The most impt change at #NIH and to US science this year is bigger than grant cancellations— it’s how the agency is governed.
For 75 years NIH has been largely independent of presidential control. That’s changed this year. New piece from me and @nataliebaviles.bsky.social in @nature.com
🧪
A few of the great signs from the #Nashville #standupforscience rally.
@standupforscience.bsky.social
I was honored to lead the Nashville #StandUpForScience rally today. Here are some of the highlights:
@standupforscience.bsky.social
"Hey hey, ho ho, RFK has got to go!"
Me speaking at the Stand Up for Science rally.
Group posed with UCS posters plus Beaker.
Today we showed up.
Feeling proud of scientists and science supporters in this moment. Thank you all. #Standupforscience
Rally with stand up for science banner and signs in Chicago federal plaza
Scientist attendee in blue coat with a stand up for science flag
Representing Genetics Society of America at the Chicago #StandUpForScience rally with Mark Garfinkel during the #Dros26 conference lunch break
Screenshot from a Facebook video: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1421055745622174 MUSC College of Medicine and MUSC Department of Medicine: We’ve received a major renewal for the highly competitive Digestive Disease Research Core Center grant! Led by Dr. Don Rockey, this prestigious NIH grant was successfully renewed for the next five years to continue supporting research on digestive and liver diseases here at MUSC. As one of only 17 centers in the United States, we take pride in being a national leader in the field and are grateful for the renewed support from the NIH.
Could this be the reason? The senior author brings in a lot of grant money! It seems a large conflict of interest to have MUSC investigate their own star researchers.
Nothing to see here.
www.facebook.com/watch/?v=142...
Figure from a scientific paper showing three Western blots, each with five lanes. The bottom one (labeled b-actin) has three dientical lanes, which I marked with red boxes. https://pubpeer.com/publications/4E8CA18B8A0DE440619A23D705CBB8 doi: 10.1016/j.ajpath.2021.11.005.
The Medical University of South Carolina Research Integrity Officer and Committee concluded that "human error in regards to organization and record keeping of original images was the cause for this mistake."
How the heck can this be caused by a mistake?
#ThisImageIsFine
#ImageForensics
Hello @springernature.com - you’ve just published another bit of nonsense in Scientific Reports 🙁
(This is in Springer Nature's Scientific Reports btw)
The ethics and integrity team at SN told me "We can confirm that the query has been received and logged for review in line with COPE guidelines."
I'd say... this should have an expression of concern ASAP, if not outright retraction.
Text says: This section provides a comprehensive description of the methodology employed in this study to develop an explainable XAI framework for ASD diagnosis and parental support. The proposed framework integrates the TabPFNMix regressor, a state-of-the-art machine learning (ML) model for tabular data, with SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) to ensure both high predictive accuracy and interpretability. The methodology is structured into five subsections: (1) Dataset Description, (2) TabPFNMix Overview, (3) SHAP for Explainability, (4) Framework Design, and (5) Evaluation Metrics. Figure 1 shows the overall methodology. Informed consent was obtained from all participants involved in the study, and, where applicable, consent was obtained from legal guardians for minor participants as approved by the IRB. And then Figure 1 is shown with lots of AI errors on the image.
An absolutely totally fine this can be published in a science journal image that purports to show how the study was carried out but instead is just AI slop.
Uhh,,, Figure 1 shows you... what exactly? Trying to understand Medical fryrmbial, runctitional features and mum's legs going through concrete.
This whole article is a bit of a disaster. And it's very difficult to find other published work for the author. Strange! 🧪
(via @smutclyde.bsky.social)
An international computing society has begun retracting conference papers for “citation falsification” only months after the sleuth who flagged the suspect articles was convicted for defamation in a lawsuit filed by one of the offending authors.
Photosynthetic sea slugs can decapitate themselves & regenerate whole body from the detached head (without the heart or guts), while the shed body do not regenerate. The process takes ~2-3 weeks. A new model for regeneration?
From: www.cell.com/current-biol...
LISTEN UP, DORKS!
@standupforscience.bsky.social is getting (even more!) political. People often say "well what can one person do??"
🥊 If all our followers joined Science Fight Club and gave $5 a month, we could save science!
🥊Join here: www.standupforscience.net/join-science...
SHARE WIDELY!
They were already suspended, now they're delisted.
Cureus has had an outsized impact on the sheer volume of nonsense research for years, and I wonder if WoS felt like they had a choice.
I won't miss it.
retractionwatch.com/2025/10/27/e...
For others troubled by the exoneration of Hoau-Yan Wang, there's an analysis of the difficulty prosecuting scientific fraudsters at 13:00 in this @bjkspod.bsky.social podcast. I didn't anticipate the role of institutional research integrity offices in manufacturing "reasonable doubts."
I was on 🇨🇦 CBC Radio's Quirks and Quarks last weekend to talk about systematic scientific fraud! Listen to the 18-minute segment here: www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks...
"If we are to rebuild our scientific enterprise, we will need the support of the American people, and that means cleaning up our house. Policies to forbid ghostwriting and strong sanctions for researchers who violate those policies would be a good place to start."
doi.org/10.1126/scie...
A network of peer reviewers in Italy is targeting medical journals, threatening “both the scientific record and patient safety,” a team of researchers including @deevybee.bsky.social report.
Reporter @virginiagewin.bsky.social interviewed 19 current and former US federal agency scientists about the science being dismantled at EPA, NOAA, NASA, CDC, NIH, & USGS.
They say it's making America unprepared for environmental and public health crises.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
A journal dead (correction: discontinued!!) and the papers that lived. A saga of Journal of Chemical Neuroanatomy.
www.linkedin.com/posts/mu-yan...
Featuring @smutclyde.bsky.social @forbetterscience.bsky.social
We will fight back with this
This study on effects of probiotics in Parkinson's clinical trial has been retracted. pubpeer.com/publications.... This yogurt stuff confuses me: Could impair sociability pubpeer.com/publications... but help with Parkinson's?? I guess both studies are goofy. I love yogurt.
Read how @jsmoliga.bsky.social and @mumumouse2.bsky.social made a woodpecker disappear!
Happy Friday to those who celebrate!
forbetterscience.com/2025/10/24/s...
Wiley: "After a detailed analysis of the concerns for each remaining article, we did not find anything to require further action on these articles. ......As such, we are now closing our investigation."
Me: yeah but what about the O peaks at 8.5 KeV ....😅
pubpeer.com/publications...
Tale of two retractions. www.linkedin.com/posts/mu-yan...
Ayman Atta (KSU, EPRI) has earned 5 more #SciRetraction, all from ACS Omega! 👍Kudos to @acs.org @pubs.acs.org
🤝Team work with @mumumouse2.bsky.social Sylvain Bernès @elisabethbik.bsky.social and anonymous @pubpeer.com contributors ❤️
#ResearchIntegrity 🔍 #ImageForensics #FoSci
#ThisImageIsFine
I spoke to Savina Kirilova about misuse of ResearchGate for @nature.com:
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Researchers in India fear they may lose access to academic papers after an Indian court’s decision to block the pirate website Sci-Hub — my latest for @cenmag.bsky.social:
cen.acs.org/policy/publi...
