Planet Neuroscientists

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MBSJ 2025

in OIST Japan on 2025-11-10 12:00:00 UTC.

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Review of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s Obituary for Dr. James Watson

James Watson, who described himself as “not a racist in a conventional way”, has died at the age of 97. Below is a review of an obituary for Dr. James Watson published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on November 7, 2025. The obituary is in black and the review comments are in red.

Jim Watson made many contributions to science, education, public service, and especially Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL).

In the realm of science, several of the contributions James Watson took credit for were not his (see below). In terms of education, his focus was on bringing a single Eton boy every year to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for a research experience during the boy’s gap year after high school (the boys would frequently stay at his house). Eton, an all-boy boarding school, is Britain’s most elite school (CSHL oral history, 1997). Insofar as public service, Watson’s public record was not one of civic engagement or humanitarian contribution. His tenure as the first head of the Human Genome Project ended quickly in conflict (see below) and his public statements regarding genetics and race, gender, and intelligence was widely condemned (source: Amy Harmon, 2019)

As a scientist, his and Francis Crick’s determination of the structure of DNA, based on data from Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins and their colleagues at King’s College London, was a pivotal moment in the life sciences.

Franklin did not just provide data that enabled Crick and Watson to determine the structure of DNA. Yes, with her student Raymond Gosling she generated high-quality X-ray images of DNA, most famously Photo 51, which provided clear evidence that DNA forms a helical structure. But Franklin did much more and was an equal scientific contributor to the elucidation of DNA’s structure, whose experimental rigor and insights were central to solving the double helix. Franklin’s X-ray diffraction work distinguished the A and B forms of DNA, resolving confusion. Her measurements revealed that DNA’s unit cell was huge and had a C2 symmetry, implying two antiparallel sugar-phosphate strands. She confirmed the 34 Å helical repeat in the B form and identified the phosphate backbone’s exterior location. Though she did not derive complementary base pairing, her late-stage notes show that she recognized DNA could encode biological specificity through any sequence of bases, anticipating the idea of informational coding (Cobb and Comfort, Nature, 2023).

Watson, along with Crick and Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Watson also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Gerald Ford and the National Medal of Science from President Bill Clinton, among many other awards and prizes.

It is true that Watson received these awards. Coincidentally, William Shockley was also awarded the Nobel Prize around the same time as Watson (physics, 1956) and he promoted racist eugenics, arguing that people of African Ancestry posed a “dysgenic risk”, as well as advocating for sterilization. He used his Nobel prestige to advance his malicious and scientifically bankrupt ideas (source: Scott Rosenberg, 2017)

While at Cambridge, Watson also carried out pioneering research on the structure of small viruses. At Harvard, Watson’s laboratory demonstrated the existence of mRNA, in parallel with a group at Cambridge, UK, led by Sydney Brenner.

One of his colleagues at Harvard, E. O. Wilson, once called James Watson “the most unpleasant human being I have ever met” (source: Amanda Gefter, 2009).

His laboratory also discovered important bacterial proteins that control gene expression and contributed to understanding how mRNA is translated into proteins.

The discovery of important proteins that control gene expression in bacteria, notably the lac repressor, was made by Francois Jacob and Jaques Monod.

As an author, Watson wrote two books at Harvard that were and remain best sellers. The textbook Molecular Biology of the Gene, published in 1965 (7th edition, 2020), changed the nature of science textbooks, and its style was widely emulated.

In this textbook Watson got the central dogma wrong, presenting it in a profoundly misleading way. (source: Matthew Cobb, 2024).

The Double Helix (1968) was a sensation at the time of publication. Watson’s account of the events that resulted in the elucidation of the structure of DNA remains controversial, but still widely read.

Prior to the publication of The Double Helix, Francis Crick wrote that “If you publish your book now, in the teeth of my opposition, history will condemn you”. Watson published the book anyway (source: letter by Francis Crick, 1967) .

As a public servant, Watson successfully guided the first years of the Human Genome Project, persuading scientists to take part and politicians to provide funding.

Watson resigned from the Human Genome Project due to conflicts of interest related to holdings of his in biotechnology companies and due to his insistence that cDNA should not be sequenced leading to conflicts with NIH director Bernadine Healy, with whom he also clashed on patenting of expressed sequence tags (source: Christopher Anderson, 1992). Fortunately, thanks to the vision of Bernadine Healy, who was the first female director of the NIH, cDNA technology was pursued and led to RNA-seq which, along with DNA-seq, is today the most widely used genomics assay. 

He created the Ethical, Legal and Social Issues (ELSI) program because of his concerns about misuse of the fruits of the project.

Watson reportedly configured ELSI so as to undermine its ability to interfere with the human genome project: “I wanted a group that would talk and talk and never get anything done and if they did do something, I wanted them to get it wrong. I wanted as its head Shirley Temple Black” (source: Lori Andrews, 1999, Dolan et al., 2022). 

Watson’s association with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory began in 1947 when he came as a graduate student with his supervisor, Salvador Luria. Luria, with Max Delbruck, was teaching the legendary Phage Course. Watson returned repeatedly to CSHL, most notably in 1953 when he gave the first public presentation of the DNA double helix at that year’s annual Symposium. He became a CSHL trustee in 1965.

James Watson did not credit Rosalind Franklin in his presentation of the DNA double helix; he did not even mention Rosalind Franklin in his Nobel, although he did admit that people found him unbearable (source: Nobel Banquet speech, 1962).

CSHL was created in 1964 by the merger of two institutes that existed in Cold Spring Harbor since 1890 and 1904, respectively. In 1968, Watson became the second director when he was 40 years old. John Cairns, the first director, had begun to revive the institute but it was still not far short of being destitute when Watson took charge. He immediately showed his great skills in choosing important topics for research, selecting scientists and raising funds.

On the matter of selecting scientists, Watson once remarked “Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you’re not going to hire them” (source: Tom Abate, 2000). On the matter of raising funds, it seems that James Watson’s network included Jeffrey Epstein, with whom he reportedly met within two years before Epstein’s arrest in 2019 (source: Business Insider).

