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In some areas of social science, around half of studies can’t be replicated. A new test-fast, fail-fast initiative aims to show what research is hot — and what’s not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ERROR project offers researchers a bounty for spotting mistakes in published papers — a strategy borrowed from the software industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do you get your creative juices flowing after spending hours, days or months looking at a blank screen? Researchers share their advice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Campaigners who want scrutiny of biometrics research on Uyghurs, Tibetans and other groups are frustrated by slow progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A crop of referee reports from the Royal Society’s archive reveal discussions about cutting printing costs, reviewer holidays and even editing images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence could help speedily summarize research. But it comes with risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some researchers publish a new paper every five days, on average. Data trackers suspect not all their manuscripts were produced through honest labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ranga Dias will have a second paper revoked. A journal’s investigation found apparent data fabrication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies involving hundreds, even thousands, of scientists are on the rise, but how do such large groups coordinate their work? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Publishers are deploying AI-based tools to detect suspicious images, but generative AI threatens their efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population isolates such as those in Finland benefit genetic research because deleterious alleles are often concentrated on a small number of low-frequency variants (0.1% ≤ minor allele frequency < 5%). These variants survived the founding bottleneck rather than being distributed over a large number of ultrarare variants. Although this effect is well established in Mendelian genetics, its value in common disease genetics is less explored1,2. FinnGen aims to study the genome and national health register data of 500,000 Finnish individuals. Given the relatively high median age of participants (63 years) and the substantial fraction of hospital-based recruitment, FinnGen is enriched for disease end points. Here we analyse data from 224,737 participants from FinnGen and study 15 diseases that have previously been investigated in large genome-wide association studies (GWASs). We also include meta-analyses of biobank data from Estonia and the United Kingdom. We identified 30 new associations, primarily low-frequency variants, enriched in the Finnish population. A GWAS of 1,932 diseases also identified 2,733 genome-wide significant associations (893 phenome-wide significant (PWS), P < 2.6 × 10–11) at 2,496 (771 PWS) independent loci with 807 (247 PWS) end points. Among these, fine-mapping implicated 148 (73 PWS) coding variants associated with 83 (42 PWS) end points. Moreover, 91 (47 PWS) had an allele frequency of <5% in non-Finnish European individuals, of which 62 (32 PWS) were enriched by more than twofold in Finland. These findings demonstrate the power of bottlenecked populations to find entry points into the biology of common diseases through low-frequency, high impact variants.Genome-wide association studies of individuals from an isolated population (data from the Finnish biobank study FinnGen) and consequent meta-analyses facilitate the identification of previously unknown coding variant associations for both rare and common diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The confidential 124-page report from the University of Rochester, disclosed in a lawsuit, details the extent of Ranga Dias’s scientific misconduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities must declare all their retractions and launch investigations into misconduct cases; a Nature analysis reveals that since 2021 there have been more than 17,000 retractions with Chinese co-authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By joining a collecting society, researchers can ensure they are paid when copyrighted book content and papers are reproduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A world of AI-assisted writing and reviewing might transform the nature of the scientific paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generative-AI technologies can create convincing scientific data with ease — publishers and integrity specialists fear a torrent of faked science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The large language model does everything from reading the literature to writing and reviewing its own papers, but it has limited applicability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ways in which researchers can artificially inflate their reference counts are growing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a huge collaborative effort, millions of cells in the mouse brain have been mapped in detail. Two scientists examine the resulting wealth of insights into gene regulation in brain cells, neuronal connections and how our own brains evolved.Transcriptomic and epigenomic data from millions of mouse brain cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ohio State University investigations identified misconduct by two scientists in lab of high-profile cancer researcher Carlo Croce. The university has cleared Croce of misconduct, but disciplined him over management problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A retracted paper highlights chemistry’s history of trying to avoid the expensive, toxic — but necessary — catalyst. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reanalysis of landmark paper finds that eight genome sequences were mistakenly assigned to the wrong orangutans. The impacts on research are as-yet unclear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of millions of papers shows that farflung collaborators produce fewer foundational discoveries than groups working together in person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developers want to free scientists to focus on discovery and innovation by helping them to draw connections from a massive body of literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A few publishers are using automated software to catch flaws in submitted papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Letter to the Editor [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faced with a deluge of papers, journal editors are struggling to find willing peer reviewers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Covalent bonds share electron pairs between two atoms and make up the skeletons of most organic compounds in single, double and triple bonds. In contrast, examples of one-electron bonds remain scarce, most probably due to their intrinsic weakness1–4. Although several pioneering studies have reported one-electron bonds between heteroatoms, direct evidence for one-electron bonds between carbon atoms remains elusive. Here we report the isolation of a compound with a one-electron σ-bond between carbon atoms by means of the one-electron oxidation of a hydrocarbon with an elongated C–C single bond5,6. The presence of the C•C one-electron σ-bond (2.921(3) Å at 100 K) was confirmed experimentally by single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis and Raman spectroscopy, and theoretically by density functional theory calculations. The results of this paper unequivocally demonstrate the existence of a C•C one-electron σ-bond, which was postulated nearly a century ago7, and can thus be expected to pave the way for further development in different areas of chemistry by probing the boundary between bonded and non-bonded states.The one-electron oxidation of a hydrocarbon with an elongated C–C single bond provides direct evidence for a one-electron σ-bond between carbon atoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2004, physicists reported something remarkable: they had isolated ultrathin films of carbon atoms using sticky tape alone, and found that the films had astounding properties. The finding would forever change condensed-matter physics.Two decades of 2D materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Too often, journal assessments of potentially unreliable research are superficial, opaque and prolonged. Changes to the guidance given by the Committee on Publication Ethics could tighten up the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

