Editor’s Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

We are reinforcing our editorial standards following this incident.

Correction of scientific literature: Too little, too late!

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has highlighted the limitations of the current scientific publication system, in which serious post-publication concerns are often addressed too slowly to be effective. In this Perspective, we offer suggestions to improve academia’s willingness and ability to correct errors in an appropriate time frame.

Just 2% of Immigration Court Filings Based on Alleged Criminal Activity in February 2026

Numbers are also lower now than they were a year earlier when President Trump returned to office. One year ago in February 2025, DHS filed NTAs on 821 individuals based on claims of criminal activity compared with 741 today. This represented 4 percent of the cases filed a year ago, rather than just 2 percent now.

Q&A from the slop trenches – GeoSpatial ML

We reviewed 22 ML conference submissions this summer. Fifteen had fabricated citations, hallucinated authors, or clear LLM slop, so we complain about that a bit, and release the paper references audit we now run.

Scientific production in the era of Large Language Models

Large Language Models (LLMs) are rapidly reshaping scientific research. We analyze these changes in multiple, large-scale datasets with 2.1M preprints, 28K peer review reports, and 246M online accesses to scientific documents. We find: 1) scientists adopting LLMs to draft manuscripts demonstrate a large increase in paper production, ranging from 23.7-89.3% depending on scientific field and author background, 2) LLM use has reversed the relationship between writing complexity and paper quality, leading to an influx of manuscripts that are linguistically complex but substantively underwhelming, and 3) LLM adopters access and cite more diverse prior work, including books and younger, less-cited documents. These findings highlight a stunning shift in scientific production that will likely require a change in how journals, funding agencies, and tenure committees evaluate scientific works.

Incorrect Citation Association for Articles in Online-Only Springer Nature Journals

We show that citation metrics of journal articles in many of the online-only Springer Nature journals and associated ones are distorted, going back to articles from 2001. We find that most likely due to an API response error, there are many incorrect references which typically lead to Article Number 1 of a given Volume. Among others, the issue affects journals such as Scientific Reports, Nature Communications, Communications journals, Cell Death & Disease, Light: Science & Applications, as well as many BMC, Discovery and npj journals. Beyond the negative effect of introducing incorrect reference information, this distorts the citation statistics of articles in these journals, with a few articles being massively over-cited compared to their peers, while many lose citations; e.g. both in Scientific Reports and in Nature Communications, 5 of the 10 top cited articles have article numbers of 1. We validate the distorted statistics by assessing data from multiple scientific literature databases: Crossref, OpenCitations, Semantic Scholar, and the journals' websites. The issue primarily arises from the inconsistent transition from page-based referencing of articles to article number-based referencing, as well as the improper handling of the change in the publisher's article metadata API. It seems that the most pressing problem has been present since approximately 2011, which we estimate affects the citation count of millions of authors.

Some Data Indicating That Editors and Reviewers Do Not Check Preregistrations During the Review Process · Volume 6 Issue 1

Incorrect Article Type Labeling: This article was previously mislabeled as an editorial article. This has now been corrected.

White House Health Report Included Fake Citations (Published 2025)

A report on children’s health released by the Make America Healthy Again Commission referred to scientific papers that did not exist.

Andreas De Block on Twitter / X

It took Nature three years to publish this rebuttal, which clearly demonstrates the fundamental flaws in the original paper. In the meantime, the paper's conclusions influenced scientific debate and policy decisions. Such delays in correcting flawed research do real damage. https://t.co/QI3Ei3PE70— Andreas De Block (@DeblockBlock) August 13, 2026

Sleuths flag ‘complete mismatch’ in data of BMJ stem cell study | Manoj Lalu

This is disappointing, but I’m not surprised. I was one of the reviewers for the initial version. You can see by my review (it’s all open) that I flagged primary outcome switching, a complete lack of any data on the cells themselves, and sample size inconsistencies in the protocol versus the report (and within the report). The data seemed impressive. Too good to be true I guess? I never saw the paper again in peer review after that initial review. The next notification I received was that the paper was accepted. Given BMJ’s commitment to open peer review and post-publication scrutiny (which I admire), I have no doubt we will hear about a formal editorial investigation soon.

By the numbers: the latest ICE and CBP data on arrests, detentions and deportations in the US

The Guardian has reviewed figures from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection since Trump’s inauguration

Quotation errors in general science journals

Abstract. Due to the incremental nature of scientific discovery, scientific writing requires extensive referencing to the writings of others. The accuracy

Quotation errors in general science journals

Due to the incremental nature of scientific discovery, scientific writing requires extensive referencing to the writings of others. The accuracy of this referencing is vital, yet errors do occur. These errors are called ‘quotation errors’. This paper presents the first assessment of quotation errors in high-impact general science journals. A total of 250 random citations were examined. The propositions being cited were compared with the referenced materials to verify whether the propositions could be substantiated by those materials. The study found a total error rate of 25%. This result tracks well with error rates found in similar studies in other academic fields. Additionally, several suggestions are offered that may help to decrease these errors and make similar studies more feasible in the future.