Retracted scientific papers cited on Wikipedia tend to linger for years, according to a study examining nearly 1,200 citations.

How can one learn to investigate the #integrity of published #scientific papers? This Community Page by @cosig.net, @reeserichardson.bsky.social, @solalpirelli.bsky.social presents COSIG, a collection of guides enabling anyone to perform forensic peer review 🧪#AcademicSky plos.io/43uZsbC

"Investigating the integrity of published scientific papers is key to the scientific process, but the necessary knowledge is in short supply." Check the COSIG team's new Community Page article in @plosbiology.org ! doi.org/10.1371/jour...

A Cochrane system for checking whether any of its thousands of published reviews include retracted studies has already turned up dozens of reviews that do and will now get closer scrutiny to ensure their results and recommendations hold up.

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 🎉

Haven't seen one of these in the wild in AGES. Scientific error-checking difficulty: very easy Why is this table definitely not real data?

Issue 44 of #rdmweekly is out! 📬 Including: ➡️ psychds - R Package @mekline.bsky.social ➡️ READMEBuilder @eivimeycook.bsky.social ➡️ Citations to Retracted Papers @cosig.net ➡️ Data Curation as Data Literacy Education @mikalarae.bsky.social and more! rdmweekly.substack.com/p/rdm-weekly...

Sleuths face various legal risks but they can also use the law for their advantage. ⚖️ COSIG's newest guide, number 3️⃣5️⃣, covers legal considerations for taking part in forensic peer review. Read it here: osf.io/q3y7s

The COSIG team is at #WCRI2026 ! Our poster is up at station 120. We'll all be there today from 12:00 to 1:30; come stop by!

With the COSIG team, we are also presenting our poster on the 5th, number 120, come see some examples of problematic content in scientific papers and try to catch them! @cosig.net @solalpirelli.bsky.social @yaamurozturk.bsky.social @reeserichardson.bsky.social

SS: We see advertisements for increasing your CV by writing Mendelian Randomization papers based on a simple tool, and we tested that LLMs can easily produce MR papers as well. These formulaic types of papers are also highlighted in the @cosig.net guidelines: osf.io/2kdez/files/... #WCRI2026

Can accommodate some more people at this Introduction to INSPECT-SR workshop tomorrow (April 30th). Book here or email/ message me directly: www.trybooking.com/uk/GATM It says (N America) because the time was chosen for that region, but all welcome

Happy Easter from Sal Sleuthmander and the COSIG team! 🐣🐰🪺

I will be giving a BitesizeBio Webinar on Monday March 23 (5 pm UK time / 1 pm ET / 10 am PT). Title: "How to Find Errors and Misconduct in Biomedical Papers". Topics: sleuthing, @pubpeer.com, @cosig.net Register here: events.bitesizebio.com/how-to-find-...

Do you know what to do when a study you have cited gets retracted? COSIG's entry on Citations to Retracted Publications has been updated with what to do in this situation. Read all about it: osf.io/9q3as

Pseudoreplication is the practice of treating non-independent observations as if they were independent replicates. This can dramatically increase the rate of false positives. COSIG's newest entry covers how to spot them. Read it at osf.io/hyxvr COSIG 🎉now with 34 guides 🎉is available at cosig.net.

@sjmelchor.bsky.social writes for @nature.com about how to spot dubious papers, interviewing @elisabethbik.bsky.social, @abalkina.bsky.social, @jabyrnesci.bsky.social, myself and and my fellow @cosig.net maintainers @solalpirelli.bsky.social and Yagmur Ozturk! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Stealth corrections happen when a publisher makes changes to a scientific article after its publication, without issuing any public notice. To learn more, check out the latest COSIG entry on Stealth Corrections! osf.io/34nj5 COSIG (33 guides and growing!) is available at cosig.net.

New blog post: UnEDXpected Peaks Thanks to @reeserichardson.bsky.social, for teaching me to spot Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy problems. @cosig.net guide: osf.io/2kdez/files/... 30+ papers from a group from Pakistan with wonky EDX plots. Read more: scienceintegritydigest.com/2026/02/09/u...

To make COSIG more discoverable for educators looking to develop course material on publication integrity and peer review, COSIG now has an entry in OER Commons! @oercommons.bsky.social #OER oercommons.org/courses/the-...

Check out this feature on sleuthing by @jgro-the.bsky.social !

Happy New Year from Sal Sleuthmander and the COSIG team! Here's to doing lots of post-publication peer review in 2026 🎆🥂🔎

Merry Christmas and happy holidays from COSIG's newly-named mascot, Sal Sleuthmander!

