“Maybe, I would have been treated better if I had cited some of the editor in chief’s papers,” Bimonte, of the University of Siena, wrote in boldface in the email, which we have seen. Two days later, an unhappy editor at the journal quit, Retraction Watch has learned.
TIL that there is a thing called the Enhanced Games, where athletes are explicitly encouraged to take performance-boosting drugs.
Perhaps we need the Journal of Enhanced Papers. People could pay to put their AI slop and paper mill stuff in there, and leave us out of it.
cc @jsmoliga.bsky.social
Exclusive: Unrest at Wiley journal whose EIC is cited in more than half of its papers retractionwatch.com/2026/02/26/e...
If you would like to help put pressure on the @royalsociety.org to finally take meaningful action on this issue, you can politely decline their requests for your labour (eg invitations to review or to sit on their editorial boards or grant panels), and refer to the arguments in this blogpost.
Prossima settimana a Firenze a parlare di riforma dell'università.
Fascinating piece about how the fear of microplastics is almost certainly overblown.
One takeaway for me is that even the scientists behind the microplastics=bad papers are VERY reserved about whether these findings are really problematic.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Every western country on earth is currently both (A) hollering about the need to free people from authoritarian governments and (B) gradually making it illegal to criticize the state of Israel.
Editorial power in economics journals has a long history.
We analyze 150+ years of board turnover, stability, and governance with new data & methods.
Big patterns, big change.
🔗 arxiv.org/abs/2601.05727
#Economics #ScienceOfScience
How long should it take to retract a paper with incontrovertible signs of data fabrication? Sleuths think 2 months is too long, particularly when clinical risks are involved. deevybee.blogspot.com/2026/01/an-o...
#retraction #stemcells #cardiology
@erictopol.bsky.social
A recent blogpost translated into Italian, which makes it sound much more erudite - iniquitous data!
www.roars.it/i-pericoli-d...
Bug in Springer Nature metadata may be causing ‘significant, systemic’ citation inflation retractionwatch.com/2025/11/11/b...
Tutto ciò avviene in chiara contraddizione con i principi di libertà di ricerca e insegnamento ancora sanciti dalla Costituzione.
La proposta è già stata duramente bocciata dal Consiglio di Stato, che segnala contraddizioni con la legge istitutiva e mette in dubbio la legittimità di molte novità.
Con la riforma, nomine e attività di valutazione passano sotto l’iniziativa esclusiva del Ministro, riducendo drasticamente l’indipendenza tecnica di ANVUR.
La proposta di riforma dell’ANVUR rende finalmente evidente ciò che da anni era solo implicito: l’Agenzia è lo strumento con cui il governo attua il controllo centralizzato e indirizza le attività di università e ricerca. www.roars.it/valutare-e-o...
Nel deserto lasciato dalla guerra, l'università deve parlare www.roars.it/nel-deserto-... @filippobelloc.bsky.social
Grateful that @lonnibesancon.bsky.social, @gcabanac.cpesr.fr, Cyril Labbe and Alexander Magazinov chose to donate the proceeds of their ASIS&T Best Paper Award for 2025 to the @elisabethbik.bsky.social Fund to support the work of sleuths.
More here: centerforscientificintegrity.org/our-projects...
Data-visualization researcher @lonnibesancon.bsky.social has faced online abuse, threats and legal challenges. But he remains proud of his service to science and society. He hopes young scientists will get involved in scientific sleuthing: spklr.io/63328BEc6p
Con la VQR in corso si è tornati indietro: ANVUR ha ripreso il controllo diretto dei panel, nominando un quarto dei membri, e riaprendo la porta a bias e conformismo. La valutazione della ricerca soffoca il pluralismo e rafforza le gerarchie accademiche consolidate.
L’analisi di rete svela che le nomine operate direttamente dai consigli direttivi di ANVUR nelle prime due VQR dettero luogo a strutture chiuse e autoreferenziali, a differenza della terza VQR quando il panel venne sorteggiato.
Dietro la facciata neutrale delle regole formali, i panel VQR in area economica mostrano legami fitti e opachi, dominati da gruppi accademici vicini all’università Bocconi.
AI summaries kill search traffic. This has been an obvious consequence of Google's AI summary strategy since its inception.
Apparently the training data is so valuable that Google is willing to risk the neck of the goose that lays golden eggs.
Screenshot: thebullshitmachines.com/lesson-9-blu...
How about a podcast on research integrity featuring big names in the field (e.g., @elisabethbik.bsky.social) and, incidentally, yours truly? Go listen to
open.spotify.com/show/2AuVl4w...
L’accademia dei Lincei ha da poco assegnato i premi Feltrinelli. Quest’anno il premio Feltrinelli per la medicina, consistente in €100.000, è stato assegnato a Carlo M. Croce. Hanno fatto bene? www.roars.it/i-lincei-pre...
Ajan Reginald, formerly of Celixir infamy, should apply to the FDA. It's a coin toss whether the dynamic duo approve or decline to approve products on any given day. Likely there's special speedy path for packs of lies purporting to be biologics.
Springer-Nature launched a series of "Discover" journals that closely mimic MDPI titles -- sharing *identical* journal names, and likely similar business model.
What is going on, and why researcher will - as always - fall for it?
A 🧵
the-strain-on-scientific-publishing.github.io/website/post...
Finally out my critical reflection on #CoARA. doi.org/10.1093/rese...
Preprint available here: arxiv.org/abs/2408.05587
