Planet Neuroscientists

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Two OIST Startups Selected for J-Startup OKINAWA 2025

in OIST Japan on 2025-11-19 12:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

An expert criticism by fraudsters and antivaxxers: the case of PubPeer

in For Better Science on 2025-11-19 06:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Does AI understand what it produces? Henk de Regt explores how we might assess understanding in machines and humans

in The Transmitter on 2025-11-19 05:00:10 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Five Essential Books on Plastic, Power, and Pollution

If you enjoyed Beth Gardiner’s feature about big oil’s bet on plastics, here are more books curated by Scientific American

in Scientific American on 2025-11-18 20:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

See the alarming extent of NIH and NSF funding cuts in 2025

in Science News: Health & Medicine on 2025-11-18 18:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Research integrity conference hit with AI-generated abstracts

The first of three themes for next year’s World Conference on Research Integrity will be the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence for research integrity. In an ironic and possibly predictable turn of events, the conference has received “an unusually large proportion” of off-topic abstracts that show signs of being written by generative AI.

The call for abstracts for the conference, set for May in Vancouver, closed a month ago. Last week, peer reviewers received an email with “URGENT” in the subject line.

“If you haven’t already reviewed the 9th WCRI abstracts that have been allocated to you, please take note of the following,” the email read. “We’ve received several signals that an unusually large proportion of the abstracts are completely off-topic and might have been written by some form of generative AI.”

We reached out to the conference co-chairs to find out how many abstracts the conference received, how many seem to be AI-generated, and other details. Lex Bouter, professor emeritus of methodology and integrity at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, declined to answer specific questions while the team sorts out the issue. He provided a statement nearly identical to the text emailed to peer reviewers. 

“Many of these abstracts seem to have single authors and unusual affiliations (perhaps fake),” the email stated. “This seems to be a new phenomenon we’re experiencing at WCRI, which may also partly explain why we received so many abstracts.”

The email noted that conference organizers have checked for plagiarism in abstracts since finding several cases of it in submissions to the 6th WCRI in 2019. Among abstracts for the 2026 conference, the plagiarism software Copyleaks found a few cases of plagiarism — and it indicated “a substantial amount” showed signs of generative AI (GAI) use. 

“We believe many applicants probably used GAI for language and grammar polishing, and we believe that to be acceptable,” Bouter said by email. “But among the submissions there are a proportion that are clearly off-topic and low quality that look like they were generated by GAI.”

As in past years with plagiarized abstracts, almost all of those flagged this year were submitted by authors who also applied for travel grants, the email to reviewers stated. 

“Consequently, we intend to further examine abstracts with AI scores exceeding 20% that will likely be accepted based on average review scores and are associated with travel grant applications,” Bouter said. “We will subsequently reject the abstracts (and the travel grant application) for which we believe that unacceptable GAI use has occurred.”

The organizers recommended that reviewers give the lowest score to abstracts that are completely off-topic. The review process is set to wrap up next week.

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 2025-11-18 17:31:41 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Experts Explain How Botulism Toxin Can End Up in Baby Formula

In recent weeks, at least 23 infants in the U.S. have been infected with botulism in an outbreak linked to ByHeart powdered infant formula

in Scientific American on 2025-11-18 17:30:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Chatbots may make learning feel easy — but it’s superficial

in Science News: Science & Society on 2025-11-18 16:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Funding chaos may unravel decades of biomedical research

in Science News: Health & Medicine on 2025-11-18 14:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

First QMU student for PhD exam

in OIST Japan on 2025-11-18 12:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Conference poster prizes for two Quantum Machines students!

in OIST Japan on 2025-11-18 12:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

New Research Staff in the Quantum Machines Unit

in OIST Japan on 2025-11-18 12:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Outreach for High School Students: Science Day Gunma 2025 – Exploring the World of Quantum Mechanics with OIST and Gunma University

in OIST Japan on 2025-11-18 12:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

New Pill Can Save Moms from Postpartum Depression within Days

Deep emotional distress after birth kills many mothers. A new kind of drug offers better, faster treatment

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

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

We Need Laws to Stop AI-Generated Deepfakes

When anyone can forge reality, society can’t self-govern. Borrowing Denmark’s approach could help the U.S. restore accountability around deepfakes

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

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Readers Respond to the July/August 2025 Issue

Letters to the editors for the July/August Issue 2025 issue of Scientific American

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

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

December 2025: Science History from 50, 100 and 150 Years Ago

Heimlich maneuver; training fleas

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

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Math Puzzle: Falling Through

Solve a holey shape conundrum in this math puzzle

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

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Can We Find Cleaner Ways to Extract Rare Earth Elements?

