It is hard to find the time to post here. I’m getting lots of requests to help scanning papers for image problems, and am also traveling a lot to give talks and be in panels. So my ‘monthly’ digests have now turned into quarterly digests, hahaha.
These past months, I have traveled to Berlin to receive the Einstein Foundation Award, to Oxford for the FAIRS Meeting, participated in a workshop in Stockholm organized by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences about the Reformation of Science Publishing, a conference in London at the Royal Society about the Future of Science Publishing, and a gathering with other science detectives and journalists in Krakow, Poland. In between, I gave several talks at research institutions and medical schools. I am getting pretty good at packing suitcases!
Here is a round-up of some noteworthy articles about research integrity.
COSIG
COSIG stands for the Collection of Open Science Integrity Guides. It is an open‑source, community‑led set of guides intended to help more people to conduct post‑publication peer review. The project was led by Reese Richardson, and published in June 2025. Cosig.net currently has 30 guides on a range of topics, including general tips on how to comment on PubPeer or report integrity concerns, as well as discipline-specific forensic tools for image forensics, plagiarism detection, or statistical red flags. The idea is that anyone can be a sleuth and contribute to critically reading scientific papers. All tools are freely downloadable as individual PDFs or as a combined set. Read more about it on Retraction Watch.
Science Integrity ‘sleuths’ in the news
- Research-integrity sleuths say their work is being ‘twisted’ to undermine science. Some sleuths fear that the business of cleaning up flawed studies is being weaponized against science itself. “We try to point out those bad papers because we still believe in science and want to make science better,” says Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist and image-integrity specialist based in San Francisco, California. But, she adds, “I am very worried about how the work we do in pointing out bad papers is currently being misused, or even weaponized, to convince the general public that all science is bad”. [Miryam Naddaf, Nature, July 2025]
- The COVID-19 pandemic transformed this scientist into a research-integrity sleuth. Lonni Besançon has faced online abuse, threats and legal challenges. But he remains proud of his service to science and society. “My main message to young scientists is simple: don’t be afraid to speak up. Research misconduct may not always be visible at first glance, but if you are vigilant and critical, you can spot it.”[Christine Ro, Nature, July 2025]
- Quality of scientific papers questioned as academics ‘overwhelmed’ by the millions published. Widespread mockery of AI-generated rat with giant penis in one paper brings problem to public attention. Sir Mark Walport, the former government chief scientist and chair of the Royal Society’s publishing board, said nearly every aspect of scientific publishing was being transformed by technology, while deeply ingrained incentives for researchers and publishers often favoured quantity over quality. “Volume is a bad driver,” Walport said. “The incentive should be quality, not quantity. It’s about re-engineering the system in a way that encourages good research from beginning to end.” [Ian Sample, The Guardian, July 2025]
- Journal plagued with problematic papers, likely from paper mills, pauses submissions. The halt will let Taylor & Francis focus on checking Bioengineered’s papers for fraudulent works and paid authorships. “Today feels like a big win for the scientific record,” says René Aquarius, a biomedical scientist in Radboud University Medical Centre’s neurosurgery department. Aquarius led a group of sleuths who published a preprint in March suggesting the journal was rife with problematic papers and that Taylor & Francis was not acting fast enough to investigate them. [Jeffrey Brainard, Science, July 2025]
- Detecting fraud ‘is a job for professionals, not peer reviewers’. Integrity investigator Elisabeth Bik urges publishers, journals and institutions to take responsibility [Sophie Hogan, Research Professional News, July 2025]
- More than two dozen papers by neural tube researcher come under scrutiny. One of the studies, published in 2021 in Science Advances, received an editorial expression of concern on 21 May, after the journal learned that an institutional review of alleged image problems is underway. Renowned data-integrity consultant Elisabeth Bik found the potential problems and posted her findings on PubPeer two months ago after scrutinizing about 100 of Yang’s studies. [Claudia López Lloreda, The Transmitter, June 2025]
- Science sleuths flag hundreds of papers that use AI without disclosing it
Telltale signs of chatbot use are scattered through the scholarly literature — and, in some cases, have disappeared without a trace. Both Glynn and Strzelecki have identified instances in which publishers have removed the telltale AI phrases without indicating that the paper has been modified, dubbed stealth corrections. [Diana Kwon, Nature, April 2025]
Research Integrity at Publishers and Institutions
- Academic Research Integrity Investigations Must be Independent, Fair, and Timely. We propose that research integrity violations of substantial scale should be independently investigated by appropriately resourced specialists. Such investigations should be completed within a time frame that facilitates meaningful corrective action when required or exoneration of the accused party when appropriate; completion of an investigation should rarely extend beyond one year and the results of the investigation should be made public.- Schrag, Patrick, Bik – J Law Med Ethics [May 2025]
- Springer Nature launches new tool to spot awkward, tortured phrases. The new tool is based upon the tortured phrases catalogue of the Problematic Paper Screener that was created by Guillaume Cabanac, Cyril Labbé and Alexander Magazinov. It flags unusual and awkwardly constructed phrases that could indicate that an author used paraphrasing tools to prevent plagiarism from being discovered. [Rebecca Trager, Chemistry World, July 2025]
- River Valley Technologies launches Research Integrity Dashboard. River Valley has already submitted some 4,000 animations of questionable images on PubPeer. The Research Integrity Dashboard integrates with existing workflows, offering both large and small publishers a scalable, customisable approach to safeguarding research ethics [Research Information, May 2025]
- Frontiers broadens AI‑driven integrity checks with integration of Cactus’ Paperpal Preflight and Clear Skies’ Papermill Alarm and Oversight into AIRA [Frontiers, July 2025]
Notable retractions
- The Institut Hospitalo Universitaire-Méditerranée Infection in Marseille (IHU-MI) now has 56 papers retracted, 47 authored by its former director Didier Raoult. I wrote about concerns in IHU papers here, here, and here. You can follow the retractions and corrections of all 846 IHU-MI articles with concerns at IHU-Correction.com or at the Retraction Watch Leaderboard. Raoult has reached position 12 on that leaderboard.
- Sodom comet paper to be retracted two years after editor’s note acknowledging concerns. Scientific Reports has retracted a controversial paper claiming to present evidence an ancient city in the Middle East was destroyed by an exploding celestial body – an event the authors suggested could have inspired the Biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah [Ellie Kincaid – Retraction Watch, April 2025]. I wrote about my concerns about the images in this paper in October 2021.
- Former cancer researcher who sued university for discrimination hits 35 retractions. More than 100 of Rao’s papers have comments on PubPeer, most originating from a user called Lotus azoricus. We now know that pseudonym belongs to sleuth Elisabeth Bik. [Kate Travis, Retraction Watch, May 2025]
- After 15 years of controversy, Science retracts ‘arsenic life’ paper. Many scientists, including David Sanders, a biologist at Purdue University in Lafayette, Ind. who has previously argued for the paper’s retraction in posts for Retraction Watch, believe the paper’s results were simply the result of contamination of the authors’ materials. [Ellie Kincaid, Retraction Watch, July 2025]
Science Integrity Digest 