Planet Neuroscientists

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Spotlight On: Manuela Marescotti

in Women in Neuroscience UK on 2025-05-24 14:00:15 UTC.

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Weekend reads: French agency’s research director sanctioned; AI data woes at MIT; is disruptive science over?

Dear RW readers, can you spare $25?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Scopus indexed a journal with a fake editorial board and a sham archive. When we asked them about it, they removed it.
• Can a better ID system for authors, reviewers and editors reduce fraud? STM thinks so.
• Correction finally issued seven years after authors promise fix ‘as soon as possible.’
• Researchers to pull duplicate submission after reviewer concerns and Retraction Watch inquiry.
• Genentech authors flip PNAS study from corrected to retracted following Retraction Watch coverage.

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 59,000 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):

• “CNRS chemist punished for scientific fraud.” A link to our previous coverage.
• “It should be completely normal to ask, ‘so how did you actually get this amazing data anyway?'”, says Stuart Buck, who first spotted problems with MIT’s AI paper. 
• And: “What the failure of a superstar student reveals about economics.”
• “Are groundbreaking science discoveries becoming harder to find?”
• “Gaming the Metrics? Bibliometric Anomalies and the Integrity Crisis in Global University Rankings.”
• How “Clarivate is clamping down on bad actors in academic publishing.” A link to our coverage of the impact factor change. 
• Publisher to include new indicator of retracted citations using GetFTR, which relies on the Retraction Watch Database.
• When researchers secretly used AI bots on Reddit, “it became a landmark moment for research ethics.” Links to our previous coverage.
• “How the publishing elite weaponise vocabulary,” from the EIC of a journal “often lumped into the ‘predatory’ pile.”
• “A Sting Inside a Papermill.”
• “Russia honors chemist who was suspended in Spain.”
• “The Black Market of Publications in Peru: Paper Mills and Authorship for Sale.”
• “The value of co-authorship must be recognised outside the sciences.”
• An AI research quiz: “find out how your ethics compare.”
• “Conspiracy theories have unraveled scientific authority. Is the scientific community to blame?”
• The University of Minnesota “loses $2 million federal grant after allegations of fabricated data.” And: University “antiracism health center struggled even before plagiarism allegations.”
• Researchers find non-financial conflicts of interest are “meaningful conceptual entities” that require “new approaches” for management.
• “The interests of scholarly communication and publishing are not always compatible.”
• “Why I stopped submitting my work to for-profit publishers.”
• “Open Science: An Antidote to Anti-Science.”
• School responds after retracted paper (one of over 1,500 at same journal) listed high school students as authors.
• “Why restrictive academic authorship practices perpetuate inequality.”
• Researchers emphasize need to “focus” on clinical trial integrity since they contribute “directly to healthcare practice and policy recommendations.”
• “Musician Evelyn Harris returns honorary degree to Smith College after plagiarized speech.”
• “The Integrity of Randomized Clinical Trials: Consensus Statements from Hong Kong to Cairo.”
• “AI linked to explosion of low-quality biomedical research papers.”
• “You won’t find these on the shelf. Newspapers print an AI-generated reading list with fake books.”

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 2025-05-24 10:00:00 UTC.

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Genentech authors flip PNAS study from corrected to retracted following Retraction Watch coverage

The authors of a 2006 paper have retracted their article following an extensive correction in January – and a Retraction Watch story noting the correction missed at least one additional issue with the work.

“Death-receptor activation halts clathrin-dependent endocytosis,” published in July 2006 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has been cited 99 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. Most of the authors were affiliated with the biotech company Genentech. 

As we previously reported, commenters on PubPeer raised issues about possible image duplications, spurring the authors to review the work. The January correction addressed about two dozen instances of image splicing and duplication in five of the paper’s figures. The notice stated the authors repeated the experiments for a manuscript posted on bioRxiv in October 2024. “The new data confirms the original results, reaffirming the experimental conclusions,” the authors wrote in the correction notice. 