These valuable but difficult-to-extract metals are increasingly important to modern life

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

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Can AI ‘Griefbots’ Help Us Heal?

What can AI “griefbots” do for those in mourning?

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

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Poem: ‘The Covert Herbarium of Cryptogamic Botany’

Science in meter and verse

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

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Why a Little Heartbeat Irregularity Can Be Good for You

Milliseconds of variability, now detected by fitness watches, can improve well-being

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

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Science Crossword: A Destructive Fix

Play this crossword inspired by the December 2025 issue of Scientific American

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

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

NASA’s Mars Sample Return Mission in Jeopardy as U.S. Considers Abandoning Retrieval

NASA spent years and billions of dollars collecting Martian samples to bring home. Now they might be stranded

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

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Science Bleeds When It’s Cut

As funding dries up, researchers face setbacks that threaten innovation and public progress

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

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

How Fossil-Fuel Companies Are Driving Plastic Production and Pollution

To keep profits rolling in, oil and gas companies want to turn fossil fuels into a mounting pile of packaging and other plastic products

in Scientific American on 2025-11-18 10:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Personalized mRNA Vaccines Will Revolutionize Cancer Treatment—If Federal Funding Cuts Don’t Doom Them

Vaccines based on mRNA can be tailored to target a cancer patient’s unique tumor mutations. But crumbling support for cancer and mRNA vaccine research has endangered this promising therapy

in Scientific American on 2025-11-18 10:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Role of maternal factors in autism; and more

in The Transmitter on 2025-11-18 05:00:16 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Neurophysiology data-sharing system faces funding cliff

in The Transmitter on 2025-11-17 21:21:42 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Computing society pulls works for ‘citation falsification’ months after sleuth is convicted of defamation

An international computing society has begun retracting conference papers for “citation falsification” only months after the sleuth who flagged the suspect articles was convicted for defamation in a lawsuit filed by one of the offending authors.

So far, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has pulled at least 27 of the papers, but dozens more remain, according to Solal Pirelli, a software engineer in Lausanne, Switzerland, who raised concerns about the articles more than two years ago. Some of the proceedings allegedly include plagiarized works, while others are plagued by citation stuffing.

The retraction notices from September 10 state:

The authors have violated the ACM Policy on Plagiarism, Misrepresentation, and Falsification by engaging in citation falsification by co-authoring works containing an extremely large percentage of unnecessary self-citations, including citations that were not used as references in the work.

“It’s good that ACM is beginning to clean up their scientific library,” Pirelli told us. “However, they have more work to do, especially if they ever plan on aligning with the industry standard” guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics.

 “As it stands, it takes ACM more time to deal with problematic proceedings than it does for someone to organize a yearly edition of a conference with them, which is obviously not sustainable,” he added.

The society would not answer specific questions about the dubious conference proceedings. But Scott Delman, ACM’s director of publications, agreed “investigations take far too long to conduct” and said it was a “high priority” for the group to devote more resources to investigations.

Pirelli first reported the plagiarized conference papers to ACM in October 2022. He later flagged several more conference proceedings that contained exorbitant numbers of citations to the benefit of one or two of the conference chairs. Pirelli wrote about his findings in a blog post in January 2023 after ACM failed to respond to his concerns.

Half a year later, one of the conference chairs, Shadi Aljawarneh, a computer scientist at the Jordan University of Science and Technology in Irbid, sued Pirelli for defamation, as we reported in November 2023.

“This guy is suing me because … I uncovered his whole … scam association that was organizing a bunch of conferences that may or may not have even happened,” Pirelli told us at the time. “One of them was supposedly in Kazakhstan in a time when Kazakhstan was closed due to COVID.”

In June of this year, the court found for Aljawarneh. Pirelli is appealing the verdict and declined to comment on the case, but said the retractions confirm he “was right to report these papers.”

