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Exclusive Springer Nature Retracts Removes Nearly 40 Publications

Leo Migdal
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exclusive springer nature retracts removes nearly 40 publications

Scientific publisher Springer Nature has begun to retract dozens of papers that relied on a dataset fraught with ethical and reliability concerns, The Transmitter has learned. Five papers have been retracted since 16 November, and 33 more retractions are planned, says Tim Kersjes, Springer Nature’s head of research integrity, resolutions. The papers attempted to train neural networks to distinguish between autistic and non-autistic children in a dataset containing photos of children’s faces. Retired engineer Gerald Piosenka created the dataset in 2019 by downloading photos of children from “websites devoted to the subject of autism,” according to a description of the dataset’s methods, and uploaded it to... The dataset contains more than 2,900 photos of children’s faces, half of which are labeled as autistic and the other half as not autistic. After learning about a paper that cites the dataset, “I went and downloaded the dataset, and I was completely horrified,” says Dorothy Bishop, emeritus professor of developmental neuropsychology at the University of Oxford.

“When I saw how it was created, I just thought, ‘This is absolute bonkers.’” Without identifying each child in the dataset, there is no way to confirm that any of them do or do not have autism, Bishop says. 8 DECEMBER 2025 Scientific publisher Springer Nature has begun to retract dozens of papers that relied on a dataset fraught with ethical and reliability concerns, The Transmitter has learned. Five papers have been retracted since 16 November, and 33 more retractions are planned, says Tim Kersjes, Springer Nature’s head of research integrity, resolutions. The papers attempted to train neural networks to distinguish between autistic and non-autistic children in a dataset containing photos of children’s faces. Retired engineer Gerald Piosenka created the dataset in 2019 by downloading photos of children from “websites devoted to the subject of autism,” according to a description of the dataset’s methods, and uploaded it to...

The dataset contains more than 2,900 photos of children’s faces, half of which are labeled as autistic and the other half as not autistic. After learning about a paper that cites the dataset, “I went and downloaded the dataset, and I was completely horrified,” says Dorothy Bishop, emeritus professor of developmental neuropsychology at the University of Oxford. “When I saw how it was created, I just thought, ‘This is absolute bonkers.’” Snip https://www.thetransmitter.org/retraction/exclusive-springer-nature-retracts-removes-nearly-40-publications-that-trained-neural-networks-on-bonkers-dataset/ Scientific publisher Springer Nature has begun to retract dozens of papers that relied on a dataset fraught with ethical and reliability concerns, The Transmitter has learned. Five papers have been retracted since 16 November, and 33 more retractions are planned, says Tim Kersjes, Springer Nature’s head of research integrity, resolutions. The papers attempted to train neural networks to distinguish between autistic and non-autistic children in a dataset containing photos of children’s faces.

Retired engineer Gerald Piosenka created the dataset in 2019 by downloading photos of children from “websites devoted to the subject of autism,” according to a description of the dataset’s methods, and uploaded it to... The dataset contains more than 2,900 photos of children’s faces, half of which are labeled as autistic and the other half as not autistic. Optical and Quantum Electronics, a Springer Nature journal, has retracted more than 200 papers since the start of September, and continues issuing retraction notices en masse. According to the notices, which have similar wording, the retractions come after the publisher identified problems with the articles including compromised peer review, inappropriate or irrelevant references, and nonsensical phrases, suggesting blind use of... “These investigations are based on intelligence from past work alongside whistleblower information,” Chris Graf, director of research integrity at Springer Nature in Oxford, UK, told Retraction Watch. But Graf declined to share the specifics of the inquiry: “We need to keep details of these investigations confidential to ensure that we do not inform the efforts of individuals who may engage in...

