I don't see the point in giving sleuths credit for retractions. It doesn't seem like a good way of valuing labour and also further turns retractions into a kind of weird moral economy.
Noticed: Sleuths are starting to get credit for retractions
retractionwatch.comAug 1, 2025 at 9:08 PM
Scientific sleuths come in from the cold
Research integrity investigators are starting to organize, but the field, and the people, remain idiosyncratic
A journal named a sleuth in a correction. The sleuth says that was ‘ethical editorial malpractice’
As the publishing community debates the merits of naming sleuths in retraction or correction notices, one journal did so without the sleuth’s permission — by publishing an email from the authors na…
A Delphi survey on attitudes to serious research misconduct: Exploring convergence vs. polarization of views of research “sleuths” and research integrity experts
Research fraud is often seen as a rare event, but evidence from self-report surveys indicates that fabrication and falsification of data are common enough to be a problem. This study assessed attit...
Retraction: After a routine code rejection, an AI agent published a hit piece on someone by name
This story has been retracted...
How Ten Publishers Retract Research
Retractions are the primary mechanism for correcting the scholarly record, yet publishers differ markedly in how they use them. We present a bibliometric analysis of 46,087 retractions across 10 major publishers using data from the Retraction Watch database (1997-2026), examining retraction rates, reasons, temporal trends, and geographic distributions, among other dimensions. Normalized retraction rates vary by two orders of magnitude, from Elsevier's 3.97 per 10,000 publications to Hindawi's 320.02. China-affiliated authors account for the largest share of retractions at every publisher. Retraction lags and reason profiles also vary widely across publishers. Among the ten publishers, ACM is an outlier in its retraction profile. ACM's normalized rate is mid-range (5.65), yet 98.3% of its 354 retractions are related to one incident. Seven of the ten most common global retraction reasons (including misconduct, plagiarism, and data concerns) are entirely absent from ACM's record. ACM's first retraction dates to 2020, despite a catalog dating to 1997. ACM self-describes its retraction threshold as "extremely high." We discuss this threshold in relation to the COPE retraction guidelines and the implications of ACM's non-public dark archive of removed works.
Retraction Note: High replicability of newly discovered social-behavioural findings is achievable
Nature Human Behaviour - Retraction Note: High replicability of newly discovered social-behavioural findings is achievable
Papers and peer reviews with evidence of ChatGPT writing
Retraction Watch readers have likely heard about papers showing evidence that they were written by ChatGPT, including one that went viral. We and others have reported on the phenomenon. Here’…
Tracers in the dark: the global hunt for the crime lords of cryptocurrency
"A propulsive story of a new breed of investigators who have cracked the Bitcoin blockchain, taking once-anonymous realms of money, drugs, and violence and holding them up to the light Black markets have always thrived in the shadows of society. Increasingly, these enterprises-drug dealing, money laundering, human trafficking, terrorist funding-have found their shadows online. Digital crime lords inhabiting lawless corners of the internet have operated more freely than their analog counterparts could have ever dreamed of. At the heart of their massive conspiracies: cryptocurrency. By transacting not in dollars or pounds but in Bitcoin-a currency with anonymous ledgers, overseen by no government, beholden to no bankers-black marketeers robbed law enforcement for years of their chief method of cracking down on criminal markets, namely, following the money. But what if the centerpiece of this dark economy held a secret, fatal flaw? What if their currency wasn't so cryptic after all? An investigator using the right mixture of technical wizardry, financial forensics, and old-fashioned persistence could crack open an entire world of crime. Men with No Names is a story of crime and consequences unlike any other. With unprecedented access to the major players in federal law enforcement and private industry, veteran cybersecurity reporter Andy Greenberg tells an astonishing saga of criminal empires built and destroyed. He introduces an IRS agent with a defiant streak; a Bitcoin-tracing Danish entrepreneur; and a colorful ensemble of hardboiled agents and prosecutors as they delve deep into the crypto-underworld. The result is a thrilling, globe-spanning story of dirty cops, drug bazaars, sex-abuse rings, and the biggest takedown of an online narcotics market in the history of the internet. This is a cat-and-mouse story and a tale of a technological one-upmanship that's utterly of our time. Filled with canny maneuvering and shocking twists, it answers a provocative question: How would some of the world's most brazen criminals behave if they were sure they could never get caught?"--
Technology and Below-the-Line Labor in the Copyfight over Intellectual Property
Andrew Ross, Technology and Below-the-Line Labor in the Copyfight over Intellectual Property, American Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 3, Rewiring the "Nation": The Place of Technology in American Studies (Sep., 2006), pp. 743-766
Lots of scepticism about codes of ethics in this piece but surely the work of sleuthing needs to be grounded in some kind of observable, ethical process. Otherwise it's just as opaque and unscientific as the stuff it's investigating.
Dalmeet Singh Chawla
Research sleuths are starting to organize, but the field, and the people, remain idiosyncratic — my latest for @cenmag.bsky.social: cen.acs.org/research-integrity/scientific… @mcintold.bsky.social, @reeserichardson.bsky.social, @elisabethbik.bsky.social, @sholtodavid.bsky.social, @eugenie-reich.bsky.social
I have many questions about this. What if the sleuth finds nothing, embarks on a project that leads to nothing? How will the validation happen? What happened to old terms like research integrity? And finally, should we perhaps reflect a bit (I would say even worry) about the incentive being set up?
Retraction Watch
We're thrilled to announce the creation of the Retraction Watch Sleuth in Residence Program.
In my ideal world, every promotion (eg full professor) or large personal grant committee would have two paid sleuths that go through/sample candidates' CVs for sloppyness and QRPs. What do sleuths think of that? We would need a database of people and a concept of what a basic CV check looks like.
Just checked, and yes, my retracted paper is in the #retractionwatch database, as it should be. However, I wish the reason didn't include that it was an investigation by the journal/publisher, it was me who sweated and wrote a new paper with a solid theorem explaining why our old paper was […]
Original post on mathstodon.xyz
mathstodon.xyzAnd for context, here are the sleuths' profiles in other outlets: thetransmitter.org/publishing/retraction-she-wro… zmescience.com/science/the-rise-of-the-scien… These people are pros.
Retraction, She Wrote: Dorothy Bishop’s life after research
www.thetransmitter.org