The reference lists of most of the suspect papers are dominated by works by Aljawarneh, who was among the chairs of all of the conferences, and his frequent coauthor Vangipuram Radhakrishna, a computer scientist at Vallurupalli Nageswara Rao Vignana Jyothi Institute of Engineering & Technology in Hyderabad, India. Radhakrishna chaired one of the conferences along with Aljawarneh and others.

One of the retracted papers, for instance, lists 31 articles by Aljawarneh and 51 by Radhakrishna, none of which are cited in the paper itself. Neither researcher replied to requests for comment.

”While we have seen a steady rise in cases over the years … the good news is that the total number and percentage of published papers that have been compromised by bad actors remains relatively small,” Delman said. “Most misconduct is identified prior to the publication stage, so in general the system is working as intended.” 

Many of the questionable papers Pirelli identified have yet to be retracted, including one containing a user manual for a university IT system. The same is true of the allegedly plagiarized proceedings that Pirelli reported to ACM in 2022, although they received an expression of concern.

Delman would not comment on “any additional penalties that may be imposed on specific bad actors” but referred us to the group’s policies for such punishment, which include temporary publishing bans.

”Some of the public criticism we have received on sites like PubPeer is fair and some of it is not,” Delman said. “I do agree that investigations take far too long to conduct, and it is a high priority for ACM to address this by devoting more resources to investigations and the decision-making and appeals processes over the coming months to reduce the time it takes to post Expressions of Concern and Retraction Notices to warn the community of integrity issues related to published articles. We are also considering updates to some of our policies and procedures to accelerate and streamline decision-making, while ensuring due process for respondents to allegations.”

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 2025-11-17 18:21:25 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Transplant Rejection Is a Major Hurdle for Pig Organs. Scientists Are Solving the Problem

In a successful transplant in a man with brain death, scientists prevented the immune system from attacking a genetically modified pig kidney for 61 days, the longest such an experiment has lasted

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

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

The Leonid Meteor Shower Is Peaking—Here’s How to Watch This Fireball-Filled Event

A thin crescent moon and dark skies could give watchers a clear view of this astronomical event

in Scientific American on 2025-11-17 16:17:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

How to Survive (and Thrive) While Writing Your Thesis

in Women in Neuroscience UK on 2025-11-17 15:00:58 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Life-saving research on extreme heat comes under fire

in Science News: Science & Society on 2025-11-17 14:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

How Forbes Sent E-mails to the Future—And What Happened 20 Years Later

Twenty years ago Forbes.com sent hundreds of thousands of messages to the future. Here’s what happened next

in Scientific American on 2025-11-17 13:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

How to Send a Message to Future Civilizations

When written knowledge is more ephemeral than ever, how can we pass on what’s important?

in Scientific American on 2025-11-17 13:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Does Information Ever Really Disappear? Physics Has an Answer

Black holes and quantum mechanics present a paradox about the preservation of information

in Scientific American on 2025-11-17 13:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Nuclear-Waste Arks Are a Bold Experiment in Protecting Future Generations

Designing nuclear-waste repositories is part engineering, part anthropology—and part mythmaking

in Scientific American on 2025-11-17 13:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Can a Buried Time Capsule Beat Earth’s Geology and Deep Time?

A ridiculous but instructive thought experiment involving deep time, plate tectonics, erosion and the slow death of the sun

in Scientific American on 2025-11-17 13:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Where global deep tech dreams meet capital — two days of innovation event in Okinawa

in OIST Japan on 2025-11-17 12:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

How Influential People Map Their Social World

The same brain areas that help us map physical space help us chart social connections, and the best relationship cartographers have most clout

in Scientific American on 2025-11-17 12:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

How Technology and Friendship Preserved a 20-Year E-mail Time Capsule

Scientific American’s editor in chief David M. Ewalt reflects on a 20-year experiment in e-mailing the future

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

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

The Fribourg Declaration

in For Better Science on 2025-11-17 06:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

A change at the top of SfN as neuroscientists gather in San Diego

in The Transmitter on 2025-11-17 01:00:39 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Scientists Create 3.3 Trillion Degree Particle Soup to Mimic the Universe Just after the Big Bang

Quark-gluon plasma, a bizarre state of matter that mimics the early cosmos, is the hottest thing ever made on Earth

in Scientific American on 2025-11-15 12:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Weekend reads: Debunking ‘When Prophecy Fails’; ‘Godfather of AI’ first to reach 1 million citations; ‘Cake causes herpes?’

