A newly discovered species of cactus is discovered using energy dispersive X-ray analysis.

Author lists on papers have ballooned, and it’s getting hard to discern contribution.

www.thetransmitter.org/academia/the...

Russian Thermophysicist Handed *5-Year* Suspended Sentence in FSB-Linked Fraud Case

www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/02/25/r...

First lady Kim Keon Hee's master's thesis was plagiarized, university says Sookmyung Women's University has officially ruled that first lady Kim Keon Hee's master's thesis was plagiarized after the university's alumni association, which raised the allegations, decided not to...

First lady Kim Keon Hee's master's thesis was plagiarized, university says

www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2...

How often do you see all such shapes in a single XPS pattern?!

I repeat: University of Messina = fraud

Emanuella Esposito has ~500 papers. Most of them are probably false.
doi.org/10.3390/ijms...
#Italy #science #research #fraud #Messina #MDPI

Took just 6 months for MMR (Spandidos) to retract this mess. 👏

pubpeer.com/publications... h/t anon Hoya for noticing.

Tragic & funny: I have moved on from problematic figures in articles to flagging "corrections". This figure was published as part of a "correction" to a problem I flagged in July'24: Jalili et al. 2024 in 'Molecular Biology Reports' (DOI: 10.1007/s11033-024-09599-y). pubpeer.com/publications...

Sabine Hazan still can’t understand: I did not retract her paper, the journal did; after I and others pointed out flaws she could not rectify.

#scicomms

Felice Frankel:

"As a [great, scholarly, "cultivée" etc. - imo] science photographer, I am acutely aware of the difference between an illustration and a documentary photograph, but I am less confident that AI programs can make this distinction."

You are in a hurry, and want to create as many papers as possible. Consequently, you do your photoshopping at almost light speed. Length contraction is a natural consequence of this phenomenon.

Be Responsible like @WorldScientific. Claim to follow the @C0PE guidelines, but hire an EiC that proudly answers like this. And, don't forget to ignore the complaints you receive via email.

Incredible scenes, puts Larry the cat to shame.

‘Stamp out paper mills’ — science sleuths on how to fight fake research A group of scientists who are experts at spotting fraudulent research outline five essential steps to combat industrialized scientific misconduct.

‘Stamp out paper mills’ — science sleuths on how to fight fake research www.nature.com/articles/d41...

These days I see asymmetric error bars everywhere. Is it OK?

Star ecologist accused of misconduct loses university post Tree researcher Thomas Crowther is seeking to move his laboratory from ETH Zurich, which says it will not renew his contract.

Star ecologist accused of misconduct loses university post
Tree researcher Thomas Crowther is seeking to move his laboratory from ETH Zurich, which says it will not renew his contract.
Holly Else reports @nature.com

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Evolution journal editors resign en masse to protest Elsevier changes All but one member of the editorial board of the Journal of Human Evolution (JHE), an Elsevier title, have resigned, saying the “sustained actions of Elsevier are fundamentally incompatible with th…

how fitting to this story about the world's largest academic publisher:

"AI processing continues to be used and regularly reformats submitted manuscripts to change meaning and formatting and require extensive author and editor oversight during proof stage." 🧪🎓🤖

retractionwatch.com/2024/12/27/e...

Shinde & Desai 2023 (10.1007/s12011-023-03840-8) in 'Biological Trace Element Research', 1 out of 13 articles with severe issues I have found in the journal so far. Figure 8 is a true piece of art. I found the orange and blue with the help of ImageTwin.ai after spotting suspicious overlap by eye.

*Challenge 5* (level newbie):
Some plots might be similar. Right

I sleuth by looking closely and asking questions. In this case, @arbitraryeffect.bsky.social confirmed my "feeling" that the overhang is probably not alright. 10.1016/j.radphyschem.2020.109085

Nice to see a journal use an Expression of Concern the way I think they should always be used - after a credible concern has been raised, the journal wants to alert readers that they are investigating.

pubpeer.com/publications...

You have to laugh or you'll cry. An author apologises for not shifting the field of view enough, causing an overlap of 3 images. The images should all be for different combinations of bacterium and treatment.
H/T @sholtodavid.bsky.social

pubpeer.com/publications...

Wow! How did you find the red boxes?!

Figures with lots of panels often come with lots of problems (just my personal impression): Wang et al. 2024 (DOI: 10.1186/s12870-024-05668-3); 'BMC Plant Biology'. Figure 1 has a questionable overlap (after rotation) and one of the panels just has been copy-pasted (because why not, right?)

Dozens of the world’s most cited scientists stop falsely claiming to work in Saudi Arabia This newspaper unveiled that Saudi universities were paying up to €70,000 a year to prestigious researchers to artificially pump up Arab institutions in international academic rankings

Article from @manuelansede.bsky.social elansede in @elpais.com on academical #fraud! 2000 frauds have been removed by @clarivate.com in their highly cited list. But we are far from cleaning up the #papermill #fraud! The fake Saudi Arabia science bubble to burst?
english.elpais.com/science-tech...

Can anybody confirm this?
x.com/YangLiu_LMB/...

Identical baselines. The protruding objects on O and In peaks are unfortunate, but the yellow ink that dripped down below the baseline just took the cake. 10.1016/j.optmat.2022.113039

1st post on bsky - about bsky! I was fascinated with academic starter packs and made an interactive network to see academic communities and how they connect - a map of knowledge! link to an interactive & searchable network: ketikagarg.github.io/blueSkyAcade...

Chandrasekharan et al. 2022 (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-04025-w); Scentific Reports. Somehow I do not believe that the two panels marked in red actually represent two different experimental conditions. pubpeer.com/publications...
Could be an honest error but overlap like that always give me the ikk.

Image recycling for different conditions. So obvious too...was this paper was ever even looked at by a reviewer or editor?: Akinloye et al. 2023 (DOI: 10.1007/s13596-021-00588-1); Again in 'Advances in Traditional Medicine'. So much sketchy "science" in that journal...flagging 20+ papers currently.