors with reviewers, found 94 profiles involving fake identities. In all but two cases, the impostors had used “round-trip-verified” email addresses belonging to the domains of “reputed” universities, the authors write. (The remaining two used “.edu” domains of defunct institutions.) 

Impersonating someone else using an institutional email address “adds another layer of challenge in the detection” of bad actors, said first author Nihar B. Shah of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, who also sits on OpenReview’s board.

Shah told us a presenter at the International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication earlier this month had encouraged greater reliance on institutional emails to help combat paper mills. The new findings suggest “that is not entirely foolproof and so we should try to use multiple different ways together for identity verification.”

Fraudsters already try to impersonate reviewers to make sure articles they or their accomplices wrote get favorable reviews. Other forms of identity theft are also a growing threat to academia. Researchers may find their names on papers they never wrote, or entire journals may be hijacked, swindling authors into paying for useless publications. 

To create a fake institutional email, fraudsters rely on institutions allowing members and visitors to create email aliases, according to the preprint.

“The dishonest researcher gained access to an email of a trusted institution, and created email alias(es) resembling someone else at that institution. Alternatively, the dishonest researcher may ask a co-conspirator at another institution to create such an alias,” the authors write.

Once an email address was secured, the impostor then signed up to review using the other person’s identity, they add.

Embedded in the review system, “the dishonest researcher under this fraudulent identity attempts to get assigned to review papers authored by their true identity. This can sometimes be accomplished by expressing interest in reviewing the paper during bidding. This may alternatively be accomplished by increasing their perceived suitability as a reviewer for the paper by carefully tuning the false reviewer profile or some text in their own paper.”

Some impostors created multiple fake reviewer profiles, the authors note, or teamed “up with another dishonest researcher to favorably review their co-conspirators’ work in exchange for some quid-pro-quo.”

Nobody knows how common identity theft is in academia. Among thousands of legitimate reviewers, the 94 fake profiles are “a relatively small number,” said Andrew McCallum of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, an author of the preprint and the creator of OpenReview. “But of course, even one case is very concerning.”   

In a joint interview, Hylke Koers,  chief information officer of the International Association of Scientific, Technical, & Medical Publishers, or STM, and his colleague Richard Northover, product manager for identity and access at STM, welcomed the new findings from OpenReview.

“They’re very specific about some of the scenarios through which institutional email addresses can still be used for fraudulent purposes,” Koers told us. “I think there’s a call to action for publishers there, but also for research institutes and other parts of the research community to all step up and be much more vigilant about these kinds of scenarios.”

As we wrote in May in a Q&A with Koers, new guidance from the trade organization “suggests identifying “good” and “bad” actors based on what validated information they can provide, using passport validation when all else fails, and creating a common language in publishing circles to address authorship.”

Northover, who also worked on the recommendations, emphasized the need to make individual risk assessments and not be “so restrictive that you would exclude many legitimate scholars from participating.”

“You don’t go from … nothing to everybody needing to provide their retina scan and fingerprints,” he told us. “One example of something that you can use instead of, or as well as, institutional email addresses, would be ORCID with trust markers,” independently verified information such as institutional affiliation and publication record.  

Shah and McCallum said they believe identity theft is happening across different academic fields, with certain ways of picking referees – asking authors for suggestions or relying on open calls, for instance – being particularly ripe for abuse.

Based on his experience with AI conferences, Shah said he estimates about one in 200 reviewer profiles could be fake. Given that reviewers and authors are increasingly being paired using artificial intelligence, he added, developers “should make sure that the AI is far more robust to any kind of gaming.”

As to the 94 fake profiles in OpenReview’s system, they “were all blocked before they could do any real damage,” Shah told us.

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 2025-09-22 13:45:36 UTC.

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‘Almost Impossible’ Deep-Earth Diamonds Confirm How These Gems Form

Seemingly contradictory materials are trapped together in two glittering diamonds from South Africa, shedding light on how diamonds form

in Scientific American on 2025-09-22 13:45:00 UTC.

