Columbia Cancer Surgeon Notches 5 More Retractions for Suspicious Data; The New York Times, October 16, 2024

Benjamin Mueller, The New York Times; Columbia Cancer Surgeon Notches 5 More Retractions for Suspicious Data

"The chief of a cancer surgery division at Columbia University this week had five research articles retracted and a sixth tagged with an editor’s note, underscoring concerns about research misconduct that have lately bedeviled Columbia as well as cancer labs at several other elite American universities.

With the latest retractions, the Columbia lab, led by Dr. Sam Yoon, has had more than a dozen studies pulled over suspicious results since The New York Times reported in February on data discrepancies in the lab’s work.

The retracted studies were among 26 articles by Dr. Yoon and a more junior collaborator that a scientific sleuth in Britain, Sholto David, revealed had presented images from one experiment as data from another, a tactic that can be used to massage or falsify the results of studies.

Dr. Yoon’s more junior collaborator, Changhwan Yoon, no longer works in the lab, Columbia said in response to questions on Wednesday. But the university has said little else about what, if anything, it has done to address the allegations.

Since the Times article in February, Dr. Yoon’s name has been changed from Sam Yoon to S. Sunghyun Yoon on a Columbia website advertising surgical treatment options."

Wiley shuts 19 scholarly journals amid AI paper mill problems; The Register, May 16, 2024

 Thomas Claburn, The Register; Wiley shuts 19 scholarly journals amid AI paper mill problems

"US publishing house Wiley this week discontinued 19 scientific journals overseen by its Hindawi subsidiary, the center of a long-running scholarly publishing scandal.

In December 2023 Wiley announced it would stop using the Hindawi brand, acquired in 2021, following its decision in May 2023 to shut four of its journals "to mitigate against systematic manipulation of the publishing process."

Hindawi's journals were found to be publishing papers from paper mills – organizations or groups of individuals who try to subvert the academic publishing process for financial gain. Over the past two years, a Wiley spokesperson told The Register, the publisher has retracted more than 11,300 papers from its Hindawi portfolio.

As described in a Wiley-authored white paper published last December, "Tackling publication manipulation at scale: Hindawi’s journey and lessons for academic publishing," paper mills rely on various unethical practices – such as the use of AI in manuscript fabrication and image manipulations, and gaming the peer review process...

In January, Wiley signed on to United2Act – an industry initiative to combat paper mills.

But the concern over scholarly research integrity isn't confined to Wiley publications. A study published in Nature last July suggests as many as a quarter of clinical trials are problematic or entirely fabricated."

THE RECKONING; Science, March 7, 2024

CATHLEEN O’GRADY , Science; THE RECKONING

"Part of the failure lies with France’s law on research ethics, Amiel says, which is out of step with international standards. “It’s provincial,” he says. “And it’s really a problem.” Because the law allows some human studies to proceed without ethical approval, Amiel says, similar violations are ongoing elsewhere in France, though not at the scale of the IHU’s. The best solution would be to overhaul the law, he says—but “I don’t think it’s a priority for the government at the moment.”

The close relationship between political powers and scientific institutions in France is also to blame for the foot-dragging institutional response, Lacombe says. Without external voices—like Bik, Frank, Besançon, Molimard, and Garcia—“I’m not sure that things would have moved,” she says."

A Columbia Surgeon’s Study Was Pulled. He Kept Publishing Flawed Data.; The New York Times, February 16, 2024

 Benjamin Mueller, The New York Times; A Columbia Surgeon’s Study Was Pulled. He Kept Publishing Flawed Data.

"Problems with the study were severe enough that its publisher, after finding that the paper violated ethics guidelines, formally withdrew it within a few months of its publication in 2021. The study was then wiped from the internet, leaving behind a barren web page that said nothing about the reasons for its removal.

As it turned out, the flawed study was part of a pattern. Since 2008, two of its authors — Dr. Sam S. Yoon, chief of a cancer surgery division at Columbia University’s medical center, and a more junior cancer biologist — have collaborated with a rotating cast of researchers on a combined 26 articles that a British scientific sleuth has publicly flagged for containing suspect data. A medical journal retracted one of them this month after inquiries from The New York Times."

‘The situation has become appalling’: fake scientific papers push research credibility to crisis point; The Guardian, February 3, 2024

 Robin McKie, The Guardian; ‘The situation has become appalling’: fake scientific papers push research credibility to crisis point

"Tens of thousands of bogus research papers are being published in journals in an international scandal that is worsening every year, scientists have warned. Medical research is being compromised, drug development hindered and promising academic research jeopardised thanks to a global wave of sham science that is sweeping laboratories and universities.

Last year the annual number of papers retracted by research journals topped 10,000 for the first time. Most analysts believe the figure is only the tip of an iceberg of scientific fraud."