Incorrect Article Type Labeling: This article was previously mislabeled as an editorial article. This has now been corrected.
Public Editor
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The Utility of AI Tools in Auditing Adherence to Pre-Analysis Plans
Pre-analysis plans (PAPs) can improve research reproducibility by reducing researchers’ degrees of freedom, but their value depends on adherence. We argue that large language models (LLMs) can provide an efficient, scalable, and systematic way for authors and reviewers to assess adherence to PAPs. In an application to our own research, an LLM systematically identifies precommitted design choices, evaluates deviations, and diagnoses gaps in pre-specification, substantially reducing the human labor required for these tasks. However, variability in audit output across LLMs underscores the continued importance of human judgment. We discuss implications for best practices in AI-assisted PAP auditing.
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.
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.
Doctors’ AI scribes get names of drugs and diagnoses wrong, NHS watchdog warns
Exclusive: Patients identify errors in consultation transcripts that are missed by GPs, Healthwatch England finds
Your doctor’s AI notetaker may be making things up, Ontario audit finds
Made-up therapy referrals, incorrect prescriptions among the common mistakes.
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The New York Times drops freelance journalist who used AI to write book review
Writer and author Alex Preston said he “made a serious mistake” after a reader spotted similarities between his review and one that appeared in the Guardian
Attention Authors: Updated Practice for Review Articles and Position Papers in arXiv CS Category
arXiv’s computer science (CS) category has updated its moderation practice with respect to review (or survey) articles and position papers. Before being…
Editor’s Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations
We are reinforcing our editorial standards following this incident.
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…
When should a paper be corrected? Last December, @elisabethbik.bsky.social and other sleuths began flagging papers by a prominent bioengineer, Ali Khademhosseini. They found over 80 with image issues. Khademhosseini and his colleagues have issued over 40 corrections, but avoided retractions.
Science sleuths raise concerns about scores of bioengineering papers
www.nature.comInteresting editing error in today's Pew report. They used CPS to count immigrants (weren't we just arguing about this?) and conclude the number dropped 1.4 million from January to June. They repeat this key sentence, once with and once without the caveat... pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/21/key-fi…