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Inside the Mysterious Smuggling of the El Ali Meteorite

How a space rock vanished from Africa and showed up for sale across an ocean

in Scientific American on 2025-09-22 11:00:00 UTC.

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Vaccine Panel Overhaul, Head Trauma in Sports, and Strange Reproduction in Ants

A revamped CDC advisory committee faces vaccine debates, studies reveal brain changes in athletes, and climate change drives deadly heat waves across Europe.

in Scientific American on 2025-09-22 10:00:00 UTC.

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Next Open NeuroFedora meeting: 22 September 2025 1300 UTC

Photo by William White on Unsplash.

Please join us at the next regular Open NeuroFedora team meeting on Monday 22 September 2025 at 1300 UTC. The meeting is a public meeting, and open for everyone to attend. You can join us in the Fedora meeting channel on chat.fedoraproject.org (our Matrix instance). Note that you can also access this channel from other Matrix home severs, so you do not have to create a Fedora account just to attend the meeting.

You can use this link to convert the meeting time to your local time. Or, you can also use this command in the terminal:

$ date -d 'Monday, September 22, 2025 13:00 UTC'

The meeting will be chaired by @ankursinha. The agenda for the meeting is:

• New introductions and roll call.
• Tasks from last meeting.
• Open Pagure tickets.
• Python package installability check.
• Package health check.
• Open package reviews check.
• Neuroscience query of the week
• Next meeting day, and chair.
• Open floor.

We hope to see you there!

in NeuroFedora blog on 2025-09-22 09:59:02 UTC.

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In Bad Company

in For Better Science on 2025-09-22 05:00:00 UTC.

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Beyond Newtonian causation in neuroscience: Embracing complex causality

in The Transmitter on 2025-09-22 04:00:08 UTC.

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Weekend reads: Vaccine contamination paper under investigation; Harvard sues Gino for falsifying evidence; fugitive scientist arrested

Dear RW readers, can you spare $25?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Drummond Rennie (1936-2025): A towering figure in medical journals in his own words
• Exclusive: Journal bans drug safety database papers as they flood the literature
• Why has this microRNA review paper been cited more than 2,000 times? 
• Publisher investigating DNA contamination paper that authors say CDC vaccine committee will consider
• Exclusive: Iraqi physicist fired by ministry over massive publishing scam

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 60,000 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?

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

• “Paper by memory institute director garners expression of concern over image integrity.” A correction for the same author we covered in May. 
• “Harvard Sues Ex-HBS Professor Gino for Defamation, Accusing Her of Falsifying Evidence.”
• “Autism and Vaccine Scientist Arrested for Allegedly Stealing $1 Million from CDC.” He was indicted in 2011.
• “A Call for Retraction: How a Journal Condoned Psychedelic Therapy Abuse.”
• “Atlantic Settles Writer’s Suit Over Article It Retracted.”
• “We force people to do things they’re not prepared to do, and we shouldn’t blame them if they do things wrong,” John Ioannidis says of publishing pressure. Plus, his recent paper on “Provenance and Funding of Extremely Cited Biomedical Articles.”
• University “fires tenured professor following investigation into misconduct” at equine lab.
• “Far more authors use AI to write science papers than admit it, publisher reports.”
• “The policy and practice of postpublication critique is seriously neglected in psychology journals,” say researchers.
• “What do researchers acknowledge ChatGPT for in their papers?”
• Researcher creates databases with over 375,000 peer review documents to aid in finding probable review mills.
• “Which studies make headlines – and which remain invisible – often comes down to journal prestige“: An interview with the author of a recent paper on “How Journalists Navigate Predatory Journals.”
• “Scientists write and review papers without getting paid, and their institutions have to pay for access.”
• “‘Shut out’: Journal fires editor after publishing research refuting ‘warming climate.'”
• Insights following a peer review poll: “Researchers ‘polarised’ over use of AI in peer review.” “AI peer review needs to be peer-reviewed.” “Lack of geographic diversity in peer review skews ‘publishable’ research.”
• Why NIH’s caps on article processing charges “could backfire.” 
• “Scientists decry NIH pledge to end some human fetal tissue research.”
• “‘Publish or perish’ evolutionary pressures shape scientific publishing, for better and worse.”
• “A new method for evaluating research project proposals shows us how much we don’t know about collective decision making.”
• “Make research accessible. It benefits all chemists.”
• “To fight the war on science, higher education needs to reimagine the most important career milestone for faculty.”
• Attorney proposes model to explore “what could be the potential impacts (good, bad, or indifferent) of citation gaming.”
• “Peer review crisis is stalling India’s scientific progress.” 
• Researchers say the “rapid growth in redundant publications (a 17-fold increase between 2022 and 2024) is suggestive of a systemic failure of editorial checks.”
• “The rising danger of AI-generated images in nanomaterials science and what we can do about it.”
• “‘Lipstick on a pig’: how to fight back against a peer-review bully.”