Last week, COSIG's team of maintainers finally got to meet up in person! @solalpirelli.bsky.social @reeserichardson.bsky.social

Achal Agrawal realised how ingrained research misconduct had become, and resolved to do something about the issue He is part of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2025 go.nature.com/3Yk3d0T

Are you keeping up with @abalkina.bsky.social's advent calendar? It is a great way to practice spotting publication integrity issues!

Congratulations to one of COSIG's first contributors, @elisabethbik.bsky.social !

Happy Advent! !!!🎄✨ Welcome to a new edition of the Research Integrity Advent Calendar. Each day brings a small challenge: spot the problem, detect inconsistencies, and sharpen your skills. Enjoy the season and the daily puzzles! Day 1. papermills.tilda.ws/advent2025

This Thursday, COSIG maintainer @reeserichardson.bsky.social will be presenting on using COSIG to spot problematic papers! Registration details below.

Scientific articles often report data in tables. COSIG's latest guide covers methods to export these tables into a spreadsheet editor like Microsoft Excel! COSIG (32 guides and growing!) is available at cosig.net.

COSIG has a new mascot but he doesn't yet have a name! Any suggestions?

Check out the latest issue of REACH magazine from @sci-integrity.com, which features COSIG on page 42! www.sci-integrity.com/reach-octobe...

The FDA Adverse Events Reporting System (FAERS) is useful for identifying potential adverse events associated with drugs. However, its data is often exploited to produce articles reporting spurious drug risks. COSIG's entry on formulaic research now covers low-quality pharmacovigilance studies!

COSIG has a new landing page! Check it out at cosig.net. (Files for COSIG are still hosted on OSF!)

What is a "calculation chain" file? How can I easily identify duplicated values in a table? COSIG's 31st guide is all about data forensics using Microsoft Excel! osf.io/bz725 As always, all guides are available at cosig.net.

Adjusting the black/white levels in an image can reveal inconsistencies barely perceptible to the naked eye. A 2018 article in Scientific Reports was just retracted as a result of several such inconsistencies. Check out COSIG's guide on software for image forensics here: osf.io/g23pf

Starting in 10 minutes!

This Friday, September 12, COSIG maintainer @reeserichardson.bsky.social will be participating in a panel discussion (16:00 CEST, 10:00 AM EDT) as part of the all-day event "Making Sense of Open Science" hosted by the Czech Academy of Sciences. Watch online! www.projekt-amulet.cz/index.php/en...

Here we are!

COSIG maintainers Reese Richardson and Yagmur Ozturk are at #PRC10 in Chicago! Come find us to talk about post-publication peer review!

Stocking the Librarian’s Publishing Integrity Toolkit The number of tools available to help library staff identify potential research misconduct is rapidly expanding. Here are some recommendations. By Matthew Goddard and Zachariah Motts katinamagazine.org/content/arti...

Want to get involved finding problematic scientific articles? Check out the Collection of Open Science Integrity Guides at cosig.net! @cosig.net

One of the issues raised in this commentary is data leakage between the training set and the validation set. Check out COSIG's entry on data leakage here: osf.io/d8mzb

On Monday, July 21 at @reeserichardson.bsky.social will be giving a talk about COSIG for Open Research Summer School, organized by @kingsioppn.bsky.social! Online attendance for all of Open Research Summer School is free! Register here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/open-resea...

Our entry on reporting publication integrity issues to publishers has contact information to reach the publication integrity and publication ethics departments at most major scholarly publishers. Read here: osf.io/4edk2 All of COSIG is available at cosig.net!

A 2019 Cochrane systematic review on using lithium to treat acute mania confuses standard error (SE) with standard deviation (SD) for two studies included in a meta-analysis, resulting in an overestimation of overall effect size in that meta-analysis. See COSIG's guide on the topic: osf.io/hp4yd

"Data leakage" occurs when a statistical or machine learning model has access to data it shouldn't during the training process. This can lead to severe overestimation of a model's predictive performance. Data leakage is the subject of COSIG's 30th guide! Read here: osf.io/d8mzb

A recent article on preventing solar cells from overheating using nanoparticles presents this TEM image. However, this image contains apparent duplications. Can you spot them? Answers in PubPeer thread below. See COSIG's guide on image duplication: osf.io/547re

Anyone can help safeguard science🔎💡 That's the spirit behind COSIG, a brilliant, community-led #OpenScource project that empowers anyone to take part in post-publication peer review, or #Sleuthing Huge congrats to the team behind it🎉 We'll be recommending it widely! #ResearchIntegrity

Do you want to take part in post-publication peer review but have no idea where to start? COSIG's newest guide covers exactly this, going over some basics and suggestions on how to get started with PPPR/forensic metascience/sleuthing! cosig.net "Getting started" guide: osf.io/8m2tz