(29 Sep 2026) China maintains a zero-tolerance policy toward academic misconduct, with a special campaign targeting retracted papers and a crackdown on paper buying and selling launched, the Ministry of Science and Technology said on Tuesday. Qiu Yong, vice-minister of the ministry, said the ministry has led a special campaign on retracted papers involving academic…
(23 Sep 2026) Science of the Total Environment (STOTEN) has retracted 165 papers this year, most for “suspicious” changes in authorship or editorial conflicts of interest. The retractions have come after STOTEN was delisted from Clarivate’s Web of Science in November after the index put it on hold due to concerns about article quality. The…
(3 Sep 2026) Four Chinese academics who lost posts at leading universities after a high-profile blogger flagged their research for misconduct have come under official investigation by China’s leading funder of basic research. The National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) published details on August 26 of 31 new misconduct cases at universities and hospitals…
(3 Sep 2026) After identifying antibody validation data manipulation in Thermo Fisher Scientific’s catalogue in May, the science sleuths and researchers behind the finding have now uncovered doctored validation data on a much larger scale, with over 18,000 images relating to over 17,000 antibodies from at least 15 different supplier companies. Reese Richardson, Elisabeth Bik and Sholto…
Some institutions are overhauling assessment and trying to move away from the emphasis on surveillance (24 Jul 2026) The UK’s Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education reports that while complaints remain low, AI-related misconduct cases are rising within internal university procedures. Chief of staff Adam Waddingham says: “Detection tools may be…
(16 Jul 2026) Overwhelming submission volumes, coupled with easy access to artificial intelligence tools making misconduct far easier, are increasing the pressure on editors and peer reviewers, which is turning once-rare jobs for research integrity specialists into commonplace ones at publishers. A spokesperson for Taylor & Francis says the company’s publishing and ethics team “more…
(21 Jul 2026) A second-year medical student in Nepal is at the center of an international research network churning out everything from systematic reviews and meta-analyses to case reports and database studies, Retraction Watch has learned. The student, Raghabendra Kumar Mahato, leverages this network, which includes nearly 1,000 members connected through the WhatsApp messaging platform, to…
(10 Jul 2026) The National Health Commission released on Friday 28 cases of research misconduct involving data fabrication, paper trading and guest authorship. The cases involve researchers from hospitals in Shanxi, Jiangxi and Guangdong provinces, as well as Chongqing, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. In one case, researchers…
(8 Jul 2026) Indonesian authorities are widening their investigation into a case of suspected identity and research fraud at an overseas medical conference, which has exposed gaps in academic oversight and revived concerns about abuses in the nation’s system of publication-driven promotion for academia. The Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology has set up a…
(27 May 2026) China’s academic world has been thrown into turmoil after a former doctoral student launched a series of high-profile allegations accusing some of the country’s most prominent scholars of suspected research misconduct and data manipulation. The whistleblower, known online as “Geng Tongxue” (“Student Geng”), has rapidly become one of the most closely-watched figures on Chinese…