Upcoming talks

• “Doctors’ Lounge“: An evening “examining the quality control challenges that we all face in our quest to stay current as medical practitioners” featuring our Ivan Oransky (September 29, virtual)

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 2025-09-20 10:00:00 UTC.

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Staying on the keto diet long term could carry health risks

in Science News: Health & Medicine on 2025-09-19 18:00:00 UTC.

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2025 Ig Nobel Prizes Awarded for Research on Tipsy Bats and Pasta Physics

Winners of the annual Ig Nobel awards include the science of tipsy bats and the physics of cacio e pepe

in Scientific American on 2025-09-19 16:45:00 UTC.

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Exclusive: Iraqi physicist fired by ministry over massive publishing scam

A professor of physics in Iraq was permanently dismissed last week after a government investigation found he orchestrated a massive fraudulent publishing scheme involving hundreds of thousands of dollars paid into his bank account by unwitting researchers, documents obtained by Retraction Watch show.

The scam included a deal between a prominent association of Iraqi academics and a predatory publisher, as well as the creation of a fake journal website and bogus acceptance letters purporting to be from reputed journals.

According to a ministerial order dated September 9 and obtained by Retraction Watch, the physicist, Oday A. Al-Owaedi, who also goes by several other names, defrauded “researchers by collecting money from them under the pretext of publishing their papers in reputable international journals as promised, while in fact falsifying and forging publication in fake websites.”

The document also stated Al-Owaedi falsified “the scientific content of research papers, knowingly, by inserting his name and his scientific works as references in these allegedly published papers.”

An Iraqi scholar close to the matter told us “hundreds” of budding researchers had been caught in the scam. That has put their careers at risk, because master’s and Ph.D. students in Iraq are required to publish papers in indexed journals before they can obtain their degrees, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

“Many graduate students and researchers relied on these conference acceptances for thesis defenses, academic promotion, publication requirements, or graduation,” the source added. “Now, they face academic uncertainty or setbacks due to decisions beyond their control.”

We contacted Iraq’s Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research to confirm Al-Owaedi’s termination, which has not been officially announced, and ask if the ministry will take steps to help the victims. We have not heard back. The order permanently removes Al-Owaedi from his position at the University of Babylon in Hilla, a public institution, adding that he committed “acts that render his continuation in state service harmful to the public interest.” 

Neither Al-Owaedi nor his former employer responded to requests for comment. But on September 17, the day after we emailed him about the evidence we had obtained, Al-Owaedi announced his dismissal on Facebook (in Arabic) and said he was “innocent of the charges” against him. Al-Owaedi is also a politician and is running in Iraq’s parliamentary election in November.

Al-Owaedi’s publishing scheme centered on a conference that was organized by a prominent association of Iraqi academics and was slated to take place in Baghdad this month. According to its website, the 7th International Conference of the Iraqi Academics Syndicate for Sciences (ICIASS-2025) offered participants a chance to publish their research in AIP Conference Proceedings or one of several “highly respected and peer-reviewed journals from renowned Dutch publishing house Elsevier.” (In correspondence we obtained, AIP Publishing denied having “an agreement in place to publish the proceedings of this conference.”)

