VICTORY! England over Mexico. Me (morally) over the other Makerfield candidates. Celebrate with me LIVE IN LONDON! My one and only July gig is @museumofcomedy this Thursday 9 July at 8.30pm. Tickets are disappearing faster than Nigel's poll lead. JOIN ME! www.museumofcomedy.com/count-binfac...
Alberto Baccini
@albertobaccini.bsky.social
Professor of Quantitative studies of science, University of Siena, Italy. One of the founders of http://roars.it
A United Nations’ independent commission has found that Israel is deliberately targeting Palestinian children. Commission chair Srinivasan Muralidhar described the “systematic killing and harming of children” including since the so-called ceasefire was declared in October 2025.
“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.
Exclusive: Unrest at Wiley journal whose EIC is cited in more than half of its papers
Timothy Lee (center) of Macau University of Science and Technology was named editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Tourism Research in 2023. On Feb. 18, a researcher in Italy sent a disgr…
retractionwatch.com
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
Enhanced Games - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Exclusive: Unrest at Wiley journal whose EIC is cited in more than half of its papers retractionwatch.com/2026/02/26/e...
Exclusive: Unrest at Wiley journal whose EIC is cited in more than half of its papers
Timothy Lee (center) of Macau University of Science and Technology was named editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Tourism Research in 2023. On Feb. 18, a researcher in Italy sent a disgr…
retractionwatch.com
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.
FOR THE RECORD: one year on, I lay out clearly how Elon Musk FRS has breached the @royalsociety.org’s code of conduct, why the Society’s failure to defend its values has been so damaging, & what they need do to recover their standing in the scientific community. occamstypewriter.org/scurry/2026/...
La cattiva scienza e la sua diffusione. www.youtube.com/live/mKitu7N...
La cattiva scienza e la sua diffusione
YouTube video by ReteGARR
youtube.com
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/...
‘A bombshell’: doubt cast on discovery of microplastics throughout human body
Exclusive: Some scientists say many detections are most likely error, with one high-profile study called a ‘joke’
theguardian.com
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
A Stock-Flow Framework for Editorial Board Dynamics: The Case of Economics Journals, 1866-2019
Research on the editorial boards of scholarly journals has predominantly relied on static, cross-sectional data, focusing on their composition or interlocking editorships at single points in time. To ...
arxiv.org
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
An Open Letter to the BMJ Editorial Board
to: Editor in chief, Kamran Abbasi , kabbasi@bmj.com Executive editor, Theodora Bloom , tbloom@bmj.com Head of research, Elizab...
deevybee.blogspot.com
A recent blogpost translated into Italian, which makes it sound much more erudite - iniquitous data! www.roars.it/i-pericoli-d...
I pericoli dell'uso della bibliometria con dati inquinati
La valutazione della ricerca basata sulle metriche viene spesso presentata come una soluzione ai problemi di equità e oggettività. «La bibliometria è per la valutazione della ricerca ciò che la diagno...
roars.it
Bug in Springer Nature metadata may be causing ‘significant, systemic’ citation inflation retractionwatch.com/2025/11/11/b...
Bug in Springer Nature metadata may be causing ‘significant, systemic’ citation inflation
Millions of researchers could be affected by a “dramatic distortion of citation counts” likely caused by flaws in how the academic publishing giant Springer Nature handles article metadata, accordi…
retractionwatch.com
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...
Valutare e obbedire. Il Governo vuole il controllo totale 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 ...
roars.it
Nel deserto lasciato dalla guerra, l'università deve parlare www.roars.it/nel-deserto-... @filippobelloc.bsky.social
Nel deserto lasciato dalla guerra, l’università deve parlare
Fatta — o forse solo dichiarata — la pace, resta il deserto che la guerra ha lasciato. Ora tocca a noi. Alle università spetta la responsabilità più difficile: la ricostruzione culturale, la progettaz...
roars.it
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...
“Sneaked references: Fabricated reference metadata distort citation counts” Chosen for 2025 Best JASIST Paper Award
The Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is delighted to announce that “Sneaked references: Fabricated reference metadata distort citation counts,” written by Lonni Besançon, Guil...
asist.org
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
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.
spklr.io
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...
Inside the digital publishing industry, which I try to monitor closely, this is the big news. By Julia Alexander at Puck.
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...
Science in the Gray Zone
Podcast · Nanobubbles ERC Project - Chakalaka Medialab · Science and Technology
open.spotify.com
Un podcast sur l'intégrité de la recherche avec des grands noms du domaine (e.g., @elisabethbik.bsky.social) et accessoirement "yours truly" ça vous dit? Allez écouter 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...
I Lincei premiano Carlo M. Croce. Hanno fatto bene?
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. Questa la motivazione: ...
roars.it
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.
Questionable activities of UK company Celixir, by Patricia Murray
Patricia Murray uncovers the business secrets of the Nobelist Martin Evans and his partner Ajan Reginald. It seems the magic iMP cells used to treat patients in Greece were drawn from the blood of …
forbetterscience.com
Schneider Shorts 20.06.2025 – Life goes on, as science globalizes forbetterscience.com/2025/06/20/s...
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...
Springer Nature Discovers MDPI – The Strain on Scientific Publishing
Home page for the paper ‘The Strain on Scientific Publishing’ by Mark A Hanson, Dan Brockington, Paolo Crosetto and Pablo Gomez Barreiro
the-strain-on-scientific-publishing.github.io
Finally out my critical reflection on #CoARA. doi.org/10.1093/rese... Preprint available here: arxiv.org/abs/2408.05587
"Science was born in Italy, and that’s where they will kill and bury it". A newsletter full of Italian scientists forbetterscience.com/2025/06/06/s...
Schneider Shorts 6.06.2025 – Researchers with High Citation and Publication Counts
Schneider Shorts 6.06.2025 – one anti-qualified troll to judge all scientists in Italy, another asks Trump for $50 billion, with a celebrated Thai couple, a russian in America, an incredible …
forbetterscience.com
Dear @qeios.bsky.social Editor, I must respectfully but firmly ask that you refrain from sending me further review invitations until the “Highly Cited” badge is removed from your author/reviewer classification system.
The august facades and impeccable decorum of our great institutions arise from fortunes built on slavery and murder. As WH Auden noted of Oxford: "Knowledge is conceived in the hot womb of Violence". This ritual cannibalism is perfectly symbolic of the whole. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...
Oxford academics drank from cup made from human skull, book reveals
Decades-long use of chalice at Worcester College highlights violent colonial history of looted human remains, says Prof Dan Hicks
theguardian.com
CoARA, and, more broadly, any reform agenda focused exclusively on improving evaluative technologies, cannot achieve on its own, unless it is accompanied by a more fundamental rethinking of the role, purpose, and governance of research evaluation itself. arxiv.org/pdf/2408.05587
arxiv.org