Weekend reads: The AI ghosts ‘contaminating’ academic publishing; court upholds whistleblower suits; Ariely paper retracted after sleuths flag tampering

The week saw several notable developments in the world of academic publishing and research misconduct. First, the Duke study led by Dan Ariely was retracted due to evidence of data tampering. Additionally, a journal retracted a paper claiming the existence of hidden corridors inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, while another Nature paper on the "atmospheric thirst" for calculation errors was retracted by Oxford researchers due to calculation errors.

The Hijacked Journal Checker now lists over 450 entries, and the Retraction Watch Database has surpassed 67,000 retractions, with the COVID-19 retractions list nearing 700. The mass resignations list has also grown to more than 50 entries.

Elsewhere, a preprint revealed that AI language models generate fictional names when working in teams and documenting the effects in scholarly repositories. A court ruled that fraud whistleblowers are protected by the First Amendment, which could prevent the chilling effect on reporting research fraud. Additionally, a researcher accused of stealing $1 million in CDC grant funds for autism-vaccine research was found to have exaggerated his role in a preprint paper.

A statistician at the University of Chicago has written over 200 academic papers this year, many of which have been removed from a preprint site. Jason Arday, an accused of misconduct, has been given a three-month teaching ban but can continue research. The upcoming trial of asthma researchers echoes previous cases, with some studies continuing despite fraud allegations.

RFK Jr. questioned a vaccine study, and the U.S. Department of Commerce quietly removed language banning political interference from the department's scientific integrity policy. A Finnish editor raised concerns about the thoroughness and impartiality of misconduct investigations. Francesca Gino told a court that Harvard is trying to avoid addressing the central question in her case.

The BMC journal retracted a paper after inadvertently naming a sleuth in the correction, and the researcher apologized for underestimating replication rates in several of his articles. An editorial highlights the need for policy changes to restore scientific integrity and transparency. There are calls to address "AI policies are repeating every mistake of plagiarism policies" and to create new guidelines for publishing Indigenous data.

The analysis shows that women make up less than one-fifth of last authorships in elite journals, and a peer-review article discusses the capacity of editors and conflicts of interest in elite peer review. Finally, a satirical Ig Nobel Prize in biology was awarded to a retracted snake-stepping paper, and a talk on covering fraud and misconduct will be held on October 8.