In messages posted to the conference’s now-deleted Telegram group, Al-Owaedi, who chaired the organizing committee for the event, claimed he had made a deal with Elsevier to publish hundreds of papers at discounted prices.

Authors were required to pay “publication fees” after receiving a preliminary acceptance notice from the conference, but before publication, Al-Owaedi explained. These fees varied by journal, but typically amounted to US$650 – or some $100 more than Iraq’s average monthly salary – according to a list the conference supplied of more than two dozen journals from Elsevier, AIP and another publisher.

After payment, the works would be sent to “the publishing house,” which would edit it and submit it to one of the journals on the list, Al-Owaedi wrote.

In reality, the ”publishing house” referred to Acadia Pulse, which in May signed an agreement with Al-Owaedi to assist his organization in publishing a “total of 400 academic papers in peer-reviewed Scopus Q2 indexed journals.”

Acadia Pulse describes itself as a New York-based “international consultancy offering students, researchers, and corporations the opportunity to publish in PubMed and Scopus indexed journals.” But no records of a business called Acadia Pulse exist in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR company database. Meanwhile, the operation’s website has several hallmarks of a full-fledged paper mill, such as promising ”guaranteed publications in our flagship journals.”

One of these “flagship” publications is the International Journal of Scientific Studies and Qualitative Research, which lists as its editor-in-chief Gunnar Möller. A physicist at the University of Kent in the UK, Möller told us he had never heard of the journal.

The company did not respond to our requests for comment.

According to emails and bank receipts we obtained, authors at the conference were required to pay the publication fees directly into Al-Owaedi’s personal bank account. In at least one case, the required payment – 950,000 Iraqi dinars, or about US$725 – exceeded the “publishing cost” provided in the journal list by more than US$50.

On July 8, Al-Owaedi announced on Facebook that the first research from the conference had been published in Elsevier’s Journal of Vocational Behavior. He included what he described as a link to the paper: https://link-doi.org/11.1230/j.jvb.2025.178213. When the link was still functional (we archived it here), it sent readers to a near-perfect sham version of the journal’s website. The site displayed a complete article, titled “Holland’s Characteristics of personality Traits and Their Influence in Impression Management” and written by two real Iraqi scholars.

But the Digital Object Identifier link was forged – real DOI prefixes always start with “10,” not “11” – and the paper had never been published. We reached out to the two authors, but one told us he was sick and the other never replied.

Similarly, some authors began receiving purported acceptance letters from the journals, as well as what appeared to be login information allowing them to access Elsevier’s Editorial Manager system to track their submissions, according to videos we have seen.

But Elsevier told us the letters had not been issued by their publications, adding, “The matter is still under investigation, but so far, we have no evidence that Editorial Manager was compromised.”

The ministerial order dismissing Al-Owaedi states he handed over the money received from the researchers to his wife, “without authorization from the [Iraqi Academics Syndicate] and without disclosure thereof.”

The Iraqi Academics Syndicate has not responded to our requests for comment.

In his September 17 Facebook posts, Al-Owaedi stated the money he received had “been transferred by the conference to the publishing company.” As proof, he attached pictures of two purported bank transaction slips listing amounts of $54,000 and $150,000, respectively.

Correspondence from Acadia Pulse addressed to “Iraqi Universities” suggests the forgery did not go unnoticed, and the company attempted damage control through obfuscation.

In a section titled “Reasons Why Journals Declare Acceptance Letters Fake and Papers Non-Existent,” a letter signed by a “Henry Davis” stated, “Journals have strict terms and conditions that authors must follow. One of these is that authors must not contact the journal directly before publication. If an author violates this condition, the journal may deny any connection to the manuscript because such contact undermines the confidentiality of the editorial process and affects their business model.”