Biologist and scientific sleuth David Sanders identified another image duplication in the paper, which he reviewed at our request. Prashant Nair from the PNAS news office told us at the time it was “inadvertently omitted,” and the journal would update the correction notice to include the duplication. 

But on May 15, the article was retracted instead. The retraction notice reiterates the “additional potential duplication” had been “previously identified and submitted for correction by the authors, but inadvertently omitted from the January 3, 2025, correction note.” The statement, attributed to the authors, concludes, “At this time, we believe that retraction, rather than further correction, is the most prudent course of action.”

Nair confirmed the authors decided to retract the article, as did a representative from Genentech. “We confirm that the authors believed retraction to be the most prudent course of action, and on that basis, requested retraction of the paper,” said Karen Ring, Genentech senior manager for science communications, public affairs and access. Both Nair and Ring said they had nothing further to add beyond the retraction notice.

“Compared to many cases in which I am involved, the authors and the journal have acted somewhat swiftly and ultimately correctly,” Sanders said. 

He also suggested that corrections should be subject to scrutiny.  “With an alarming frequency, initial corrections prove to be either inadequate (as in this example) or actually deceptive (as in many other examples),” he said. “Corrections should be monitored by sleuths as closely as the original articles.”

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 2025-05-23 20:34:00 UTC.

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New Infrared Contacts Let You See in the Dark

Straight out of science fiction, these contact lenses convert infrared light into visible light that humans can see

in Scientific American on 2025-05-23 18:30:00 UTC.

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Hurricane Season Is Soon—NOAA Says It’s Ready, but Weather Experts Are Worried

As hurricane season approaches, thousands of weather and disaster experts have raised concerns about NOAA and NWS budget cuts and staffing shortages

in Scientific American on 2025-05-23 15:15:00 UTC.

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Wet fingers always wrinkle in the same way

in Science News: Health & Medicine on 2025-05-23 14:00:00 UTC.

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COVID Vaccines Face Potential New Limits from Trump Administration

Despite the fact that vaccines against COVID have already undergone strict safety reviews and that people continue to die from the disease, Trump’s FDA is moving to reduce access to annual COVID boosters for healthy Americans

in Scientific American on 2025-05-23 13:30:00 UTC.

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The Creepy Calculus of Measuring Death Risk

Meet micromorts and microlives, statistical units that help mathematicians to calculate risk

in Scientific American on 2025-05-23 12:00:00 UTC.

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Hypervelocity Stars Hint at a Nearby Supermassive Black Hole

Some stars streaking through the Milky Way at millions of kilometers per hour probably trace back to a supermassive black hole in a neighboring galaxy

in Scientific American on 2025-05-23 10:45:00 UTC.

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DolphinGemma Could Enable AI Communication with Dolphins

A large language model for dolphin vocalization could let us better understand these beloved marine mammals

in Scientific American on 2025-05-23 10:00:00 UTC.

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Schneider Shorts 23.05.2025 – Defamation and damage to business

in For Better Science on 2025-05-23 05:00:00 UTC.

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Escaping groupthink: What animals’ behavioral quirks reveal about the brain

in The Transmitter on 2025-05-23 04:00:57 UTC.

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Why Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ Won’t Shield the U.S. from Nuclear Strikes

The White House’s $175-billion plan to protect the U.S. from nuclear annihilation will probably cost much more—and deliver far less—than has been claimed, says nuclear arms expert Jeffrey Lewis

in Scientific American on 2025-05-22 20:30:00 UTC.

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Researchers to pull duplicate submission after reviewer concerns and Retraction Watch inquiry 

While doing a literature review earlier this spring, a human factors researcher came across a paper he had peer-reviewed. One problem: He had reviewed it – and recommended against publishing – for a different journal not long before the publication date of the paper he was now looking at. 

Based on the published paper and documents shared with us, it appears the authors submitted the same manuscript to the journals Applied Sciences and Virtual Reality within 11 days of each other, and withdrew one version when the other was published. 

And after we reached out to the authors, the lead author told us they plan to withdraw the published version next week – which the editor of the journal had called for in April but its publisher, MDPI, had not yet decided to do. 