Also in 1968, Watson married Elizabeth (Liz) Lewis, and they have lived on the CSHL campus their entire lives together. Jim and Liz have two sons, Rufus and Duncan. As with the former Directors, they fostered close relationships with the local Cold Spring Harbor community.

In 1969, Watson focused research at CSHL on cancer, specifically on DNA viruses that cause cancer. The study of these viruses resulted in many fundamental discoveries of important biological processes, including the Nobel prize-winning discovery of RNA splicing. Watson was the first Director of CSHL’s National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center, which remains today.

On the matter of cancer, James Watson delivered a lecture at UC Berkeley in 2000 where he talked about an experiment to protect against skin cancer. He claimed that in an experiment by scientists at the University of Arizona, who injected male patients with an extract of melanin to test whether they could chemically darken the men’s skin as a skin cancer protection, they observed an unusual side effect, namely that the men developed sustained and unprovoked erections (source: Tom Abate, 2000).

Watson was passionate about science education and promoting research through meetings and courses. Meetings began at CSHL in 1933 with the Symposium series, and the modern advanced courses started with the Phage course in 1945. Watson greatly expanded both programs, making CSHL the leading venue for learning the latest research in the life sciences. Publishing also increased, notably of laboratory manuals, epitomized by Molecular Cloning, and several journals began, led by Genes & Development and later Genome Research. He encouraged the creation of the DNA Learning Center, unique in providing hands-on genetic education for high-school students. There are now DNA Learning Centers throughout the world.

The DNA learning center page on Rosalind Franklin states “The X-ray crystallographic expert, hired for her skills, and known to be methodical. Don’t call her Rosy!” (source: DNA learning center)`

Through a substantial gift to CSHL in 1973 by Charles Robertson, Watson started the Banbury Center on the Robertsons’ 54-acre estate in nearby Lloyd Harbor. Today, this center functions as an important “think tank” for advancing research and policies on many issues related to life and medical sciences.

The Banbury Center was founded as an old boys club. Meetings are invitation only, with invites by the old boys for other old boys. I attended a meeting in 2004 on functional genomics which consisted of 33 invitees of which 33 were men, despite the fact that many of the leading genomics scientists at the time were women. At the meeting I had dinner with James Watson, during which he took the opportunity to denigrate Rosalind Franklin and the Irish (source: Banbury Center, 2004). 

Watson remained in leadership roles at CSHL until 2000, and then continued as a member of the faculty. However, his remarks on race and IQ in 2008 led the CSHL Board of Trustees to remove him from all administrative roles and his appointment as a CSHL Trustee. When he made similar statements in 2020, the board revoked his Emeritus status and severed all connections with him.

Watson made racist and sexist remarks not only in 2008 and 2020 but throughout his life (source: James Watson in his own words).

Watson’s extraordinary contributions to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory during his long tenure transformed a small, but important laboratory on the North Shore of Long Island into one of the world’s leading research institutes.

Watson was the director of CSHL from 1968 – 1994 but there have been many other individuals who were key in establishing CSHL as a leading research institute: Barbara McClintock (discovered transposons) was at Cold Spring Harbor from 1941 until her death in 1992 (source: Wikipedia). She was recruited by Milislav Demerec (director 1941 – 1960). Bruce Stillman (director since 1994) has been instrumental in establishing the CSHL graduate program, the Genome Research Center, and under his watch it became a top-10 biomedical research center (source: Wikipedia).

in Bits of DNA on 2025-11-08 21:57:05 UTC.

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Rubin Observatory Discovers Surprise ‘Tail’ on Iconic Galaxy

The first image from the Vera C. Rubin telescope reveals a previously unnoticed feature of the galaxy M61 that may explain its mysterious properties

in Scientific American on 2025-11-08 13:00:00 UTC.

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Weekend reads: Journal retracts ADHD intervention papers; ‘Science and the crisis of trust’; letters to editors surge

Dear RW readers, can you spare $25?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Former Australian science agency ecology researcher loses two papers
• Dozens of board members resign from big-data journal after mass staff firings
• Review mill in Italy targeting ob-gyn journals, researchers allege
• Exclusive: A misconduct ruling, a flawed investigation, and an attempted payoff
• Sleuths flag ‘complete mismatch’ in data of BMJ stem cell study
• Journal retracts ‘bizarre’ placebo effect paper

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):

• “Journal retracts two papers evaluating ADHD interventions.”
• “When science is perceived as aligned with political agendas, or when episodes of scientific misconduct receive high-profile media coverage, the legitimacy of science can be damaged, even if such cases are rare.”
• “Letters to scientific journals surge as ‘prolific debutante’ authors likely use AI.” Meet one author who published over 500 letters to editors in a year. 
• arXiv will “no longer accept computer science review articles and position papers” after getting “spammed” with AI papers.
• “The relentless rise of China’s medical science.”
• “What Research Scandals? Welcome to the Bioethics Memory Hole.”
• University president “files defamation suit over plagiarism allegations.”
• Ex-university “soccer coach’s doctorate revoked for research misconduct.”
• Researcher “repulsed by the prevalence of scientific misconduct” says “science itself could be a form of dissent.”
• “Temporal shifts in retraction reasons”: study finds a “shift is observed from classical misconduct, e.g. ‘Falsification’ … to procedural concerns like ‘Fake Peer Review.'”
• Researchers find “only a small proportion (5.7%) of submitting authors disclosed AI use” in biomedical journals.
• “Professor Loses Appeal Over Firing for Racial IQ Gap Article.”
• “Oxford University Press announces agreement to acquire Karger.”
• “Large language models in peer review: challenges and opportunities.”
• “Concerns Escalate With the Fundamental Integrity of Scientific Peer-Reviewed Literature.”
• “How politicians soured on Europe’s biggest primate research center.”
• “Post-publication peer review: remedy or risk for publishing?”
• Ghost writing “threatens the integrity of scientific research: When a paper is ghostwritten by a corporation with a clear interest in promoting or exonerating a profitable product, the paper may have been inappropriately influenced by that interest.”
• Indian council clears former director of the Animal Resources Development Department of misconduct charges.
• Researchers look at strategies to limit endogamy in editorial boards of university journals. 
• Meta and TikTok are obstructing researchers’ access to data, European Commission rules.
• “Could research security measures reshape open science?”
• “UK university halted human rights research after pressure from China.”
• An author of a study on “Fake publications in biomedical science” is among those proposing a “call to action for all stakeholders…to unite in reforming the structure of the current science publishing culture.”
• Data science platform’s “Scientific Image Forgery Detection” competition: “Who can develop the best model to detect copy/move forgeries in biomedical images?” asks Elisabeth Bik.
• “Facing claims of animal abuse, a major breeder of research dogs will close its pipeline.”
• “The Administration Dismantled CDC’s Peer Review System. Staff Scrambled to Save It.” 
• “Manuscript Submissions Are Up! That’s Good, Right?”
• “Citation proximus: The role of social and semantic ties on citations.”

