Retraction Watch

The Great Pyramid of Giza, also known as the Pyramid of Khufu. Jerome Bon/Flickr A journal has retracted a paper by two Italian scientists who claimed to have found hidden structures inside of the oldest and largest of the Pyramids of Giza. The study, published in Remote Sensing in October 2022, purportedly used synthetic aperture radar to penetrate the Pyramid of Khufu with energy pulses and process the echoes received, revealing a network of rooms, corridors and tunnels.

If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.

New York University Press is pulling all copies of a book about intelligent design after the author falsely quoted another scholar in the work. Designer Science: A History of Intelligent Design in America, by C.W. Howell, was published by NYU Press in 2025.

The Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA) at Kyoto University in Japan is defending Nobel Prize winner Shinya Yamanaka against claims of  image manipulation in multiple studies on which he was an author. The institute says questioning Yamanaka’s integrity without sufficient evidence is “completely unacceptable.” Yamanaka shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2012 and works at CiRA.

Elsevier says it will begin investigating two papers coauthored by disgraced surgeon Paolo Macchiarini “soon,” more than a year after two critics of his work formally requested the publisher retract the articles — and nearly a decade after two institutions found him guilty of misconduct for related work.

wildpixel/iStock The involvement of independent academic researchers in examining data and conducting analyses is central to producing trustworthy research.

Six editors and nearly 60 advisory editors of Games and Economic Behavior resigned after the journal’s publisher decided not to renew the editor-in-chief’s contract. In late July, Elsevier told Hervé Moulin, a business professor of the University of Glasgow, his six-year tenure as editor-in-chief of the journal would end in December. Moulin told Retraction Watch he was disappointed by the news, as he had expressed a desire to continue in his role.

If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.

Westock/Adobe Stock A trial date has been set in a $1 billion defamation case against Elsevier that alleges the company published what plaintiffs say was a manipulated study about an air purifying technology over objections from peer reviewers. The case has already cost Elsevier a $10,000 sanction from a judge.

A materials science journal has pulled 56 papers so far this year for transgressions including image overlap, concerns about data integrity and “suspicious” changes in authorship. Ceramics International began retracting the papers in July. More than 50 of the retractions were requested by an “impartial field expert acting in the role of an independent Publishing Ethics advisor,” according to the notices.