Record-breaking retraction: IEEE pulls >1,400 papers in one day — all linked to papermills (titles found for sale by @abalkina.bsky.social ). IEEE has retracted around 3,000 papers this year so far, our analysis suggests. @miryamnaddaf.bsky.social | @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Record-breaking retraction: scholarly publisher pulls 1,400 conference papers on one day

Announcement by IEEE follows publication of a study showing the retracted papers are linked to paper mills.

nature.com

I just leave it here and I swear, I am done with this book

Overdue! dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

‘Cerebral torment’: @ioppublishing.bsky.social retracts nearly 100 papers for tortured phrases To date, IOPP has retracted upward of 1,000 papers, said @gcabanac.cpesr.fr, computer scientist @iufrance.bsky.social and creator of the Problematic Paper Screener. retractionwatch.com/2026/10/09/i...

‘Cerebral torment’: IOP retracts nearly 100 conference papers for tortured phrases

IOP Publishing has retracted nearly 100 papers from three of its conference proceedings after the articles were flagged for containing tortured phrases.  Tortured phrases are rephrasings and s…

retractionwatch.com

Hey @gcabanac.cpesr.fr we have tortured illustrations too, now! 😬

Hao Yin@haoyin.bsky.social · last mo.

Cilia - AI champion show🏆 Credit: GPT6-Astra Inspired by @christlet.bsky.social

📰 Our team member Guillaume Cabanac is in Physics World today! “Cabanac says that the latest misconduct smoking gun can be found in bibliographies and the growing use of hallucinated references…” Read here: physicsworld.com/a/how-scient... @gcabanac.cpesr.fr

How scientific publishers are fighting back against fraudulent papermills – Physics World

The growth of AI and papermills has caused publishers countless headaches

physicsworld.com

I presented some of my recent work at @iritoulouse.bsky.social Seminar – from strange bibliometric patterns and #GenAI to research integrity and research climate. Many thanks to @gcabanac.cpesr.fr for the invitation! doi.org/10.13140/RG.... #scientometrics #ResearchEvaluation #bibliometrics

(PDF) Apparently, it’s called forensic scientometrics: What happens after we find something wrong?

PDF | This presentation was prepared for the research seminar at the Informatics Research Institute of Toulouse (IRIT), 11 September 2026. It brings... | Find, read and cite all the research you need ...

doi.org

The PPS Tortured detector tabulates 8626 IEEE articles with tortured phrases, 62% of which have been posted on @PubPeer.com: dbrech.irit.fr/pls/apex/f?p.... The PPS Annulled detector finds that 46% (3966/8626) of the IEEE articles with tortured phrases are retracted: dbrech.irit.fr/pls/apex/f?p...

Hundreds of ads by #papermills, offering authorship on scientific articles for a fee, wound up published in conference proceedings. Are these venues a back-door route that’s too easy? #scicomm #retractions #peerreview @science.org www.science.org/content/arti...

Hundreds of paper-mill papers peddled in ads were later published

More than one-fifth of some IEEE conferences’ papers appear linked to authorship for sale

science.org

A tool used to rephrase plagiarised text changed "final solution" to "mass killing of an ethnic group" in a chemistry paper. Now retracted thanks to a PubPeer user who spotted this. pubpeer.com/publications...

Sounds like @gcabanac.cpesr.fr 's tortured phrases!

Gro-Tsen@gro-tsen.bsky.social · 3mo ago

So, IBM publishes machine-generated translations of AIX documentation on its Web site, and the French translation of awk documentation translated “sin” and “log” (the math functions) as if they were the words for a religious transgression and a journal respectively. 🤣

Thanks to AI, one can generate SEM images in full color now! Sabet, M. Halogen-free polymer composites: advancing sustainable and high-performance flexible electronics. Iran Polym J 34, 599–624 (2025). doi.org/10.1007/s137...

Today in Serious Scientific Publishing.

Use #bibCheck if you are a French academic: it's an online tool that audits bibliographies and reports retracted or inexistent references, developed in collaboration with @cnrs-inist.bsky.social (see slide 25 ut3-toulouseinp.hal.science/hal-05646645...). Otherwise check github.com/gianlucasb/h...

Today, COSIG and Sal Sleuthmander turn 1 year old! 🎂 Contributions to COSIG are the best birthday gifts we can ever receive, many thanks to all of our contributors 🎉

Very interesting. Springer retracted two essays from the early 1940s by Max Planck. Apparently because of "duplicate publication" - similar things (also by Planck) appeared elsewhere. But back in the day, that was common and not thought of as bad! There wasn't an internet to spread papers around.

physics.soc-ph@arxiv-soc-ph.bsky.social · 6mo ago

The Curious Case of Max Planck retracted papers. When past scientific practices meet contemporary publishing norms https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.17534

C'mon, @mdpiopenaccess.bsky.social - after all the effort sleuths put in to hunt down the papermill products, is this the best you can do? A "correction"? If you want to be taken seriously as a publisher you need to weed out the gobbledegook. pubpeer.com/publications...