Another message addressed questions about the strange DOI prefix of the forged conference publication. “We would like to clarify that the assignment of DOI prefixes is entirely determined by the respective journal or publisher,” the letter stated. ”Each publisher is registered with CrossRef (or another DOI registration agency) and may receive a different prefix based on their allocation.”

The Iraqi scholar who spoke on condition of anonymity said some students had not been awarded their degrees because they presented the fake journal acceptance letters at their thesis defense.

“There have been attempts to blame students and researchers for making payments or not recognizing the fraud,” the source told us. “This is unfair. The participants received what appeared to be formal, official conference acceptance letters. They were acting in good faith, based on institutional trust, and should not be penalized for the failure of oversight bodies.”

The source also criticized the government for making Al-Owaedi chair of yet another conference organizing committee two weeks after the investigation against him began, and for keeping the probe under wraps while conference participants continued submitting papers and paying publication fees to the physicist.

“This delay directly enabled the harm done to researchers and students,” the source said.

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 2025-09-19 15:22:01 UTC.

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Go Ahead, Write in the Margins—It’s Good for Your Brain

Annotating the margins of books is an important part of deep reading and has a long legacy of merit in both science and literature

in Scientific American on 2025-09-19 14:30:00 UTC.

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Bats live with some viruses. But others can do them in

in Science News: Health & Medicine on 2025-09-19 14:00:00 UTC.

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Mauricio Andres Rios Maciel

in OIST Japan on 2025-09-19 12:00:00 UTC.

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NASA Records More Than 6,000 Exoplanets and Counting

It’s a crowded galaxy, the latest exoplanet tally shows

in Scientific American on 2025-09-19 11:00:00 UTC.

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How to Weigh a Black Hole

Gauging the mass of a black hole is tricky, but astronomers have devised multiple methods to measure the heft of these galactic gluttons

in Scientific American on 2025-09-19 10:45:00 UTC.

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'Etymology Nerd' Adam Aleksic on How Internet Culture Is Transforming the Way We Talk

Linguist Adam Aleksic explains how viral slang and algorithm-driven speech aren’t destroying language––they’re accelerating its natural evolution.

in Scientific American on 2025-09-19 10:00:00 UTC.

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Schneider Shorts 19.09.2025 – Diversity, gender and equity issues

in For Better Science on 2025-09-19 05:00:00 UTC.

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Robots marry natural neuroscience, experimental control to probe animal interactions

in The Transmitter on 2025-09-19 04:00:11 UTC.

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Episode 312 - Ricardio Mozzachiodi, PhD

On September 18, 2025, and we got to talk with Ricardo Mozzachiodi about what was learned and what we continue to learn about the cellular and molecular basis of memory by studying simple behaviors in a mollusk, Aplysia california, the sea hare. Ricardo filled us in on the original rationale for studying cell biology of learning in this animal, and current findings on the role of neuromodulators in learning.

Guest:

Ricardo Mozzachiodi, Professor, Department of Life Sciences, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi.

Participating:

Alfonso Apicella, Department of Neuroscience, Developmental and Regenerative Biology, UTSA

Host:

Charles Wilson, Department of Neuroscience, Developmental and Regenerative Biology, UTSA

Thanks to James Tepper for original music

in Neuroscientists talk shop on 2025-09-18 22:00:00 UTC.

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Aftershock of July’s 8.8 Earthquake Strikes Kamchatka. Tsunami Risk Waning

A powerful magnitude 7.8 aftershock off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula that arose from July’s magnitude 8.8 earthquake is raising concerns about possible tsunami impacts, although risk appears to be waning

in Scientific American on 2025-09-18 21:05:00 UTC.

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New AI Tool Predicts Which of 1,000 Diseases Someone May Develop in 20 Years

A large language model called Delphi-2M analyzes a person’s medical records and lifestyle to provide risk estimates for more than 1,000 diseases

in Scientific American on 2025-09-18 20:30:00 UTC.