The journal Applied Sciences published the paper, “Correlations between SSQ Scores and ECG Data during Virtual Reality Walking by Display Type,” on March 4, 2024.

Both the first author of the paper, Mi-Hyun Choi, and the senior author, Jin Seung Choi, are professors at Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea.

The reviewer, who asked us to remain anonymous, received the manuscript from editors at Virtual Reality on January 22. That manuscript had a submission date of January 2, less than two weeks before the authors submitted it to Applied Sciences. 

“I reviewed this human-subject study and noticed, curiously, that there was no ethics statement on the paper detailing whether there had been any ethics approval,” he said, noting at the time he raised these concerns to the editor in chief of Virtual Reality. 

In the published version, the authors state the protocol was approved by the university’s Institutional Review Committee. 

In the review report we saw, the reviewer wrote the manuscript couldn’t be published in its current form because it didn’t properly cite prior research on the topic, lacked a novel thesis and lacked statistical rigor.

“In isolation, each of these omissions could warrant a minor revision, however, the manuscript is quite scant on detail and unfortunately reads more like a conference paper or a short-and-sweet-paper,” he wrote on Jan. 23, 2024. 

But after he raised these concerns to the editor-in-chief, he didn’t see the paper again, he told us. Then, he was informed the authors withdrew it from consideration on March 5 — the day after, it turns out, Applied Sciences published its version.

In emails we have seen from this April, the reviewer brought the dual submission to the attention of both journals. In response, Rob Macredie, the editor-in-chief for Virtual Reality, noted the authors stated in their cover letter to the journal that the paper was “currently not under review, nor it will [sic] be submitted to another journal while under consideration for Virtual Reality.”

Later that month, Giulio Cerulo, the editor in chief of Applied Sciences, told the reviewer the double submission was a “clear violation of the ethical standards and, in my opinion, it should lead to a retraction of the published article.”

But when we followed up with Applied Sciences, an MDPI title, they said they were still investigating the paper. Jisuk Kang, the publishing manager at MDPI, said in an email the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) “retraction guidelines do not support the retraction of a published article based solely on dual submission, if the integrity of the data remains intact.” Kang noted the journal was still reviewing the paper and if the investigation uncovered misconduct, “further action will be taken as appropriate.”

COPE considers dual and multiple submissions “unethical practices in academic publishing,” but the organization doesn’t recommend a  course of action once the papers are already published. 

For a similar case submitted to COPE, the members said the organization would “always advocate educational rather than punitive action” and suggested editors publish an editorial “on the ethics of dual submissions.”

Jin Seung Choi first told us earlier this month the dual submission was “not appropriate,” and he said it was a “simple oversight” by the authors. He also said he would not support the retraction of the paper, as it contains “no plagiarism, misconduct, or issues concerning research originality.”

“Although it was my mistake, I think it would not have happened if the submission system had been able to recognize in advance that it was under review by another journal,” he told us.

After we followed up to confirm his affiliation this week, Jin Seung Choi told us he would withdraw the paper after meeting with his co-authors next week. “I do not want the problem to spread any further,” he wrote.

The reviewer told us he suspected “the authors either misrepresented themselves or acted maliciously” and were familiar with the submission process for journals. 

The paper has been cited once by a paper in the same journal, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. 

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 2025-05-22 18:56:14 UTC.

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It’s tricky to transplant a bladder. How surgeons finally did it

in Science News: Health & Medicine on 2025-05-22 18:25:54 UTC.

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A Public Health Researcher and Her Engineer Husband Found How Diseases Can Spread through Air Decades before the COVID Pandemic

Mildred Weeks Wells and her husband figured out that disease-causing pathogens can spread through the air like smoke

in Scientific American on 2025-05-22 16:00:00 UTC.

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Trump Leaves Disaster-Struck States Waiting Weeks for Sign-Off on FEMA Aid

States and cities struck by deadly tornadoes and floods are begging the Trump administration for disaster aid

in Scientific American on 2025-05-22 15:00:00 UTC.