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 2025-11-08 11:00:00 UTC.

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James Watson, Co-Discoverer of DNA’s Structure, Dead at Age 97

James Watson’s work on the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA led to a revolution in biology and genetics

in Scientific American on 2025-11-07 22:00:00 UTC.

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Journal retracts ‘bizarre’ placebo effect paper

An Elsevier journal has retracted a study on the placebo effect coauthored by a researcher known for extreme claims that have failed to withstand scrutiny. The move comes after critics said the researchers misunderstood “what a ‘treatment effect’ is.” 

The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology in December 2024, analyzed 30 clinical trials examining treatments for a total of five conditions. The authors concluded “the placebo-effect is the major driver of treatment effects in clinical trials that alone explains 69% of the variance.” It has been cited once, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The last author of the study is Harald Walach, who may be familiar to readers of Retraction Watch. In one now-retracted paper, Walach and his coauthors claimed the COVID-19 vaccines killed two people for every three deaths they prevented. In a different, also retracted paper, Walach and colleagues claimed children’s masks trap carbon dioxide. (They later republished the article in a different journal.) 

Walach lost two papers and a university post in 2021 and now holds affiliations with the Change Health Science Institute in Basel, Switzerland, and the Next Society Institute in Vilnius, Lithuania. This retraction brings his total to four. 

As we wrote in May, Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, a research fellow at the University of Wollongong in Australia known for sleuthing, told us the results of the placebo effect paper seemed to indicate “simply being in a clinical trial is the main component of healing.”

According to the undated retraction notice, the journal “did not find any evidence of deliberate attempts to mislead or any scientific misconduct on the part of the authors.” The “authors agreed that the title is misleading and the manuscript should have been more nuanced or measured,” the notice continues, indicating the researchers misrepresented a formula and included a retracted study in their analysis. Nevertheless, the authors “judge that none of these mistakes change the overall findings and conclusions.”

Stephen Rhodes, a researcher at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, had criticized the study in a letter to the editor in February, citing a “number of errors that lead to some sweeping conclusions.” In the letter, Rhodes wrote those leaps “reflect a misunderstanding of what a ‘treatment effect’ is.” In a placebo-controlled trial, Rhodes observed, the measure can’t be “due to placebo.”

The editors of the JCE “do not agree with all the criticisms” critics conveyed, according to the notice.

Neither Walach nor the study’s first author, Stefan Schmidt, a professor at the University of Freiburg in Germany, responded to our requests for comment. 

The notice also states the retraction “has raised important questions in respect of the editorial and peer review process for this manuscript, for which the Journal bears responsibility.” David Tovey, co-editor-in-chief of the JCE, told us “as a journal editor, I have to reflect on whether this situation could have been avoided.”

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 2025-11-07 18:46:22 UTC.

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Early Arctic Cold Snap Could Break Decades-Old Temperature Records

An early cold snap will chill much of the U.S., potentially breaking records in the Southeast

in Scientific American on 2025-11-07 18:40:00 UTC.

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China's Stranded Astronauts Show the Dangers of Space Junk

Three Chinese astronauts will likely return safely to Earth after a reported space-junk strike. But the incident highlights the growing risk of orbital debris

in Scientific American on 2025-11-07 18:35:00 UTC.

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What FAA’s Flight Reduction Plan Means for Safety and Cancellations

“I have no problems flying,” says one expert about the FAA’s plan to reduce flights by 10 percent at 40 airports nationwide. “I would get on an airplane tomorrow”

in Scientific American on 2025-11-07 17:15:00 UTC.

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World’s Largest Spider Web Discovered in Bizarre Sulfur Cave

This finding is the first documented case of colonial behavior between two solitary species of spider

in Scientific American on 2025-11-07 16:00:00 UTC.

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Why Is the Milky Way Warped?

Observations show the disk of our galaxy is not flat but warped and waving. Astronomers are still working out the reasons why

in Scientific American on 2025-11-07 11:45:00 UTC.

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Tom Zeller, Jr., on Migraine Research, Gender Bias and the Cultural Stigma of Headaches

Migraine and cluster headaches affect millions—yet research remains surprisingly thin.

in Scientific American on 2025-11-07 11:00:00 UTC.

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Schneider Shorts 7.11.2025 – No data were falsified or fabricated in any way

in For Better Science on 2025-11-07 06:00:00 UTC.

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‘How to Change a Memory: One Neuroscientist’s Quest to Alter the Past,’ an excerpt

in The Transmitter on 2025-11-07 05:00:17 UTC.

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Study Suggests COVID Pandemic May Have Aged Everyone’s Brain

Immunologist Zachary Rubin explains how, according to a recent study, living through a pandemic might accelerate brain aging.

in Scientific American on 2025-11-06 22:33:00 UTC.