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Exclusive: Publisher investigating DNA contamination paper that authors say CDC vaccine committee will consider

The publisher Taylor & Francis is investigating concerns raised on PubPeer about a paper claiming to find DNA contamination in COVID-19 vaccines beyond regulators’ recommended amounts. 

The move comes as the U.S. body tasked with making recommendations for vaccine use is scheduled to consider the safety of COVID-19 shots, and two of the study’s authors say their findings will be discussed.

The paper at issue was published September 6 in the journal Autoimmunity, a Taylor & Francis title. Scientific sleuth Kevin Patrick soon posted concerns on PubPeer, which he forwarded to the ethics department of the publisher. 

On September 8, Laura Wilson, Taylor & Francis’ Head of Research Integrity & Ethics, thanked Patrick for raising the concerns and said the company would “investigate in accordance with the COPE guidelines and our Editorial policies.”    

The publisher added a pop-up notification to the article to alert readers to the ongoing investigation after we asked if they would do so. Taylor & Francis began using such notices last year.

Jennifer McMillan, a spokesperson for Taylor & Francis, confirmed the publisher’s Ethics and Integrity team “are aware of the comments made on PubPeer and are investigating the article in question.” 

“As the investigation is in its very early stages we cannot make any further comment,” she said.  

Paolo Casali, editor-in-chief of Autoimmunity, did not respond to our request for comment. 

On September 19, a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will include presentations on “COVID-19 vaccine safety.”

Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management in Cambridge and chair of the ACIP work group on COVID-19 vaccines, will introduce the session. The work group’s activities include reviewing and summarizing “gaps in the existing knowledge regarding potential impurities (e.g., DNA contamination and endotoxins) in existing immunization products and their health impacts to inform immunization recommendations.” 

Study coauthor Kevin McKernan of the Beverly, Mass.-based company Medicinal Genomics said in a Sept. 14 post on Substack he had been “contacted by the ACIP committee to go over our paper.” A post on X by another coauthor, independent researcher Jessica Rose, stated the committee will be considering their paper. 

In her own Substack post, Rose wrote Senator Ron Johnson (R – Wisconsin) had submitted the study as evidence in a hearing of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations September 9. 

She also included a prediction: “they will try to retract our work.” 

The authors of the paper — Rose, McKernan, and David J. Speicher of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada — describe using two different methods to measure the amount of DNA remaining in mRNA COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna due to their manufacturing processes. Speicher, the corresponding author, did not respond to our request for comment. 

McKernan was also an author on a July preprint about “Synthetic mRNA Vaccines and Transcriptomic Dysregulation” that was withdrawn on Sept. 11 after sleuths Elisabeth Bik and Reese Richardson documented problems with the manuscript. 

Using one method, fluorometry, the authors of the Autoimmunity paper said they found amounts of DNA in all their samples of various vaccine lots that were higher than guidelines from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and World Health Organization recommend. Using the other method, qPCR, they said three samples were over the limit.  

On PubPeer, Patrick, who uses the pseudonym “Actinopolyspora biskrensis,” pointed out that the regulators’ recommendations were set for qPCR tests, not fluorometry. “Applying that regulatory threshold to fluorometry values is misleading, since regulators do not recognize fluorometry as the standard,” he wrote. Fluorometry also picks up mRNA, according to Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration, so it does not correctly measure DNA amounts in the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. 

In subsequent comments, Patrick also questioned the authors’ use of data from the FDA’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, and the appropriateness of several of the documents the authors cited. One reference consisted of the attachments to a meeting agenda for the town council of Port Hedland, Australia, which included a report referencing a 2023 preprint from the paper’s coauthors. 

In addition to the questionable references Patrick identified, Retraction Watch found the FDA guidance the researchers cited was issued for gene therapies, and explicitly stated it “does not apply to vaccines for infectious disease indications.” 

Other commenters on PubPeer added technical critiques of the paper as well. 

“I have no idea how this paper could have made it through peer review,” Patrick told us. “Sadly, we almost never find out what happens behind the scenes.”

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in Retraction watch on 2025-09-18 18:56:55 UTC.