This dumpster fire of a paper straight from Elsevier's papermill hell 'Environmental Research' just got retracted. Took just 8 months to conclude that completely nonsensical citations and insane COI between Editor and Authors warrants some consequenes... pubpeer.com/publications...

Yang et al. 2023 (DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.130308), co-authored by none other than Jörg Rinklebe. pubpeer.com/publications... I am not a statistician but to me the maximum and minimum should not be labeled by the same letter/group, if none of the intermediate values are...

Arguing with authors about how similar two Kiwi's can look: Iqbal et al. 2025 (DOI: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2025.148178). These must be images of the same fruit, in my opinion. (the rotation is also not a great sign...). I am a matter expert due to years-long Kiwi consumption! pubpeer.com/publications...

(1/X) I have found ~2 problematic articles / day in 2026 so far Elsevier's 'International Journal of Biological Macromolecules'. The journal is an embarrassment. This comes after hundreds of problematic papers reported to them in 2025. Here is a 'worst-of' 2026 (so far):

(1/3) Ahmad et al. 2021 (DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.124852). This is one of many Rinklebe co-authorship papers with various issues, most notably COI between editor and author. But there is also some rather odd repetitions in the summary tables. No raw data is deposited. pubpeer.com/publications...

Does someone want to guess the senior authors name in this article? Majeed et al. 2024 (DOI: 10.1016/j.csite.2025.106802) pubpeer.com/publications... Check out the reference section for a very subtle hint:

A case from the 'strange' category: This XRD pattern looks like the noise signature was trimmed with a cookie cutter? Abdin et al. 2025 (DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2025.143841) in 'Food Chemistry'. pubpeer.com/publications... Not sure why someone would use this method. Maybe get rid of peaks?

@mumumouse2.bsky.social & I have, at this point, reported almost 500 papers w/ issues to Elsevier's International Journal of Biological Macromolecules. Barely any have been addressed. Nothing has changed since: Shanmugam et al. 2026 (10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2025.149319) pubpeer.com/publications...

Paper retracted this week because the reviewer (presumably Rabiul Awual, who's shenanigans I have been looking into for a while now) requested at least 8 of his (unrelated) papers to be cited. Authors didn't question and complied. Also unauthorized authorship changes... pubpeer.com/publications...

I have written a blog at ForBetterScience. Scientific Reports appears to be as bad as ever despite promises to change and an "excellent team" forbetterscience.com/2026/01/06/s...

The first retraction for 2026: Advances in Traditional Medicine has a loooot more to investigate, but this is good start. Only a few dozen more to go!

Before embracing the plethora of papermill products coming to us in 2026, let's enjoy the retraction of this masterpiece on the last day of 2025:

How much photoshop can you fit into a single paper? Azizli et al. 2020 (DOI: 10.1007/s10904-020-01502-z): HOLD ME BEER: pubpeer.com/publications...

Today's quiz: A) abstract forest art or B) zoomed section of a FT-IR spectrum in Bera et al. 2024 (DOI: 10.1007/s10924-023-03036-0) in 'Journal of Polymers and the Environment' pubpeer.com/publications...

I am spending my day arguing with trolls on BlueSky. Merry Christmas!!

A glimpse from the future: Rajeh et al. 2026 (DOI: 10.1016/j.mseb.2025.118854) - published by Elsevier... What an embarrassment. If this data is anything to go by, then 2026 is going to be one hell of a year for research integrity: pubpeer.com/publications...

Sorry folks, but unfortunately the super cool study you are promoting here has some sketchy data. 2 of the images were re-colored to represent two distinct experimental conditions. Salt will remain an issue for agriculture & cyanobacteria won't change that... pubpeer.com/publications...