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Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ plan has a major obstacle: Physics

in Science News: Science & Society on 2025-05-22 14:02:12 UTC.

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Our Event Celebrating Women in Science

in Women in Neuroscience UK on 2025-05-22 14:00:32 UTC.

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Don’t wait until menopause to strengthen your bones 

in Science News: Health & Medicine on 2025-05-22 13:00:00 UTC.

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How Much Ultraprocessed Food Do You Eat? Blood and Urine Record It

A new study suggests blood and urine samples could provide an objective measure of diets and help unravel their connections to disease

in Scientific American on 2025-05-22 13:00:00 UTC.

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Discovering the rich biodiversity of coral reefs using a comprehensive new system

in OIST Japan on 2025-05-22 12:00:00 UTC.

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Bird Flu Vaccine for Cows Passes Early Test

Researchers have tested an mRNA vaccine against avian influenza in calves with promising results

in Scientific American on 2025-05-22 12:00:00 UTC.

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Saturn Has 274 Known Moons—Thanks in Large Part to This Astronomer

Scientific American spoke with the astronomer who has contributed to the discovery of two thirds of Saturn’s known moons

in Scientific American on 2025-05-22 11:00:00 UTC.

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Immune cells block pain in female mice only

in The Transmitter on 2025-05-22 04:00:36 UTC.

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Vitamin D May Slow Cells’ Aging by Protecting DNA

Vitamin D supplements may help prevent the loss of telomeres, DNA sequences that shrink with aging, a large study shows. But the health effects aren’t yet clear

in Scientific American on 2025-05-21 20:00:00 UTC.

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Exclusive: Layoffs revoked at U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

in The Transmitter on 2025-05-21 18:58:30 UTC.

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A new AI-based weather tool surpasses current forecasts

in Science News: AI on 2025-05-21 15:00:00 UTC.

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Single-Atom Quantum Computer Achieves Breakthrough Molecular Simulations

A quantum computer has used a single atom to model the complex dynamics of organic molecules interacting with light

in Scientific American on 2025-05-21 14:00:00 UTC.

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Getting Enough Sleep Is Critical for Weight Loss and Maintenance

A sleep medicine specialist explains how restless nights lead to consuming more calories and how you can use sleep as a tool for weight loss

in Scientific American on 2025-05-21 13:00:00 UTC.

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Sleep Aids Can Be Uneven and Expensive, Leaving Anxious Patients Lacking

When insomnia took hold of this journalist, she relied on her science reporting to find a medication that (mostly) worked

in Scientific American on 2025-05-21 13:00:00 UTC.

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New Class of Drugs Blocks Wakefulness Chemical and Offers Relief from Insomnia

Drugs that target wakefulness, molecules in cannabis and wearable devices that modulate brain activity could help people with insomnia

in Scientific American on 2025-05-21 13:00:00 UTC.

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Medicaid Cuts Will Make Older People Sicker

For people aged 65 and older, Medicaid can provide vital health care—and losing coverage makes people sicker

in Scientific American on 2025-05-21 12:00:00 UTC.

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What If Mitochondria Aren’t Only the Powerhouse of the Cell?

New discoveries about mitochondria could reshape how we understand the body’s response to stress, aging and illness

in Scientific American on 2025-05-21 10:00:00 UTC.

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Colossal Liar Wolves

in For Better Science on 2025-05-21 05:00:00 UTC.

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John Beggs unpacks the critical brain hypothesis

in The Transmitter on 2025-05-21 04:00:26 UTC.

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FDA significantly limits access to COVID-19 vaccines

in Science News: Health & Medicine on 2025-05-20 22:08:35 UTC.

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Correction finally issued seven years after authors promise fix ‘as soon as possible’

A journal has finally issued a correction following a seven-year-old exchange on PubPeer in which the authors promised to fix issues “as soon as possible.” But after following up with the authors and the journal, it’s still not clear where the delay occurred.

