The Metascience Observatory

Scientific Reports has been delisted from PubMed! We recently found serious issues in eight papers published in Scientific Reports. We are in the process of notifying authors to get their input and will be publishing a writeup most likely in a few weeks. youtube.com/watch?v=HXcrOkRU…

We just sent out our Q3 newsletter! Read it here: eomail5.com/web-version?p=74… Subscribe here to get future newsletters in your inbox: metascienceobservatory.eo.pa…

New on our YouTube - Metascience Observatory founder Dan Elton (@moreisdifferent) explains our fetchpdf package for downloading PDFs legally. In many cases you can download XML when you can't get a PDF & then convert the XML to a PDF! pip install fetchpdf youtube.com/watch?v=ifjcwuPc…

"We measure AI-generated writing in the dissertations of a near-census of US STEM PhD graduates from 2019 to 2026 and link graduates to their subsequent employment. AI writing is absent before 2023, present in 29% of dissertations filed in 2026, and rapidly growing." (link below)

A paper recently came out claiming to show that nuclear power plants cause cancer. Using the exact same methodology, researchers at @TheBTI showed the following also "cause cancer". (link below)

.@arXiv is making some updates in light of a deluge of paper submissions: blog.arxiv.org/2026/10/01/up…

Interesting. "Robustness is better assessed with a few thoughtful models than with billions of regressions" pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pna…

"... almost all participants had experience with irreproducibility... 58% had failed to replicate a result from the published literature.... Participants reported feelings of self-doubt, frustration, and depression while experiencing irreproducibility.. " journals.plos.org/plosone/ar…

Here's the duplication issue we found in "LDL receptor-related protein-1 is a sialic-acid-independent receptor for myelin-associated glycoprotein that functions in neurite outgrowth inhibition by MAG and CNS myelin" - It's awaiting moderation here: pubpeer.com/publications/E2C…

We found another duplication issue in the @J_Cell_Sci paper Sholto found issues in (10.1242/jcs.113191). Sholto suggests looking at PhD theses. In one co-author's PhD thesis we found same image but w different coloration and diff labels. Video shows transform & blink comparison.

We found a minor duplication issue in the supplementary info of 2017 Oncogene paper. What's interesting is this is from the lab of Dr. Kenneth Anderson at DFCI. @addictedtoigno1 previously flagged 16 of his papers previously as part of case that ended up causing quite a stir..

We're flagging a case of cross-paper image reuse, submitted to pubpeer. The 2014 paper caption says the image shows "EGFP expression in pAcISUBC transfected BuMECs" pAcISUBC is a human insulin expression vector constructed in the 2014 paper that does not appear in 2013 paper.

IMAGE DUPLICATION DETECTED Nature Medicine 18, 892–901 (2012). The cells in Fig. 1 are described as from a human patient, while the matching cells in Fig 6 are described as from a tumor grown subcutaneously in a mouse from human cells (a "mouse xenograph").