New editorial with John Carlisle: Detecting inconsistencies and fraud in research data: Time for authors to share the data underlying their summary statistics as a matter of course tl;dr Let's stop doing party tricks journals.lww.com/anesthesia-a... Final draft: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

"[...] concerns raised were not substantiated and do not affect the scientific conclusions of the paper. This investigation is now closed [...]" MDPI does not see need to address data reuse from 5 years prior, representing a different component. Pathetic. pubpeer.com/publications...

This article co-authored by German soil science superstar Rinklebe was just retracted. The editors somehow didn't believe 6410 g/kg was a reliable datapoint: "...in Table S1 the total potassium content (TK) = 6410 g ± 13.2 g kg-1, meaning that one kg of soil contained about seven kg of potassium."

When BMC published this the first days of 2025 we should have known how the year will turn out: Namini et al. 2025 (DOI: 10.1186/s12967-024-06048-z) in 'Journal of Translational Medicine'. This is one of 120 papers from this journal that I flagged in the last 4 weeks... pubpeer.com/publications...

10.5% of all articles I have notified journals about have been addressed to date. Most articles remain untouched, even after waiting for more than a year. I have send concerns on 2500+ articles in total.

Publishers always tell us that they have recognized the systematic issues w/ problematic papers and now have systems in place to catch them. Yet, in recent years the problem has only become worse. How can you smh publish more bad papers?? (this is data from only my own sleuthing, not representative)

Wang et al. 2024 (DOI: 10.1038/s41419-024-06897-y) corrected their paper once, but unfortunately, in the already CORRECTED figure they ended up using images that overlapped... Now they request to correct the correction. 🤦‍♂️ I don't know what else to say... #ImageForensics pubpeer.com/publications...

With a Pakistani papermill in Oxford!

FBS wrote about a case with 10+ papers published w/ scientist(s) from Exeter University, UK. The main character is now group leader at Oxford. Flagged by me & others. 2 retractions so far, a few more likely. Some pretty bad papermill-collaborations included: forbetterscience.com/2025/12/05/s...

Not only 157(!!!) citations to a single "researcher" 🤡, but also fake microscopy images??? This paper has it all!: El-Bindary et al. 2023 (DOI: 10.1016/j.molliq.2023.121946) - Truly magnificent work, published in the Journal of Molecular Liquids! pubpeer.com/publications...

While crawling through 100th of BMC Stem Cell Research & Therapy papers last month I stumbled upon a series of questionable papers by an Australian Lab at Melbourne University (some flagged by others). The PI blamed students. Leonid Schneider summarized nicely: forbetterscience.com/2025/12/02/b...

Retraction for a (now) Oxford University group leader in a Royal Society journal. This work was published during the first-authors PhD at Exeter University: Tabish et al. 2018 (DOI: 10.1098/rsfs.2017.0054). pubpeer.com/publications... I reported this to the journal 3 months ago:

Reported in March, retracted recently: Mousazadeh et al.2022 (DOI: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2021.118747) 'Carbohydrate Polymers'. The authors even argued on PubPeer that repetitions in noise in their various figures is totally expected 🤡 pubpeer.com/publications... Glad Elsevier didn't buy it...

Happy Thanksgiving! A nonsense paper I posted about 9 months ago got retracted by the Elsevier journal today, what a nice Thanksgiving present: pubpeer.com/publications... Meng et al. 2021 (DOI: 10.1016/j.jare.2020.08.010) ...probably not the last retraction for this author.

A great start to the week when you get a notification from @smutclyde.bsky.social spotting a Wiley retraction of a paper me & @sholtodavid.bsky.social flagged in July '25: Wu et al. 2020 (DOI: 10.1002/adhm.201901307) pubpeer.com/publications...

Always a good read: forbetterscience.com/2025/11/21/s... (this week featuring some interesting finds from labs in Brazil and Canada I made throughout this year)

This article was already corrected, replacing Figure 7 because of image duplication. Yet, in the now 'correct' figure, some of the image panels are still obviously mixed-up. Who approved this correction?: Du et al. 2022 (DOI: 10.1186/s12885-022-09740-9) 'BMC Cancer' pubpeer.com/publications...