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Sleuths flag ‘complete mismatch’ in data of BMJ stem cell study 

A week after The BMJ published a highly publicized paper claiming stem cell therapy can reduce the risk of heart failure, sleuths have unearthed what they are calling “serious” inconsistencies in the data. 

The paper claims the phase III clinical trial published October 29 included over 400 patients in Shiraz, Iran, and tested whether stem cell therapy lowers the risk of heart failure after a heart attack. 

The results were celebrated in a press release by the journal and appeared in several news outlets, with New Scientist calling the study the “strongest evidence yet that stem cells can help the heart repair itself.”

Almost immediately after the paper was published, sleuth Dorothy Bishop started noting inconsistencies with the data on PubPeer. Specifically, as she wrote in one comment, the study claimed to have enrolled only patients under 65 years old. However, in the accompanying data, 127 of the patients were older than 65 — a “complete mismatch,” she told Retraction Watch.

Bishop, who is also a professor of developmental neuropsychology at Oxford University, told Retraction Watch the age discrepancies alone should constitute a retraction, but after her observation, other sleuths started finding yet more issues with the data.

Nick Brown, a psychologist and sleuth, discovered a “curious repeating pattern of records in the dataset,” where every 101 records, almost all the values were identical, he wrote on PubPeer. Bishop speculated it was “as if somebody’s just cutting and pasting to full up a column.” 

Almost all the patient’s weights — 288 of 334 reported cases — were integers, and multiples of five kilograms were “heavily over-represented,” Brown wrote in another PubPeer comment. 

Some of the data issues may have been flagged during peer review, but the sequence of events outlined in the reports suggest the authors didn’t share the data until after review, Bishop said. 

In the first decision, shared with the authors on January 30, clinical editor Juan Franco said the journal had “serious concerns regarding the reporting and data sharing.” The authors said they uploaded the data, but one of the reviewers noted it was uploaded as a private file for editors only. Only after its final peer review did the authors upload the data in accordance with The BMJ’s policy. 

Bishop also noted a potential undisclosed conflict of interest for author Anthony Mathur, a researcher at Queen Mary University of London. Mathur is a shareholder and trustee of the Heart Cells Foundation, a charity that funds a unit for administering stem cell therapies to cardiac patients.  

Brown, Bishop and others flagged several other issues with the paper, including a “discrepancy” between the number of subjects enrolled (420) and those disclosed during the trial registration (360). 

Mathur acknowledged our request for comment but redirected us to the corresponding author, Armin Attar, a professor at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. 

Attar has responded to critics on PubPeer by stating: “During an internal audit, we have noticed some inconsistencies in the baseline demographic data.” He also wrote the authors were conducting a review “expected to take approximately two to three weeks.” Attar did not respond to our request for comment via email. 

As for whether the data were intentionally manipulated, Brown told us he believed it was “impossible that these discrepancies could have occurred by chance.” He also said the article “needs to be retracted urgently.” 

Emma Dickinson, head of media relations at The BMJ, responded to our request for comment: “We have noted the concerns. The BMJ takes allegations of data discrepancies seriously.”

Two of the 10 authors had affiliations with Queen Mary University of London. Seven of the remaining researchers are based in Shiraz University of Medical Sciences.

Five of Attar’s other papers have been flagged on PubPeer for image duplication and data issues, including some comments in the past week following the publication of this latest paper. None of the authors have had a paper retracted, according to our database.

Negar Azarpira, the last author on the article and a professor at Shiraz University, has 36 papers flagged on PubPeer for image and data concerns, all but four of which were flagged before The BMJ paper was published.

The cardiac stem cell field has faced controversy in the past. In 2018, Harvard and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital requested the retraction of more than 30 papers from the lab of Piero Anversa for falsified data. Many of those papers were later retracted. The National Institutes of Health continues to fund work in the field. 

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 2025-11-06 21:16:10 UTC.

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Two Vaquita Calves Offer Flicker of Hope for Most Endangered Porpoises on Earth

The latest report shows that the estimated number of endangered vaquita porpoises has modestly increased

in Scientific American on 2025-11-06 20:00:00 UTC.

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Journal retracts two papers evaluating ADHD interventions

in The Transmitter on 2025-11-06 19:21:32 UTC.

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AI Decodes Visual Brain Activity—and Writes Captions for It

A non-invasive imaging technique can translate scenes in your head into sentences. It could help to reveal how the brain interprets the world

in Scientific American on 2025-11-06 18:30:00 UTC.

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An Opera Explores the Story of Rosalind Franklin and the Discovery of DNA

Betrayal, ambition and the double helix: turning Rosalind Franklin’s story and the discovery of the structure of DNA into an opera

in Scientific American on 2025-11-06 17:00:00 UTC.

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Ancient Roman Roads Mapped in Detail from Great Britain to North Africa

New findings increase the known length of the Roman Empire’s road network by more than 60,000 miles

in Scientific American on 2025-11-06 16:00:00 UTC.

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Black Hole ‘Superflare’ Is the Strongest Ever Seen

A “superflare” 10 trillion times brighter than the sun is confirmed as the record holder for luminosity

in Scientific American on 2025-11-06 14:00:00 UTC.

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Alarm Grows over Proposed Giant Mirrors in Orbit and Other Commercial Space Plans

Reflect Orbital’s plan to deliver “sunlight on demand” using thousands of giant orbital mirrors is just the latest in a growing list of disruptive commercial activities in space

in Scientific American on 2025-11-06 13:00:00 UTC.

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New coastal research facility “OIST Sea neXus” opens

in OIST Japan on 2025-11-06 12:00:00 UTC.

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Paradox of rotating turbulence finally tamed with world-class ‘hurricane-in-a-lab’

in OIST Japan on 2025-11-06 12:00:00 UTC.

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Ozempic and Wegovy May Slow Alcohol Absorption and Intoxication

A small study helps explain why some people taking Wegovy and similar weight-loss drugs cut back on alcohol, offering insight into potential new addiction therapies

in Scientific American on 2025-11-06 12:00:00 UTC.

