Research Integrity & Misconduct
Coverage of the integrity of the research record: retractions and corrections, misconduct investigations and their outcomes, paper mills and image manipulation, authorship disputes, and peer-review manipulation. Reporting here is held to a higher evidentiary bar than any other beat on the site — allegations are distinguished from findings, and institutional processes are described accurately rather than summarised loosely.
Beats in this category
- Authorship Disputes
Disputes over authorship, contribution, and credit, and the institutional and journal processes used to resolve them. Connects directly to the site's CRediT and authorship referenc…
- Misconduct Investigations & Findings
Institutional and agency investigations into research misconduct and their outcomes. Reporting distinguishes carefully between allegation, ongoing investigation, and formal finding…
- Paper Mills & Image Integrity
Industrial-scale fraudulent publishing and the forensic work that detects it: paper-mill networks, image duplication and manipulation, tortured phrases, and the detection tooling p…
- Peer Review Manipulation
Compromised peer review: fake reviewer identities, citation cartels, reviewer coercion, and editorial-process failures, along with the safeguards publishers introduce afterward.…
- Retractions & Corrections
Individual and mass retractions, expressions of concern, and corrections to the published record — what triggered them, how the publisher handled them, and what the retraction noti…
All coverage (29)
- 1 in 277 PubMed Papers Now Cite Fake References
A Lancet Correspondence auditing 2.5 million PubMed Central papers found fabricated citations rose from 1-in-2,828 papers in 2023 to 1-in-277 in early 2026 — and over 98% of flagged papers have seen n…
- House Hearing Spotlights Grant-Fraud FCA Use
A June 2026 House Science subcommittee hearing examined FCA grant-fraud enforcement, spotlighting undisclosed foreign affiliations as a growing DOJ target.…
- Thorsen Extradited on CDC Grant-Fraud Charges
Danish researcher Poul Thorsen was extradited from Germany after 15 years as a fugitive and arraigned on 22 federal wire fraud/money laundering counts.…
- Dana-Farber’s $15M FCA Settlement Over Image Manipulation
Dana-Farber paid $15M in Dec. 2025 to settle a DOJ False Claims Act suit over manipulated images in NIH-funded papers, and what it means for grant compliance.…
- Walsh Medical Media Demanded EUR499 to Retract a Paper Falsely Attributed to an Impersonated Author
A Walsh Medical Media journal published a commentary under a University at Buffalo researcher’s name without his knowledge, then demanded EUR400, later EUR499, before it would remove the false byline …
- Melbourne Opens Formal Misconduct Probe Into John Hattie
University of Melbourne has opened a formal probe into education researcher John Hattie over alleged plagiarism and fabricated AI-style citations.…
- Italy’s CNR and the January 2025 Declaration of Rome on Research Integrity
In January 2025, CNR convened Italy’s 1st National Congress on Research Integrity in Rome, producing the Declaration of Rome. CASRAI covers the CNR committee behind it, the Congress, and the national …
- Elsevier Expands Check Integrity Tool to Screen Nearly 2,000 Journals
Elsevier expanded Check Integrity to nearly 2,000 journals in March 2026, flagging unauthorized authorship changes and editorial conflicts of interest.…
- China’s MOST Names 68 Red-Line Misconduct Categories
MOST Order No. 24 lists 68 categories of research misconduct across six actor types, part of China’s push to hold institutions accountable.…
- China’s MOST Orders Universities to Probe Retracted-Paper Misconduct
China’s Ministry of Science and Technology has ordered universities to investigate retracted papers for misconduct and warned of penalties for looking away.…
- Canada’s PRCR Proposes Removing the Statute of Limitations on Misconduct Allegations
Canada’s PRCR ran a Feb 17-Apr 17, 2026 consultation proposing to remove any statute of limitations on research misconduct allegations, alongside new rules on anonymous complaints, post-departure acco…
- Court Upholds ORI’s Misconduct Findings in Frech v. HHS