Neuron published the paper, “Common DISC1 Polymorphisms Disrupt Wnt/GSK3β Signaling and Brain Development,” in 2011. It has been cited 101 times, 28 of which came after concerns were first raised, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. 

It first appeared on PubPeer in April 2018, when commenter Epipactis voethii first pointed out figures 2 and 3 of the paper had potential image duplication. 

Shortly after, Li-Huei Tsai,  the co-corresponding author and the director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT, responded on PubPeer saying the authors were “currently working with the journal to resolve this issue.”

That same month, PubPeer commenters debated the merits of the image similarity accusations, and some raised concerns about the statistical analyses, questioning the tests used and validity of p values. 

The authors were silent until earlier this year, when PubPeer commenter Actinopolyspora biskrensis reignited the discussion with more possible instances of image overlap in the article. In April, Tsai commented yet again that the authors “have found the original data and are working with the Journal to correct the errors.” She did not respond to Actinopolyspora’s request for original images. 

Tsai forwarded our request for comment — including our request for clarification on why the correction took as long as it did — to a communications director for the Picower Institute, who sent us the text from the May 2025 correction notice. The notice says the “duplication errors” in six figures were “mistakenly,” “erroneously” or “incorrectly” in the paper. The authors said they “mixed up” images and made several cropping errors, but said the errors were made post-analysis. 

Queen Muse, the head of media for Cell Press, which publishes Neuron, told us the journal has “no comment beyond what’s included in the published correction notice, which outlines the relevant details.”

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 2025-05-20 21:52:28 UTC.

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Apple Settles Claim for Siri Eavesdropping

Apple is paying $95 million over claims that Siri secretly recorded private chats and fed targeted ads

in Scientific American on 2025-05-20 21:42:00 UTC.

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Biden’s prostate cancer is incurable, but it is treatable

in Science News: Health & Medicine on 2025-05-20 20:07:51 UTC.

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NOAA Has ‘Ground to a Halt’ as Lutnick Has Left Contracts Unsigned

A NOAA official says that “everything has ground to a halt” at the agency as staffers have waited for Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to review more than 200 agreements

in Scientific American on 2025-05-20 18:40:00 UTC.

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Why the 2025 Tornado Season Has Been So Destructive

Several devastating tornado outbreaks have cut swaths of destruction across the U.S. What’s driving these damaging storms?

in Scientific American on 2025-05-20 15:20:00 UTC.

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Why does dementia disproportionately affect women? Sex differences in dementia: what the research reveals.

in Women in Neuroscience UK on 2025-05-20 14:01:24 UTC.

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Larger, More Dangerous Hail Is Becoming More Common—Here’s Why

The largest hail tends to form in “supercell” thunderstorms and seems to be becoming more common as climate change continues

in Scientific American on 2025-05-20 14:00:00 UTC.

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Can We Refreeze the Arctic’s Ice? Scientists Test New Geoengineering Solutions

Researchers are trying to rebuild sea ice above the Arctic Circle so it can reflect the sun’s warming rays, slowing climate change

in Scientific American on 2025-05-20 13:00:00 UTC.

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Why Mitochondria Are More like a Motherboard Than the Powerhouse of the Cell

When these energy-giving organelles thrive, so do we

in Scientific American on 2025-05-20 13:00:00 UTC.

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Contributors to Scientific American’s June 2025 Issue

Writers, artists, photographers and researchers share the stories behind the stories

in Scientific American on 2025-05-20 13:00:00 UTC.

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

White ants; vacations in the mud

in Scientific American on 2025-05-20 13:00:00 UTC.

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Healing Rays and Universe-Destroying Quantum Bubbles

The June 2025 issue of Scientific American is packed with exciting features, from magnificent mitochondria and a plan to refreeze the Arctic to the universe’s first light and recent human evolution

in Scientific American on 2025-05-20 13:00:00 UTC.

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Common-Sense Measures Could Curb Heat-Related Deaths

Extreme heat is becoming more prevalent. We need to protect people who work and play outside

in Scientific American on 2025-05-20 13:00:00 UTC.