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Attention Authors: Updates for .bib file processing and TeX in arXiv submissions

The arXiv team is making more improvements to the arXiv submission process. To learn more about recent improvements, you can read our Submission 1.5 blog and TeX 2025 Live blog.

Starting this week, authors will notice three updates when submitting work to arXiv:

Processing .bib into .bbl files

• This update has been implemented to make uploading bibliographies easier for authors. From now on, it will not be necessary to upload precompiled bibliographies (the .bbl files), but instead upload the bibliography database files (.bib files instead), and our system will call the necessary programs.

Adding support for XeLaTeX

• This is an update that has been asked for often from arXiv authors. XeLaTeX allows full Unicode support as well as using TrueType and OpenType fonts, as well as OpenType Math Fonts.

Adding support for PDF(e)TeX

• This update is for arXiv users who write in “plain TeX” code and use PDF figures. Until now, plain TeX (that is, not LaTeX) documents were always processed to dvi and from there to ps and pdf, similar to the LaTeX option. With PDF(e)TeX enabled, pdf files are directly generated from the TeX source, similar to what pdflatex does for LaTeX documents.

For more in depth information on these updates and how they may affect your submission process, see our help pages.

arXiv continually assesses and re-examines our submission and (La)TeX processing, and more upgrades are on the way! We are currently in the process of considering support for LuaTeX based submissions. Be on the lookout for future updates as we add support for more TeX processing, which we’ll announce here.

We hope these changes will make for a better author experience. If you have questions or issues with your submission, be sure to first check our help pages for known issues or troubleshooting tips. You can also submit a help ticket for more support, or leave a comment below if you have suggestions for improving the arXiv submission process.

in arXiv.org blog on 2025-11-05 19:51:13 UTC.

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NASA Chief Pick Jared Isaacman Renominated to Head Agency

Ahead of Jared Isaacman’s renomination for the position of NASA’s administrator, a dispute between him and its acting chief Sean Duffy spilled into the open, with potentially profound consequences for the U.S. space agency

in Scientific American on 2025-11-05 19:00:00 UTC.

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Ancient Map of the Cosmos Uncovered in Mexican Jungle

Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of a ritual-based site that may have been built long before the rise of Maya rulers

in Scientific American on 2025-11-05 19:00:00 UTC.

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PLOS partners with the Global Young Academy to advance open science principles

Note: PLOS issued the following press release in December, 2023.

Halle/Saale, Germany, and San Francisco, United States – The Public Library of Science (PLOS) and the Global Young Academy (GYA), an international academy based in Halle, Germany, today announced that they will collaborate with one another to increase the awareness of Open Science, its principles, and its implementation into research practices. 

The Global Young Academy is an international academy of young scientists, which aims to give a voice to young scientists across the globe. The GYA develops, connects, mobilizes and empowers young researchers to lead international, interdisciplinary and intergenerational dialogue. Much of the work of the GYA occurs within member-organized working groups, one of which is the Open Science working group. 

“GYA’s Open Science working group strives to raise awareness of Open Science principles and approaches among young scientists and to provide input into Open Science policies from a diverse, international perspective,” said Tasha Gownaris, GYA Open Science Working Group Co-Lead. “We are excited about the work that PLOS is doing and are looking forward to closely collaborating on initiatives to make science more effective, equitable, and accessible.”

“This strategic partnership with the Global Young Academy will ensure that early-career researchers can inform and help to shape PLOS’ continuing efforts to increase equitable participation in Open Science,” said Roheena Anand, Executive Director of Global Publishing Development, PLOS. “The GYA’s input will be fundamental to ensuring that our Open Science solutions will serve the needs of early career researchers across the globe.”

PLOS and the GYA are invested in an Open future and want to work with stakeholders across the scholarly communication ecosystem to promote and increase uptake of Open Access and Open Science more broadly. 

The post PLOS partners with the Global Young Academy to advance open science principles appeared first on The Official PLOS Blog.

in The Official PLOS Blog on 2025-11-05 18:23:02 UTC.

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Constellation of studies charts brain development, offers ‘dramatic revision’

in The Transmitter on 2025-11-05 17:21:00 UTC.

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Exclusive: A misconduct ruling, a flawed investigation, and an attempted payoff

In April 2019, Daejung Kim, then a Ph.D. student at the University of Melbourne in Australia, found a draft manuscript on the desk of a postdoc in the same laboratory. The manuscript included the experimental results on metal alloys he had spent months collecting. Kim hadn’t been told about the paper, nor had anyone asked his permission to use the data. The findings were central to Kim’s Ph.D. thesis and publishing them would mean the data were no longer original. 

“I was shaking in the lab,” he recalled recently. “When I saw it, I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t know what to do.” 

Kim took his concerns to his supervisor, Kenong Xia, a materials scientist and head of the lab, asking for his help to resolve the issue. He wanted to be credited as a coauthor on any papers using his results. He also emailed the postdoc, Ahmad Zafari, asking to see a draft of the paper. 

But when these efforts to resolve the dispute were unsuccessful, Kim filed a formal complaint with the University of Melbourne’s research integrity office. Six months later, in January 2020, the university launched an investigation, and meanwhile, Xia and Zafari published two papers containing Kim’s results. The articles acknowledge Kim, but not as a coauthor. 

For Kim, the investigation was just the start of a long effort to reclaim ownership of his work. 

Documents reviewed by Retraction Watch show an investigation panel engaged by the university found a “cultural problem” inside Xia’s lab and research violations of Australia’s code of integrity related to the use of the grad student’s work. But it also found that Kim didn’t qualify for authorship on the manuscript. 

Xia and Zafari were barred from receiving grants from the Australian Research Council for two years. Since the early 2000s, Xia has received more than AU$900,000 (US$593,000) from the ARC, among other grants, including for defense-related research. Xia remains at the University of Melbourne despite the panel’s findings of research misconduct that is “wilful and representative of an ongoing pattern.”