James Hamlin found problems with the work of controversial physicist Ranga Dias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The massive buried structures at Gunung Padang in Indonesia would be much older than Egypt’s great pyramids — if they’re even human constructions at all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large language model creates synopses of papers aimed at various reading levels to help scientists sift through the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An unprecedented number of crystallography database entries are undergoing extra checks amid fears that they are based on fabricated data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study of review reports identifies dozens of adjectives that could indicate text written with the help of chatbots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large language models are transforming scientific writing and publishing. But the productivity boost that these tools bring could have a downside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific evidence regularly guides policy decisions1, with behavioural science increasingly part of this process2. In April 2020, an influential paper3 proposed 19 policy recommendations (‘claims’) detailing how evidence from behavioural science could contribute to efforts to reduce impacts and end the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we assess 747 pandemic-related research articles that empirically investigated those claims. We report the scale of evidence and whether evidence supports them to indicate applicability for policymaking. Two independent teams, involving 72 reviewers, found evidence for 18 of 19 claims, with both teams finding evidence supporting 16 (89%) of those 18 claims. The strongest evidence supported claims that anticipated culture, polarization and misinformation would be associated with policy effectiveness. Claims suggesting trusted leaders and positive social norms increased adherence to behavioural interventions also had strong empirical support, as did appealing to social consensus or bipartisan agreement. Targeted language in messaging yielded mixed effects and there were no effects for highlighting individual benefits or protecting others. No available evidence existed to assess any distinct differences in effects between using the terms ‘physical distancing’ and ‘social distancing’. Analysis of 463 papers containing data showed generally large samples; 418 involved human participants with a mean of 16,848 (median of 1,699). That statistical power underscored improved suitability of behavioural science research for informing policy decisions. Furthermore, by implementing a standardized approach to evidence selection and synthesis, we amplify broader implications for advancing scientific evidence in policy formulation and prioritization.Evaluation of evidence generated to test 19 proposed policy recommendations and guidance for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientists worry that ill-informed use of artificial intelligence is driving a deluge of unreliable or useless research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study suggesting papers and patents that change the course of science are becoming less dominant is prompting soul-searching — and lively debate about why, and what to do about it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chain reactions, characterized by initiation, propagation and termination, are stochastic at microscopic scales and underlie vital chemical (for example, combustion engines), nuclear and biotechnological (for example, polymerase chain reaction) applications1–5. At macroscopic scales, chain reactions are deterministic and limited to applications for entertainment and art such as falling dominoes and Rube Goldberg machines. On the other hand, the microfluidic lab-on-a-chip (also called a micro-total analysis system)6,7 was visualized as an integrated chip, akin to microelectronic integrated circuits, yet in practice remains dependent on cumbersome peripherals, connections and a computer for automation8–11. Capillary microfluidics integrate energy supply and flow control onto a single chip by using capillary phenomena, but programmability remains rudimentary with at most a handful (eight) operations possible12–19. Here we introduce the microfluidic chain reaction (MCR) as the conditional, structurally programmed propagation of capillary flow events. Monolithic chips integrating a MCR are three-dimensionally printed, and powered by the free energy of a paper pump, autonomously execute liquid handling algorithms step-by-step. With MCR, we automated (1) the sequential release of 300 aliquots across chained, interconnected chips, (2) a protocol for severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) antibodies detection in saliva and (3) a thrombin generation assay by continuous subsampling and analysis of coagulation-activated plasma with parallel operations including timers, iterative cycles of synchronous flow and stop-flow operations. MCRs are untethered from and unencumbered by peripherals, encode programs structurally in situ and can form a frugal, versatile, bona fide lab-on-a-chip with wide-ranging applications in liquid handling and point-of-care diagnostics.Microfluidic chain reactions encode programs structurally in situ, and can form a frugal, versatile, bona fide lab-on-a-chip with wide-ranging applications in liquid handling and point-of-care diagnostics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The controversy over online misinformation and social media has opened a gap between public discourse and scientific research. Public intellectuals and journalists frequently make sweeping claims about the effects of exposure to false content online that are inconsistent with much of the current empirical evidence. Here we identify three common misperceptions: that average exposure to problematic content is high, that algorithms are largely responsible for this exposure and that social media is a primary cause of broader social problems such as polarization. In our review of behavioural science research on online misinformation, we document a pattern of low exposure to false and inflammatory content that is concentrated among a narrow fringe with strong motivations to seek out such information. In response, we recommend holding platforms accountable for facilitating exposure to false and extreme content in the tails of the distribution, where consumption is highest and the risk of real-world harm is greatest. We also call for increased platform transparency, including collaborations with outside researchers, to better evaluate the effects of online misinformation and the most effective responses to it. Taking these steps is especially important outside the USA and Western Europe, where research and data are scant and harms may be more severe.This Perspective identifies common misperceptions regarding the harms of online misinformation, finding that exposure to false and inflammatory content is rare and concentrated among a small minority of people who already have extreme views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The eighteenth-century American patriot developed a host of measures to foil criminals trying to pass fake paper notes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nature analysis suggests that Russia is increasing partnerships with China and India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chatbots and other tools are increasingly being considered, but people power is still seen as a safer option. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Letter to the Editor [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Nature survey finds that scientists are concerned, as well as excited, by the increasing use of artificial-intelligence tools in research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]