A D.D.C. court granted summary judgment for HHS on Dec. 12, 2025, upholding ORI’s misconduct findings and 3-year debarment of researcher Ivana Frech.…
- Zurich Clears Aguzzi, Flags 7 Papers for Errors
University of Zurich cleared neuropathologist Adriano Aguzzi of misconduct, but flagged 7 of 36 studies for image errors he must now retract or correct.…
- BuyTheBy Dataset Puts a Price on Paper Mill Authorship
A new dataset, BuyTheBy, quantifies for the first time what paper mills actually charge for authorship: 18,710 ads, prices from roughly $56 to $5,631 for first-author slots, and just 5 of 53 matched p…
- China’s NHC Discloses 28 Research-Misconduct Cases
China’s National Health Commission disclosed 28 sanctioned misconduct cases spanning data fabrication, paper trading, and guest authorship.…
- UKCORI to Wind Down by 2027; New UK Integrity Body Floated
UKCORI co-lead Miles Padgett told the UK Reproducibility Network conference the committee has no operations planned beyond 2027, and sketched a scenario for a new centralised UK research-integrity bod…
- ORI Sanction Against Former Mount Sinai Postdoc Chen-Yeh “George” Ke Prompts Sleuthing and a Science Signaling Retraction
A March 2026 ORI finding against former Mount Sinai postdoc Chen-Yeh “George” Ke — for falsified images in a draft manuscript and NIH progress reports — prompted independent image-forensics sleuthing …
- ORI’s 42 CFR Part 93 Final Rule: What Changed for Research Misconduct in 2026
ORI’s final rule revising 42 CFR Part 93 took effect Jan 1, 2025 and applies to allegations received on or after Jan 1, 2026. Here’s exactly what changed.…
- COPE Relaunches Paper Mills Working Group in Response to AI-Enabled Misconduct
COPE relaunched its paper mills working group in June 2026, citing AI-exploited coordinated misconduct as the driver, with a companion toolkit to its systematic-manipulation guidelines as the group’s …
- STAT’s Investigation: How Guest-Edited Special Issues Are Driving Journal Retractions
STAT’s April 2026 investigation traces BMJ’s retraction of 7 of 8 papers in a guest-edited Journal of Medical Genetics issue, and the pattern behind it.…
- NIH’s May 2026 Notice: When AI Use Becomes Research Misconduct
NIH’s May 2026 notice explains when AI use in funded research crosses into research misconduct, and what enforcement follows.…
- ORI’s 2026 Case Summaries: A 15-Year Debarment and What the Fernandez Case Shows About Enforcement
The US Office of Research Integrity’s 2026 case summaries include a 15-year debarment of former Rice University professor Ariel Fernandez for fabricating data across 12 published papers — one of ORI’s…
- AI Image-Integrity Screening Goes Mainstream: MDPI and ASM Adopt Proofig, Imagetwin
MDPI’s multi-year Proofig AI deal and ASM’s Imagetwin pilot data show AI image-forensics screening becoming standard in publisher editorial workflows.…
- Fake-author citation cartels: the 2026 chemistry-journal investigation
A Feb. 2026 C&EN investigation found citation cartels inventing fake author identities and misusing APC waivers to sell undetectable citation boosts.…
- ICMJE’s January 2026 Recommendations Update: What Changed
ICMJE updated its Recommendations in January 2026, adding a new standalone Section V on AI use and a new Section III.L.2 on authors’ access to trial data, plus revisions to sponsor-agreement, miscondu…
- From orange-flag to red-flag: paper-mill signal escalation
Suspect-paper triage at scale needs structured signal escalation. A practical model for moving manuscripts from orange-flag screening to red-flag investigation.…
- Cease-and-desist or collaborate? Working with paper mills
The integrity community’s debate on how to engage with paper mills: confrontation, infiltration, or harm reduction. A look at what is actually working.…
- Why scholarly societies are hiring dedicated research-integrity directors
ACM is creating its first director of research integrity role to clear a case backlog, joining Springer Nature and Elsevier in treating misconduct investigation as a dedicated, professionalized functi…
- Paper mills and tortured phrases: the integrity crisis in 2026
Cabanac’s Problematic Paper Screener, retraction wave, citation cartels, COPE flowcharts, and the United2Act initiative: where the publishing-integrity fight stands.…
