real shit

The authors reused at least one image from an earlier paper in the International Journal for Biological Macromolecules (Elsevier) which itself appears to have fabricated data and plagiarized images (that article was retracted in Aug 2025).

pubpeer.com/publications...

"Post-publication, concerns were raised around the authenticity of the FTIR graph in figure 2b and SEM image in Figure 3c. Furthermore, during revision, two new authors were added to the revised paper without explanation..."

"Nobody ever told me I shouldn't put my unfinished novel in the filing cabinet next to the fire place"

while it is worthwhile to complain about OpenAI's lack of transparency in data use, this piece is not about that. it's this guy admitting to taking absolutely no precautions for file management and blaming it on ChatGPT when that inevitably bites him. embarrassing!

Hi, Kate! Check out the Collection of Open Science Integrity Guides (COSIG) at cosig.net (also on bsky at @cosig.net). I think you'll find a lot of useful material therein!