Schneider Shorts 13.02.2026 – Prize for Academic Integrity (Europe category) forbetterscience.com/2026/02/13/s...

I want to be author of a paper about cancer biomarkers. You're in luck! We're running a 1/2-price special on processed-alloy papers! What good is that! I'm an oncologist, not a metallurgist. We'll tie a sign to it that says 'cancer'. Do you want the text or not? OK then. pubpeer.com/publications...

Woohoo! #SuperBowl flyover over our city.

Please admire what 'Viola sheltonii' found in Discover Oncology, in "Engineering CAR T NK and NKT cell therapies to target cancer stem cells and overcome stem like resistance". pubpeer.com/publications...

I know that @frontiersin.bsky.social are trying hard to be taken seriously. But addressing the problems in the original figure (left) by a completely new set of panels (that also have problems; right) puts them straight back into predatory journal range. #ImageForensics #ScientificPublishing /

Student journalists at Stanford the first to break a story that’s long overdue stanforddaily.com/2026/02/03/f...

Good article by Theresa DeFino capturing my thoughts on how failure to address research integrity failures today accumulates problems for tomorrow. Each scientist or administrator involved in such a mess has autonomy to facilitate or resist that.

Figure 5. Sudden quarrelling of spouse due to misuse of wireless sensor technology: doi.org/10.5539/jpl....

Following my blog about former Yale Researcher Wang Min, Nature Communications retracted a paper of his today: forbetterscience.com/2025/04/30/y...

Another retraction today for Sam S Yoon. Still currently Chief, Division of Surgical Oncology at Columbia, having lost many of the papers that came out of his lab to retractions for an epic fraud. Not clear what the consequences were apart from the retractions: forbetterscience.com/2023/11/01/m...

1. I now summarized problems of a paper on ketamine on PubPeer and also contacted the editor after contacting the author who didn't respond. I also checked some other papers from authors and indeed found another suspicious one quickly. Thoughts? -> pubpeer.com/publications...

The publishers of Frontiers are very proud of their fraud-detection software and have appointed themselves as "Guardians of Research Integrity". Also, they publish stuff like this.

Prepare for the most groan-inducing CRO drug trial situation you’ve come across in a loooooong time:

2026 begins…with a resurrection of the myth that COVID vaccines cause “turbo cancers:” A review that tried hard to show the vaccines cause cancer found very little, and used handwaving to speculate. via @gorskon.bsky.social sciencebasedmedicine.org/and-so-2026-... via @sciencebasedmedicine.org

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...

@spottingthespot.bsky.social Merry $mas! pubpeer.com/publications...

Schneider Shorts 19.12.2025 – Merry Christmas! forbetterscience.com/2025/12/19/s...

The U.S. Department of Justice has reached a $15 million NIH grant fraud settlement with Dana-Farber Cancer Center. This resolves a False Claims Act qui tam complaint that I filed on behalf of @sholtodavid.bsky.social in April 2024, with Gregg Shapiro as my co-counsel.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Agrees to Pay $15 Million to Settle Fraud Allegations Related to Scientific Research Grants. The relator [Sholto David] will receive $2,625,000 under today’s settlement. www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/d...

Can't question the figure if it is illegible. Scientific Reports in September 2025. There are ancient clay tablets with more legible text. pubpeer.com/publications...

Niche product idea: a "matching pairs" memory game where the tiles are real duplicated images from scientific papers (like this one found by @sholtodavid.bsky.social)

Ah, passive voice... is there anything that can't be done by it? link.springer.com/article/10.1...

WTF au cube ! doi.org/10.1007/s125...

Even a simple picture of rocks cannot be published in an authentic form in Scientific Reports. Hope the authors are satisfied that the rocks have been made beautiful for the reader 🤷‍♀️ [Oct 2025] pubpeer.com/publications...

I have written a new blog at ForBetterScience. A German lab has published dozens of papers with images that have been either scribbled on, or manipulated with the clone tool. Blogs can take a while to read, but maybe scroll through the pictures! Plenty to see! forbetterscience.com/2025/11/11/l...

Unbelievable! How can this crap still be published?

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

Oops. Ooooooooooooops. I do hope that nobody has been given or denied a job/promotion based on their SpringerNature citation counts in the past 15 years. arxiv.org/pdf/2511.01675 h/t @nathlarigaldie.bsky.social

Something fishy about this figure🥁Scientific Reports September 2025. pubpeer.com/publications...

Looking forward to a @retractionwatch.com EXCLUSIVE ! retractionwatch.com/2025/01/02/i... "The program is funded by a generous donation from George Tidmarsh."

A brilliant post on For Better Science by Maarten.

@bmj.com Please look at PubPeer comments on an article you published last week. pubpeer.com/publications... I think your research integrity dept shld act swiftly on this one, given clinical significance. I'm aware of even more evidence of problems so let me know if this is not sufficient.

You may have seen reports about a paper claiming that "Stem cell therapy prevents heart attacks": bmj.altmetric.com/details/1830... If so, you might want to grab some popcorn: pubpeer.com/publications...

Sadism, harassment, defamation, academic manipulation and derogatory falsification: Yes, I admit to all of that. But how bloody dare they connecting me to Retraction Watch!!!

"Additionally, the author stated that they have used AI tools for generating some images, including Fig. 1." Reviewers and editors could not work that out for themselves. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Schneider Shorts 31.10.2025 – Who hasn’t had a biopsy? forbetterscience.com/2025/10/31/s...

Struck me while reviewing (another) terribly faked figure in Scientific Reports that some (but not all) of their problems would be quickly solved if they just insisted authors present image data in an elegant way.

If scholarly publishers pledge to never publish papermill trash... What shall they publish instead, to sustain their business model?

Inclusive: For Better Science is 10 years old now!

Another wonderful diagram of "bacterial mitochondria", this time from Scientific Reports in 2025. The whole paper is fake, but the diagram is still delightful. pubpeer.com/publications...

Happy to share a new peer-reviewed study on PubMed. Blessing eggs creates bigger and tastier chickens (p < 0.001). pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41035978/

Science Family journals use Proofig for image duplication detection. In January, Holden said they'd only documented 23 problems out of the last 2000 papers scanned, impressive! I downloaded the last 80 papers from Science Advances and found this published 2 days ago.

Recent MDPI paper including diagram of a bacterial cell with a mitochondrion 🤦‍♀️ The authors propose a mechanism for the toxicity of silver nanoparticles: "Ag+ ions in AgNPs bombard the bacterial mitochondria’s electron transport chain, resulting in cell death".

A CRO has been scamming academic and industry labs in the US with fraudulent data that has been published in Nature and other high impact journals. Leonid has written a great piece on my findings: forbetterscience.com/2025/09/22/i...

In 2024 I cycled from the UK to China. I finally finished a vlog, so here it is if you'd like to watch it. It's a glorified holiday album with some complaints and maps 😂 youtu.be/MdgHZPfivVA

I have been blogging at For Better Science. Revisiting Queen's University in Belfast: forbetterscience.com/2025/09/16/f...

Even in 2024 and 2025 after so much scandal there are still name brand labs publishing photoshopped neuroscience images...

This is bad news. Shooting people whose views we disagree with can only take us in a terrible direction.

Yes, I really marked every duplication of a particle in this SEM image. It might have taken me longer than it took them to fake it... Khan et al. 2017 (DOI: 10.1016/j.jallcom.2016.11.260) This Elsevier article is a complete clown show... pubpeer.com/publications... #ImageForensics

Harvard researchers publishing in Nature, some encouragement for those suffering imposter syndrome. pubpeer.com/publications...