Wildlife journal issues corrections for missing ethics statements; Retraction Watch, October 7, 2026

 Retraction Watch; Wildlife journal issues corrections for missing ethics statements

"In what one sleuth called a “systemic failure,” a wildlife journal has issued corrections to a handful of papers not for an error in the articles but to include an item that wasn’t: ethics statements. 

The most recent such correction in the European Journal of Wildlife Research (EJWR) was on September 8. According to the notice, authors of a March article on mammal diversity in Mexico provided additional information on the camera trapping method employed in the study —  namely, that their research did not require approval from an animal ethics committee. 

At least three other similar corrections have appeared in EJWR in the last four years, with several more articles with missing ethics statements flagged on PubPeer by commenter “Pseudotocinclus tietensis.”"

Ethics journal retracts paper by high school student for AI, peer review manipulation; Retraction Watch, July 6, 2026

 Retraction Watch; Ethics journal retracts paper by high school student for AI, peer review manipulation

"The Journal of Medical Ethics has retracted a paper on the use of AI in the pharmaceutical industry for containing references that don’t exist. The article’s sole author: a high school student. 

The paper, which argues biased algorithms can exacerbate inequities in health care, was published in September. The author, Irfan Biswas, listed his affiliation as Shrewsbury Public Schools in Massachusetts.

According to the May 28 retraction notice, an investigation by the journal found Biswas used generative AI to “identify and understand referenced sources” and did not verify the references prior to submission. 

“The journal investigated concerns about the quality of the work and the accuracy of the references, including concerns that several references did not exist,” the notice reads. 

Last year another ethics journal made a similar retraction after a reader found fabricated references in a paper on whistleblowing. The Biswas article joins the estimated one in 277 papers indexed in PubMed with fabricated references, a phenomenon that came about with the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT.

The retraction notice for the latest paper also cites “evidence of peer review manipulation.”

Caroline White, media relations manager for BMJ Group, which publishes the journal, declined to elaborate on the problematic peer review. Biswas confirmed to the journal he was a high school student, and agreed to the retraction, White said. 

Biswas did not respond to our emails or LinkedIn message asking for clarification on how the references ended up in the paper. 

In an August 2025 paper in Frontiers in Genome Editing, “Ethical dimensions and societal implications: ensuring the social responsibility of CRISPR technology,” Biswas listed affiliations with the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester and the University of Rhode Island in Kingston. A representative from UMass told Retraction Watch they have no record of Biswas attending the school. URI said a student by the same name is enrolled as an undergraduate, but said they were “unable to confirm whether or not it is the same individual.” 

Nearly 3,000 peer-reviewed medical papers have fake citations, a Columbia Nursing AI-assisted audit finds; Columbia, May 8, 2026

 Columbia ; Nearly 3,000 peer-reviewed medical papers have fake citations, a Columbia Nursing AI-assisted audit finds

"A new Columbia University School of Nursing AI-assisted audit reveals nearly 3,000 peer-reviewed medical papers have fake citations that do not exist in scientific databases. The results highlight an alarming trend in academic publishing as the use of AI grows.  The peer-reviewed research letter, “Fabricated citations: an audit across 2·5 million biomedical papers, was published in The Lancet on May 7, 2026."

Fabricated citations: an audit across 2·5 million biomedical papers; The Lancet, May 9, 2026

 Maxim Topaz,  Nir Roguin,  Pallavi Gupta,  Zhihong Zhang,  Laura-Maria Peltonen, The Lancet ; Fabricated citations: an audit across 2·5 million biomedical papers

"Scientific literature depends on the integrity of its references. Each reference implicitly asserts that a verifiable source exists and supports the claims being made. When references point to non-existent studies, readers, reviewers, and policy makers are unable to evaluate the evidence.

Fabricated references (references whose claimed titles correspond to no existing publication) can arise from paper mill activity, intentional misconduct, or uncritical use of artificial intelligence (AI) writing tools.1 Large language models (LLMs) generate plausible sounding but fictitious references, a well documented failure mode; previous studies estimate that 30–69% of LLM-generated references in biomedical contexts are fabricated.2,3 These references are often correctly formatted, attributed to real researchers, and bear plausible publication dates, making them difficult to detect by conventional peer review.4 To our knowledge, no systematic audit of reference integrity across the biomedical literature has been conducted until now.

We present findings from a reference-integrity audit of 2·5 million biomedical papers spanning 3 years, showing that fabricated references are embedded in the peer-reviewed literature at scale, and that the rate of fabrication is accelerating."

Publisher under fire after ‘fake’ citations found in AI ethics guide; The Times, December 14, 2025

Rhys Blakely, The Times ; Publisher under fire after ‘fake’ citations found in AI ethics guide

"One of the world’s largest academic publishers is selling a book on the ethics of AI intelligence research that appears to be riddled with fake citations, including references to journals that do not exist.

Academic publishing has recently been subject to criticism for accepting fraudulent papers produced using AI, which have made it through a peer-review process designed to guarantee high standards.

The Times found that a book recently published by the German-British publishing giant Springer Nature includes dozens of citations that appear to have been invented — a sign, often, of AI-generated material."