Brokers of scientific fraud are constantly innovating and expanding. Companies looking to spot and tackle their activities are doing the same. My latest feature for @cenmag.bsky.social: cen.acs.org/policy/publi... @clearskiesadam.bsky.social, @stmassoc.bsky.social, @gcabanac.cpesr.fr #WCRI2026

📖 Nouveau rapport de l'OPSN ! Comment la presse française raconte-t-elle les réseaux sociaux depuis vingt ans ? 🔍"Aux origines d'un monde" analyse plus de 150 000 articles et retrace la trajectoire médiatiques des plateformes, de Facebook à TikTok. 📂 opsn.univ-tlse3.fr/rapports-de-...

RAPPORT - AUX ORIGINES D'UN MONDE. Les réseaux socionumériques dans la presse quotidienne française (2003-2024) - Observatoire des pratiques socio-numériques

opsn.univ-tlse3.fr

Did you know there's a barely hidden market for authorship of fake scientific papers in conferences? New preprint w/ @abalkina.bsky.social, @mkunesova.bsky.social, and @yaamurozturk.bsky.social : arxiv.org/abs/2604.22458 We found 4,000+ ads & matched them to 1,720 IEEE conf. papers! ...🧵

Opening Pandora's box: Paper mills in conference proceedings

Paper mills are a growing threat to the integrity of science, yet their penetration in conference proceedings remains underexplored despite conferences being more important than journals in some scien...

arxiv.org

How much does it cost to buy your way onto a scientific paper? To answer this question (and better understand the global market for academic reputation manipulation), we compiled BuyTheBy, a massive dataset of thousands of advertisements from paper mills in seven different countries. Link below!

Retraction at a Spandidos journal 👏 I posted it on PubPeer in 2020, but did not get around to sending it to the publisher until March 2025. Then, @gcabanac.cpesr.fr found more problems. It's a beauty. #FlawCytometry HT: @smutclyde.bsky.social pubpeer.com/publications...

My colleague & I teamed up w/ Grounded AI to look for fake/hallucinated references. Our analysis suggests that at least tens of thousands of publications from 2025 likely contain such references. More detz at @nature.com, w/ input from @gcabanac.cpesr.fr, @mhmdhsini.bsky.social & @kowb.bsky.social.

Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done?

Tens of thousands of publications from 2025 might include invalid references generated by AI, a Nature analysis suggests.

nature.com

New blog post: The Camel's Camel. Today, I found a beautiful example of synonymized plagiarism involving the microbiome of a camel’s udder. #TorturedPhrases #ScienceIntegrity #ResearchIntegrity scienceintegritydigest.com/2026/03/12/t...

We're thrilled to announce the Ctrl-Z Award, a US$2,500 prize for researchers “who discover substantial errors in their published work and take meaningful steps to correct the scientific record." Covered by @nature.com today; read more here: centerforscientificintegrity.org/2026/03/10/a...

Stealth corrections are still a threat to scientific integrity. If you are not familiar with stealth corrections, please read this. This guest post is on @deevybee.bsky.social's blog and is authored by from René Aquarius, Floris Schoeters, Alex Glynn and @gcabanac.cpesr.fr buff.ly/t8fWFZq

NOUVEL EP - Comment devient-on un "détective" de la #science ? Avec @gcabanac.cpesr.fr, prof. à l'Université de Toulouse et concepteur du "Problematic Paper Screener". youtu.be/pNdLmsXDVn0

Qui sont les "détectives de la science" ?

YouTube video by Grand Labo

youtu.be

We wrote a 1-year update post on stealth corrections. Thank you @deevybee.bsky.social for hosting it. We also wrote a @cosig.net guide to make reporting stealth corrections more streamlined cc: @gcabanac.cpesr.fr

Dorothy Bishop@deevybee.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Guest blogpost by @deadneanderthals.bsky.social and colleagues on the persistence of stealth corrections in the scientific literature: deevybee.blogspot.com/2026/02/gues... #publishing #integrity

📰 David Adam reports for Nature News on our Replication Initiative "A European project calls for help to verify whether carbon quantum dots are really able to sense chemicals in cells." 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/d41... @nature.com

Nanoscience is latest discipline to embrace large-scale replication efforts

A European project calls for help to verify whether carbon quantum dots are really able to sense chemicals in cells.

nature.com

Iranians are experiencing a collective trauma. Thousands have been killed/injured in recent events, the economy is crippled & the threat of a wider conflict is real. This is especially difficult for those living in Iran, as many have lost (or fear losing) loved ones. www.nature.com/articles/d41...