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Months after an academic librarian deleted lists of “predatory” journals and publishers from his blog, a website with derogatory comments about his academic qualifications and mental health remains online. A communications librarian at the University of Colorado at Denver, for years maintained lists of scholarly journals and publishers he deemed “predatory. The lists, while controversial, were a resource for many scholars wondering if the invitation to publish a paper or present at a conference sitting in their inbox was legitimate.

Universities in the United States should close down their Confucius Institutes – teaching and research centres funded directly by the Chinese government – says a report by the National Association of Scholars or NAS. The wide-ranging report includes additional insights on the institutes’ often-secretive operations gleaned from the contracts signed with a dozen US universities, obtained through freedom of information law requests. The report, Outsourced to China: Confucius Institutes and soft power in American higher education, says unless contracts between US universities and the Hanban can be renegotiated to include more transparency, financial and hiring autonomy for US host universities, academic freedom guarantees and other safeguards, the institutes should be shut down.

One of the most prolific scientists in an emerging area of cancer research involving what is sometimes called the “dark matter” of the human genome has parlayed his decades-long pursuit of cancer remedies into a research empire: He has received more than $86 million in federal grants as a principal investigator and, by his own count, more than 60 awards. However, over the last several years a tide of allegations have been made concerning data falsification and other scientific misconduct. Concerns about falsified data in the scientific literature run far deeper as cases of fraud can reverberate through whole fields of research.