A subsequent review by the Australian Research Integrity Committee found flaws in how the university handled the case — including not protecting Kim’s interests, withholding the report, and not investigating additional allegations. Forced to change labs, Kim lost a scholarship and a job offer, and had to repay about AU$90,000 (US$58,400) to his sponsor in South Korea. The university has since offered Kim AU$15,000 (US$9,750) after he sought compensation for the financial losses and time spent doing the experimental work — although without admitting culpability.

Kim declined the funds, continuing to push for his data and his name to be removed from the published papers, and compensation for what he lost, which includes his intellectual property, a job opportunity, and the time he lost to changing his research topic to start his Ph.D. project over again. “I lost almost two years of my life,” he told us. “I feel that they don’t want to waste their time on my case.” 

Kim’s efforts to correct the papers containing his work has led to their retraction. 

One paper, published in Materials Science & Engineering: A in May 2020, was retracted in November 2024, three years after Kim asked the editor to remove his data and name from the acknowledgements. Before the retraction, Mark Hargreaves, the University of Melbourne’s then-deputy vice-chancellor for research, urged Kim to provide retrospective permission instead, saying a retraction would “represent another sanction of Xia and Zafari … and have implications for the other authors,” he wrote in correspondence we have seen. The editors eventually pulled the article for using data without the copyright owner’s approval. Neither Xia, Zafari nor the other authors agreed with the retraction. 

For the other article, published in Scripta Materialia in August 2019, Kim requested in 2022 and again in 2024 his data and name be removed. But the editor cited the university’s  investigation, saying it didn’t recommend a retraction, only a correction. 

That stance has changed. After we asked the journal on October 14 about their decision not to retract, Kim received an update on October 16 from Scripta Materialia telling him that following an ethics review, the journal  decided to retract the article for using Kim’s data without permission, a decision Kim called “overdue and incomplete.” The retraction did not address his concerns about the accuracy and repeatability of some of the results, he pointed out. According to the notice, both Xia and Zafari have agreed to the retraction.

In Kim’s complaint to the University of Melbourne’s research integrity office in July 2019, he reported that Xia and Zafari had breached the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research. His first allegation was that they had used his experimental work without appropriate attribution. According to a copy of the panel’s report we have seen, investigators agreed Kim’s data had been used in both papers, which “clearly cut across future opportunities” for Kim to publish data from his Ph.D.  But they found he didn’t technically qualify for authorship because he hadn’t contributed “beyond provision of primary data,” the documents state. 

Melbourne’s investigation found Xia and Zafari had repeatedly breached Australia’s research integrity code by excluding Kim from discussions about the papers, using his data without consent, and misrepresenting parts of the methodology. 

The investigators also described a “broader cultural problem” inside Xia’s lab, where Xia and Zafari portrayed Kim as an “intellectual bystander” on the project. According to the report, Kim was “denied the opportunity” to contribute, even though the panel considered him capable of doing so. This culture meant the panel didn’t believe Kim ultimately qualified for authorship. Xia told the panel that “[Kim] wouldn’t understand the paper,” which the panel described as a “deliberate and intentional” exclusion, and evidence of a culture where “students are not considered major contributors early in their studies.” 

In both papers, Kim’s name was listed in the acknowledgements without his consent, which the panel said breached the code’s fairness principle and authorship guide. Xia told investigators, “My understanding is that you do not need permission to thank people.” 

The Australian Research Council barred Xia and Zafari from receiving  grants for two years, and the university recommended a lab culture review and additional training. 

The investigation also found that Kim’s Ph.D. project overlapped with the collaboration between Xia and Zafari. Kim’s formal milestone documents identified the alloy experiments as part of his Ph.D., giving him a “reasonable expectation” that the project was his to develop. Xia told the panel that “it was never the intention that this was [Kim’s] project,” even though he had approved Kim’s milestone review. 

The investigation found that Xia’s actions constituted “wilful ignorance or wilful deviation from the code.” They were “particularly disturbed” by Xia’s attempts to justify his behavior as standard practice, warning it could lead to more serious misconduct. Zafari’s breaches were deemed comparatively minor but still “crossed the boundary of accepted practice.” 

Xia remains in his position at the University of Melbourne. Zafari is listed as a researcher on the University of Twente’s website, in the Netherlands. 

Xia has not responded to requests for comment about these findings. Zafari’s legal representatives said: “Dr Zafari is a highly regarded researcher who has not been found by any university or comparable institution to have engaged in research misconduct.” 

In a letter summarizing the findings, Hargreaves told Kim that, based on the panel’s findings and “on the balance of probabilities,” Xia “committed research misconduct,” and Zafari “committed serious breaches of the Code.” 

The panel also determined that there were inaccuracies in the methodology of the Scripta Materialia paper. The authors misrepresented the magnifications of some figures, and didn’t report the experimental conditions accurately. Zafari admitted to using “artistic licence” when preparing some figures, but the panel found this was done for convenience rather than to mislead. 

Overall, they recommended an “urgent review of student supervisory practices” as well as additional training in Xia’s group, corrections to the methodological issues, and amendments to the acknowledgements to specify Kim’s contributions. 

Because Kim was only given a summary letter of the findings, despite multiple requests, Kim said he couldn’t understand how the panel reached their conclusions and he believed their process was biased. So in March 2021, a few weeks after receiving the summary, Kim appealed the outcome.

He later took the matter to the Australian Research Integrity Committee (ARIC), which reviews how institutions handle breaches of the code. In its September 2023 report ARIC described “significant difficulty” obtaining information from the university and found Kim was “significantly disadvantaged” by the publication of papers containing his work — especially since, when he first raised his concerns, none of the papers had yet been published. The university’s six-month delay in launching the investigation after the complaint meant the data became increasingly accessible online. 

ARIC determined that the university “did not do enough to protect the interests of Dr Kim” and said pausing publication of the papers could have avoided some of the breaches.