Guillaume Cabanac, a computer scientist at the University of Toulouse, France, first highlighted issues with the journal in a February post on X. Cabanac has created software that spots odd language in academic papers he dubbed “tortured phrases,” which seem to be the result of attempts to circumvent plagiarism checks. His Problematic Paper Screener had flagged nearly 50 articles in Optical and Quantum Electronics riddled with tortured phrases, mostly published in 2023. “I suspect papermill submissions + compromised peer review,” he wrote on X at the time, referring to shady services that sell authorship slots and citations on papers. A journal has retracted a 2025 paper on social media and anxiety after a reader raised questions about the data – and thanks to the mentorship of a sleuth or two. The article appeared in 2023 in BMC Psychology, a Springer Nature title.

The sole author was Li Sun, whose affiliation is listed as the School of Marxism at Zhoukou Vocational and Technical College, in China. According to the abstract of the paper, the research explored “the impact of mindfulness-based mobile apps on university students’ anxiety, loneliness, and well-being.” Those apps were “Headspace, Calm, and Insight Timer” which “offer a... Springer Nature is retracting a book on machine learning that had multiple references to works that do not exist, Retraction Watch has learned. The move comes two weeks after we reported on the book’s fake references. In January, a review paper1 about ways to detect human illnesses by examining the eye appeared in a conference proceedings published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in New York City. But neither its authors nor its editors noticed that 60% of the papers it cited had already been retracted.

Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription Receive 51 print issues and online access Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout The 3,000+ journals in the Springer Nature portfolio published over 482,000 articles in 2024, according to data published this week on a new research integrity page on the company’s website. The page also shares a data point you don’t typically get from publishers: 2,923 articles were retracted.

The numbers are a small part of the page, which outlines the tools the publisher uses for quality control, what prompts a research integrity investigation, and what happens during such investigations. The publisher breaks down the retraction numbers a little more: We asked Springer Nature why they chose to share these numbers, and who the intended audience of the page is. Alice Henchley, director of communications, integrity, ethics and editorial policy for the Springer Nature Group, replied: We created the page to help provide more information on how the accuracy and integrity of research is maintained, particularly in light of the growing interest in how new technologies are impacting the research... We hope that this transparency will be helpful to the community and further demonstrate our commitment to scientific integrity, both in terms of the rigour we apply prior to acceptance, and the responsibility we...

You have /5 articles left.Sign up for a free account or log in. An academic journal published by Springer has retracted over 200 papers since the start of last month, Retraction Watch reported. The journal, Optical and Quantum Electronics, published at least 10 retraction notes on Tuesday alone, all regarding articles published in 2023 and 2024 and written by various authors. The notes contained similar messages, saying Springer had retracted the papers after an investigation into multiple articles found concerns. The scope of the investigation wasn't specified. “These concerns include but are not limited to the article being out of scope for the journal, the peer-review process not being in line with editorial policy, inappropriate or irrelevant references being included or...

“The publisher and editors-in-chief therefore no longer have confidence in the results and conclusions of this article and have agreed that it should be retracted.” Other similar retraction notes said the investigation raised concerns about a “compromised peer-review process.” A Springer Nature journal retracted 34 papers earlier this month, including, ironically enough, one on how to detect fake news, which appeared in special guest-edited issues hacked by publication cheats. Special issues have emerged over the past few years as particularly vulnerable to paper mills. Last March, we reported that Wiley was taking a $9 million write-down after its Hindawi subsidiary paused publication of such issues because they were badly hacked by paper mills. “Hybrid deep learning model for automatic fake news detection,” from a group in Turkey led by Othman A.

Hanshal, was published last February in Applied Nanoscience. The retraction notice reads: The Publisher has retracted this article in agreement with the Editor-in-Chief. The article was submitted to be part of a guest-edited issue. An investigation by the publisher found a number of articles, including this one, with a number of concerns, including but not limited to compromised editorial handling and peer review process, inappropriate or irrelevant references... Based on the investigation’s findings the publisher, in consultation with the Editor-in-Chief therefore no longer has confidence in the results and conclusions of this article.

The authors have not responded to correspondence regarding this retraction.

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