I have recently been looking more closely at BMC Cancer. They often correct papers but it seems like no-one checks if the "corrected" figures are actually correct. Huang et al. 2021 (DOI: 10.1186/s12885-021-08056-4) is just one example. pubpeer.com/publications... This is a "corrected" figure:

Another retraction, for concerns that I reported in February. Wiley even credited me in the note (that's a first)!: Sarandry et al. 2015 (DOI: 10.1155/2015/919342) reused data published years prior + most of the newly presented data consisted of overlapping images... pubpeer.com/publications...

A staggering statistic: "North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year." What are we doing?

🤡 Banu et al. 2020 (DOI: 10.1186/s12885-020-07608-4) in 'BMC Cancer' pubpeer.com/publications...

I am not entirely sure why these regions appear cloned and what the purpose of this type of image alteration is, but this doesn't seem correct to me: Mokhtari et al. 2019 (DOI: 10.1186/s12885-019-6018-1) in 'BMC Cancer': pubpeer.com/publications...

Another example of great 'BMC Cancer' research: Gao et al. 2021 (DOI: 10.1186/s12885-021-08294-6) - non-coding RNA & breast cancer "research" seem to pair well... pubpeer.com/publications... #ResearchIntegrity #ImageForensics

I have recently been looking closely at some BMC journals. To no ones surprise, there is an abundance of questionable biomedical research. For example: Wang et al. 2021 (DOI: 10.1186/s12885-021-08914-1) in 'BMC Cancer' pubpeer.com/publications...

Reverse Image Forensics Challenge: Try to find a unique area in Figure 9 of this recent Scientific Reports paper: 10.1038/s41598-025-17456-6 [Aug 2025] - Annotated by ImageTwin.ai

Always a good start to the week when you get notified that a paper flagged more than a year ago finally got retracted: Ahsan et al. 2021 (DOI: 10.1007/s10787-021-00840-9). Images overlap with multiple other papers. pubpeer.com/publications...

Wiley today retracted this paper in which a corner clone was used to manipulate a microscopy-image: Iconaru et al. 2011 (DOI: 10.1155/2011/291512) - retraction was the appropriate actions. pubpeer.com/publications... I even got cited for my comment on PubPeer! That's a first for me, but nice to see.

A retraction can also increate the confidence that we have in the integrity of someone's research. I think this is a good example of that. This of course does not count for retractions caused by sleuths who find clearly manipulated images or data & w/ the authors continuously making poor excuses...

Not sure I buy these scale bars, at least one must be off. Team from India & New Zealand: Yadav et al. 2025 (DOI: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2025.146238). That's on top of what seems like the same underlying image representing two materials... pubpeer.com/publications...

Next retraction for Italian cancer researcher Sebastiano Andó: molpharm.aspetjournals.org/article/S002... pubpeer.com/publications... The first concerns on this article were raised in 2013 by C. Francis I wrote about this disgraceful saga for FBS a few weeks ago: forbetterscience.com/2025/10/21/l...

More 'science' by the same Canadian team: Nabipour et al. 2025 (DOI: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2025.140027). pubpeer.com/publications... Plenty more anomalies and issues flagged by various others on PubPeer; too much to blame it on a student or undergrad.

Some interesting data coming out of this Canadian research group: Nabipour et al. 2024 (DOI: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2023.128875) - University of Western Ontario seem to have hired some (photoshop) experts cosplaying as 'scientists' pubpeer.com/publications...

Shanghai-based Deng-Guang Yu just lost his 2nd paper (~100 flagged on PubPeer). It was reported to Frontiers in February & recycled data originally published in 2013 by Yu's team: Wang et al. 2023 (DOI: 10.3389/fmolb.2023.1184767) pubpeer.com/publications... forbetterscience.com/2025/03/03/a...