It recommended the university to review its policy of withholding full reports and issue a formal apology to Kim for “the disadvantage he suffered as a result of Code breaches and poor research practice in the laboratory.” In December 2023, Hargreaves wrote to Kim apologizing for “any distress caused during the investigation.” 

ARIC declined to comment on whether it has since received any updates from the university about steps taken to address the systemic problems identified in its own investigation. 

Kim says the fallout from the case had consequences on his career. He lost a scholarship and associated job offer with a company in Korea after the delays to his Ph.D. and culture of the lab forced him to move to another lab. He was also required to repay two years’ worth of the scholarship back to the sponsor — amounting to about AU$90,000 (US$58,400). 

At the start of this year, Kim wrote to the University of Melbourne requesting compensation for the lost opportunity and the time he spent working on generating data he was ultimately unable to claim as his own. In a response we’ve reviewed, Ben Rubinstein, the deputy dean of research in the faculty of engineering and information technology, said there was no finding in the investigation that Kim should have been paid for the work, and there was no employment relationship between Kim and the university. Rubinstein stated the university couldn’t be held solely responsible for the termination of Kim’s job offer and scholarship contract. 

However, the university offered $15,000 ($9,750) as an ex gratia payment — made out of a moral obligation rather than a legal requirement — without “any admission of liability” and “in full and final settlement of all claims” against the university, Rubinstein wrote. Accepting the payment would also require Kim to agree to confidentiality and non-disparagement terms, as well as releasing the university from any current or future claims related to his time as a Ph.D. student. 

Kim, now working as an engineer in South Korea, says he rejected the offer. “The university didn’t consider my request at all,” he told us. “I feel that my concerns haven’t been resolved at all.” 

In a statement to Retraction Watch, a spokesperson for the University of Melbourne wrote: “The investigation identified that breaches of the Code occurred, and corrective actions were required of the respondent researchers. The University has taken responsive action. The graduate researcher was also provided with additional support.  

“The University of Melbourne considers this matter concluded and will be making no further comment.”

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 2025-11-05 15:38:26 UTC.

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COVID Is Beginning to Surge Globally—What Are the Symptoms, and How Serious Is It?

Limited COVID surveillance data are hampering vaccination and health strategies, researchers say

in Scientific American on 2025-11-05 14:00:00 UTC.

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Long-Lived Gamma-Ray Burst Is Unlike Any Seen Before

A cosmic explosion known as GRB 250702B is by far the longest gamma-ray burst astronomers have ever seen—if it’s even one at all

in Scientific American on 2025-11-05 13:00:00 UTC.

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Shared synaptic mechanism for Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s disease unlocks new treatment possibilities

in OIST Japan on 2025-11-05 12:00:00 UTC.

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What Is ARFID? Doctors Explain Why the Eating Disorder’s Rates Are Rising

Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, or ARFID, can cause malnutrition and weight loss in children and adults even when body image is not a factor

in Scientific American on 2025-11-05 12:00:00 UTC.

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The Psychology Behind Standing Up and Saying No

Why saying no is harder than it should be.

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

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BMJ invaded by Iranian papermill

in For Better Science on 2025-11-05 06:00:00 UTC.

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Daniel Nicholson discusses how Schrödinger’s book ‘What is Life?’ shaped years of biology, research

in The Transmitter on 2025-11-05 05:00:38 UTC.

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Our searchable repository of useful research can restore trust in federally funded basic science

in The Transmitter on 2025-11-05 05:00:36 UTC.

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Review mill in Italy targeting ob-gyn journals, researchers allege

A network of peer reviewers in Italy is targeting medical journals, threatening “both the scientific record and patient safety,” a team of researchers report. Without more transparency by journals, they say, most review mills will remain impossible to detect.

In a preprint posted on medRxiv on October 23, sleuths Dorothy Bishop, René Aquarius and Maria Ángeles Oviedo-García say they discovered the alleged review mill when they stumbled upon seemingly “boilerplate” comments in a peer review. This discovery led the trio to search for published peer reviews that shared similar terminology — work that ultimately identified 195 suspect reviews of 170 articles published between Feb. 6, 2019, and July 7, 2025. The researchers speculate the number of articles affected is likely higher given most journals do not publish their peer reviews.

The alleged mill is run by “well-established, Italian physicians in the fields of gynecology and oncology,” wrote the authors of the new study, which also noted the reviewers were refereeing papers with clinical implications, a pattern the authors called “alarming.” 

The hallmarks of a review mill are a “pattern of generic, vague, and repeated affirmations” in reviewer reports and the frequent use of “coercive citations” to push authors to cite the work of mill members, as Oviedo-García articulated in a paper last year.

Of the 195 reviews the authors identified in the new study, 186 by apparent members of the mill suggested citing “at least one article which was co-authored by the reviewer or another member of the mill,” according to the preprint. 

The preprint authors noted when they found a review containing a boilerplate comment, it “invariably” contained other text common across reviews, indicating “a level of co-ordination between reviewers.” 

Authors of 142 of the 170 identified papers included coercive citations recommended by the reviewers, suggesting the approach was highly effective in aiding the reviewers’ h-indices, Bishop’s group found. For 59 other papers reviewed as a control group, only four reviews recommended adding citations to the reviewers’ own work.

Bishop, professor of developmental neuropsychology at Oxford University, told us the reviewers her team identified “frequently publish together and during their careers they work or have worked together in the same institutions.” The research group decided not to name the reviewers in their preprint because journal editors can be “squeamish” about “naming and shaming,” she told us, which could affect the likelihood the preprint is published.

But the supplementary materials do name 14 of the reviewers involved in the alleged mill. 

One is Giorgio Bogani of Sapienza University in Rome, who completed 24 of the suspect reviews and holds an editorial board position at Minerva Obstetrics and Gynecology. Antonio Simone Laganà (Reviewer 9 in the preprint) of the University of Palermo, who completed five of the suspect reviews, won several awards for peer review in 2019, including top reviewer in biology and biochemistry and clinical medicine, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. He currently serves on the editorial board of at least 18 journals, according to the preprint authors.