Dear RW readers, can you spare $25?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Author changes name, publishes 10 papers in journals that banned him
• Bug in Springer Nature metadata may be causing ‘significant, systemic’ citation inflation
• Math is back as Clarivate boosts integrity markers in Highly Cited Researchers list
• BMJ places expression of concern on heavily criticized stem cell paper
• AMA ethics journal shutters after 26 years
• Botanists plant a stake in oral cancer research with case report, now under investigation

Did you know that Retraction Watch and the Retraction Watch Database are  projects of The Center of Scientific Integrity?  Others include the Medical Evidence Project, the Hijacked Journal Checker, and the Sleuths in Residence Program. Help support this work.   

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

• “Debunking ‘When Prophecy Fails'”: Scholar claims documents reveal “ethical violations by the researchers.”
• “‘Godfather of AI’ becomes first person to hit one million citations.”
• “‘Cake causes herpes?’ – promiscuous dichotomisation induces false positives,” by James Heathers of the Medical Evidence Project and David Robert Grimes, one of our Sleuths in Residence. 
• “Paralysed patients left in dark after trial helping them to walk thrown into chaos.”
• “Recommendations for Scholarly Publishers and Journal Editors to Mitigate Barriers to Open Access Publishing for Researchers with Weak Institutional Ties.”
• “Shadow scholars: inside Kenya’s multibillion-dollar fake-essay industry.”
• A “case study in using flimsy copyright claims to inhibit research,” for which papers using the Morisky Medical Adherence Scale continue to face retractions.
• University finds “non-existent AI-generated references in paper; prof. says content not fabricated.” Meanwhile, the journal defends the work.
• Former professor’s case against German university, which fired her for violating academic standards, reaches federal court.
• “Pressure to publish is rising as research time shrinks, finds survey of scientists.”
• Researchers find “national tendencies in self-reference behavior may be related to societal-level trust within science.”
• “‘Independent’ expert who helped shape global vaping debate was paid thousands by Juul.” He also had a paper — linking smoking to lower COVID-19 risk — retracted in 2021.
• “‘Nobody knows what is still self-invented.’: How AI-generated fake research undermines trust in science.”
• “Can a Research Agent Write Convincing but Unsound Papers that Fool LLM Reviewers?”
• “The inner workings of a paper mill”: A pharmacologist on his “sting operation.” 
• “To reform universities, first tackle global rankings.”
• Researchers look into the “emerging threat” of papers with “hidden, injected prompts designed to manipulate AI [peer] reviewers into providing overly favorable evaluations.”
• “Drivers and penalties of retraction: An empirical study of Chinese medical researchers.”
• Researchers find “women’s representation among authors of retracted papers seems slightly lower than their representation as authors of scientific papers overall.” Another study looks at gender representation in highly cited authors. A link to two of our stories looking into gender differences in retraction rates.
• “Feasibility and Outcomes of a Scientist-Designed Peer Review Model Separating Quality and Impact.”
• Study looks at “characteristics, patterns, and causes of retractions in pediatric literature.”
• “Peer Review Is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It.”
• “U.S. Congress considers sweeping ban on Chinese collaborations.”
• “The ‘Free lunches’ index for assessing academics: a not entirely serious proposal.”

Upcoming talks

• “What to do next?” with our Ivan Oransky (November 18, International Research Integrity Conference, Sydney)
• “Retractions: On the Rise, But Not Enough” with our Ivan Oransky (November 19, Association for Interdisciplinary Meta-research and Open Science 2025 Conference, University of Sydney)

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 2025-11-15 11:00:00 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

The leaders we have lost

in The Transmitter on 2025-11-15 05:00:58 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

How will neuroscience training need to change in the future?

in The Transmitter on 2025-11-15 05:00:58 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

What are the most-cited neuroscience papers from the past 30 years?

in The Transmitter on 2025-11-15 05:00:57 UTC.

- Wallabag.it! - Save to Instapaper - Save to Pocket -

Establishing a baseline: Trends in NIH neuroscience funding from 2008 to 2024

in The Transmitter on 2025-11-15 05:00:56 UTC.