Amaral Lab

And of course, all of this is related to this article: doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Endeavor, Northwestern develop AI tool for critical lung condition diagnosis Researchers say the success identifying acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS, shows the promise of AI diagnostics tools across an array of conditions.

Crain's Chicago Business: www.chicagobusiness.com/health-pulse...

Endeavor, Northwestern partner on AI tool to detect lung condition - Becker's Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis Evanston, Ill.-based Endeavor Health is piloting a computer program developed with Northwestern University in Evanston that aims to detect acute respiratory distress syndrome, a common but hard-to-dia...

Becker's Health IT: www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-i...

Our @natcomms.nature.com paper on AI for ARDS detection was just featured in the Chicago Tribune and other places! 📰

🔗 www.chicagotribune.com/2025/08/28/a...

ARDS: A Common, Deadly Syndrome That’s Easy to Miss I just recently had a cool AI in Healthcare paper published in Nature Communications!

Our very own, Felix Morales, just wrote up a blog post summarizing our @natcomms.nature.com article on automating the diagnosis of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome!

Check it out: medium.com/@fmoralcabal...

#HealthInformatics #AIinHealthcare #CriticalCare #ARDS

See below for the first author's @reeserichardson.bsky.social reflections on the latest @pnas.org article from the lab!

Fraudulent Scientific Papers Are Rapidly Increasing, Study Finds A statistical analysis found that the number of fake journal articles being churned out by “paper mills” is doubling every year and a half.

Gift link to Exhibit 1: nyti.ms/45rDirw

Organized scientific fraud is growing at an alarming rate, study uncovers From fabricated research to paid authorships and citations, organized scientific fraud is on the rise, according to a new Northwestern University study.

Exhibit 6: phys.org/news/2025-08...

Brokers of scientific fraud growing rapidly, study finds Publishers are not keeping up with paper mills and other purveyors of shoddy academic papers

Exhibit 5: cen.acs.org/policy/publi...

Scientific fraud has become an ‘industry,’ alarming analysis finds Sophisticated global networks are infiltrating journals to publish fake papers

Exhibit 4: www.science.org/content/arti...

Exclusive: retraction-prone editors identified at megajournal PLoS ONE Study says small editor group handled many problematic manuscripts — and a Nature investigation finds out who they are.

Exhibit 3: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Scientific Journals Can’t Keep Up With Flood of Fake Papers The source of the trouble is “paper mills,” businesses or individuals that charge fees to publish fake studies in legitimate journals.

Exhibit 2: www.wsj.com/science/scie...

Fraudulent Scientific Papers Are Rapidly Increasing, Study Finds

Our latest publication in @pnas.org "The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly", by @reeserichardson.bsky.social, @jabyrnesci.bsky.social, Spencer Hong, has received quite a bit of press!

Exhibit 1: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/s...

4/ These findings challenge the idea that fraud is just a matter of bad actors working alone.

Instead, we’re looking at a system—and one that’s getting better at evading detection.

Full paper here: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

#ScientificIntegrity #ScienceFraud #PNAS

3/ Through case studies, we show how:

Authors cooperate to place fraudulent papers

Brokers target specific journals

Certain subfields are more vulnerable than others

Fraudulent publications are increasing faster than legitimate ones

2/ We go beyond the “paper mill” problem and uncover a broader network of brokers, editors, and authors who collaborate to bypass traditional peer review.

These coordinated efforts can lead to the publication of fabricated research at scale.

🧵
1/ New from @reeserichardson.bsky.social, @jabyrnesci.bsky.social, and our lab in @pnas.org :

A growing body of evidence shows that "systematic" scientific fraud is an emerging threat to the integrity of science.

Our latest study investigates how this fraud is organized and sustained.

4/ These findings challenge the idea that fraud is just a matter of bad actors working alone.

Instead, we’re looking at a system—and one that’s getting better at evading detection.

Full paper here (currently paywalled): doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

#ScientificIntegrity #ScienceFraud #PNAS

3/ Through case studies, we show how:

Authors cooperate to place fraudulent papers

Brokers target specific journals

Certain subfields are more vulnerable than others

Fraudulent publications are increasing faster than legitimate ones

2/ We go beyond the “paper mill” problem and uncover a broader network of brokers, editors, and authors who collaborate to bypass traditional peer review.

These coordinated efforts can lead to the publication of fabricated research at scale.

Huge congratulations to the newly-minted Dr. Huaxia Zhou on successfully defending his dissertation!

We’re so proud of all he’s accomplished, and we'll be posting on his work as it goes to press.

He’s now headed to Tucson, AZ for a postdoc—wishing him all the best in this exciting next chapter!

This work was driven by Amaralians Felix Morales and Feihong Xu, in collaboration with Curtis Weiss, MD, from @endeavorhlth.bsky.social

Open-source computational pipeline flags instances of acute respiratory distress syndrome in mechanically ventilated adult patients - Nature Communications Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in intensive care unit patients is an often underdiagnosed but life-threatening condition. Here, the authors develop an open-source tool that uses machine le...

We’re thrilled to share that our work on automating detection of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) was just published in @natcomms.nature.com!

The tool flagged ARDS with higher sensitivity than an internal medicine physician.

Learn more: doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Congratulations to @reeserichardson.bsky.social and others on their latest publication in PLOS ONE!

They scanned 1M+ materials science papers and found 1 in 5 with mismatched SEM metadata—often tied to flawed results and signs of paper mills.

A potential way to flag questionable science.

Driven by Amaralians Felix Morales and Feihong Xu, this work was done in collaboration with Curtis Weiss, MD from @endeavorhlth.bsky.social

Using #AI in #genetics & #genomics research can be beneficial, but the risks to humans, other sentient beings, and the #environment remain mostly unknown. I & Chris Donohue argue that the ethical discourse should be expanded & we need to develop appropriate guidance. More here: rdcu.be/d1S5e

Aging is associated with a systemic length-associated transcriptome imbalance - Nature Aging The authors found that, across tissues and in multiple datasets, aging is accompanied by a length-associated transcriptome imbalance. In most cases, a decrease in the relative abundance of long transc...

Rigorous study by Thomas Stoeger, Scott Budinger et al spots decreases in rel abundance of long transcripts with age in both mouse and human samples. I don't fully agree with their interpretation of longevity intervention effects but core data is strong.
www.nature.com/articles/s43...

The pivot penalty in research - Nature An analysis of millions of scientific papers and patents reveals a ‘pivot penalty’ when researchers shift direction, with the impact of studies decreasing rapidly the further they move from their prev...

This was a very insightful read! There is a price to pay for making hard pivots in science and technology. By @dashunwang.bsky.social's group.

Read here: doi.org/10.1038/s415...