Several of the named reviewers, including Laganà, had a paper retracted from the European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology in August 2024 after sleuth Ben Mol flagged similarities with another paper on PubPeer. The second paper, published in Climacteric, shares several of the same authors. 

Mol, who leads the Evidence-based Women’s Health Care Research Group in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Monash University in Australia, has worked to raise awareness of problematic data informing medical recommendations for women’s health care, and to cleanse the literature of unreliable studies. (Mol had a paper retracted recently for duplication.)

Reviews by the alleged review mill were in journals from several publishers, including MDPI, PLOS, BioMed Central and BMJ. 

Journals with editors who are part of a review mill make easier targets, because they can give other reviewers in their network easier access to papers, Bishop told us. That, she said, was the case for 20 of the papers identified as being of concern. Bishop also said “there are likely to be many other journals involved, but we don’t know about them because they don’t have open peer review.”

Bishop noted “this is a (rare) case where we don’t think the publishers can be blamed, because the review mills are under the radar. Also, it would be a shame if these journals were lambasted for having review mills when they are actually doing the right thing by making peer review open – and having names of handling editors and/or reviewers published is also very useful.”

The preprint authors contacted PLOS One — home to 36 of the papers of concern — with the results, Bishop said. “They are aware of the problem and confirmed that one of these reviewers who served as editor was removed prior to our analysis,” she said. Reviewers identified as numbers 7 and 9 (Andrea Giannini of Sapienza University in Rome and Laganà, respectively) have been editors of PLOS One. 

None of the authors of the implicated papers seemed to be involved in the alleged network, Bishop said, speculating the goal was to increase the reviewers’ citation counts. 

How to approach affected papers is still a question Bishop and her team have for the scientific community. 

“Should they get a separate status or should they be retracted? Should they get a second chance by inviting new peer-reviewers to do additional post-publication peer-review?”

Regardless, the preprint authors “recommend that publishers adopt open peer review, employ automated checks, and transparently report the editors responsible for handling papers, to make detection of review mills easier for the entire scientific community.”

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 2025-11-04 20:06:56 UTC.

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As teens in crisis turn to AI chatbots, simulated chats highlight risks

in Science News: Health & Medicine on 2025-11-04 15:30:00 UTC.

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Gene Editing Helped One Baby—Could It Help Thousands?

In a world first, a bespoke gene-editing therapy benefited one child. Now researchers plan to launch a clinical trial of the approach

in Scientific American on 2025-11-04 13:00:00 UTC.

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How neuroscientists are using AI

in The Transmitter on 2025-11-04 05:00:34 UTC.

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Functional connectivity links with autism, not ADHD; and more

in The Transmitter on 2025-11-04 05:00:04 UTC.

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Dozens of board members resign from big-data journal after mass staff firings

More than three-fifths of the editorial board of a biomedical sciences journal resigned after the publication’s operations moved from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, China, and the editors and software team were fired with 30 days’ notice. 

GigaScience is published in partnership between Oxford University Press and GigaScience Press, the publishing division of BGI, a genomics company based in Shenzhen, according to their website. 

On October 29, B.F. Francis Ouellette, a bioinformatics consultant, sent the resignation notice in an email addressed to Oxford University Press and the new editor-in-chief of the journal, Xun Xu. According to the email, which was signed by 30 of the journal’s 49 board members, those resigning became “increasingly concerned about the recent structural and editorial changes at GigaScience and how they may affect the journal’s long-standing commitment to publishing rigorously reviewed, reproducible research.”

Those changes include a move from the long-standing Hong Kong-based editorial and data teams to Shenzhen, Ouellette wrote. The changes were made “without prior consultation or communication” with the editorial board, he added. 

Within an hour of the email, the signed names were removed from the editorial board page on the journal’s website. Xu, the executive editor and the three listed editors are all based in Shenzhen and are all affiliated with BGI. Xu is the chief scientist for BGI Group. 

The journal publishes “big data” research in the life and biomedical sciences. In recent coverage, the Open Bioinformatics Foundation said the journal was the “equivalent to establishing a full-fledged data center.” And in September, GigaScience won a Crossref metadata award.

Hongling Zhou, the newly appointed executive editor at GigaScience, said the journal was “now in the process of reconstituting” the editorial board. 

Ouellette said his primary concern wasn’t the move to Shenzhen, but that the former editors were fired with 30 days notice. 

Among those let go was the journal’s founding editor-in-chief, Scott Edmunds, who was with GigaScience for nearly 15 years. He gave a history of the journal and his time there in a blog post published September 17, his last day at the journal. 

Edmunds told us he received “generic and vague” messages from the human resources department at BGI, informing him the move was “due to strategic planning and operational optimization.”

Edmunds also said he feels optimistic about the future of the journal, noting the former editors “trained the Shenzhen team well.”

The journal is the latest to join our Mass Resignations List, which documents walkouts and resignations at more than two dozen journals since 2023.

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 2025-11-03 21:05:18 UTC.

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The Taurid Meteor Shower May Hide an Impact Threat to Earth

Debris from Comet Encke creates two annual meteor showers, but it might also pose a small risk to Earth. Scientists are investigating

in Scientific American on 2025-11-03 16:00:00 UTC.

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Volunteers agreed to be buried face-down in the snow, for science

in Science News: Health & Medicine on 2025-11-03 15:30:00 UTC.

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Endometriosis, Women’s Pain, and the Power of Storytelling: A Review of Sophie Richards on Her Discussions with Dr. Faye Bate

in Women in Neuroscience UK on 2025-11-03 15:00:31 UTC.

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Why Hurricane Melissa Was One of the Most Powerful Atlantic Storms in History

Hurricane Melissa’s rare intensity and lasting impact reveal how storms are evolving in a warming world.

in Scientific American on 2025-11-03 10:00:00 UTC.