She should lose her job for the scale of this retraction.

[NNadir]

Retraction of “Release of Fluoro-Contained Free Radicals and Polyfluorinated-Like Molecules from Photoaged Fluorinated Microplastics: Identification and Formation Mechanisms” Khaled Axel Djebbari, Leslie M. Shor, and Baikun Li Environmental Science & Technology 2026 60 (22), 16341-16341

Everything, I do mean everything in the text of the full paper was fraudulent:

The Authors voluntarily retract this article (DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5c08970) following a request from the Research Integrity Office at the University of Connecticut and as previously requested by the corresponding and senior co-author on March 4, 2026. The article and Supporting Information contain images and results which, by admission of the first author, were independently fully or partially plagiarized, fabricated, and/or falsified solely by the first author through the use of Artificial Intelligence and other means. Specifically, Figure S20 in Supporting Information was plagiarized from Figure 3 in Waria et al. (2009). 10.2134/jeq2008.0361. In addition, the following are fabricated and/or falsified through combination of human manipulation and AI generation: EPR spectroscopic data; most of computational results including ReaxFF molecular dynamics simulations, mass spectrometry and DFT calculations. As such, the article is being retracted.

Wow.

[mwmisses4289]

1. Isn't the first author male?

Don't really know how authorship of scientific articles work.
Trying to figure out what exactly the article was supposed to be about- the release of free radicals from a particular type of microplastic that was more toxic than other forms of microplastics?
Sounds worse than the "study" that started the whole idiotic "vaccines-cause-autism-don't-vaccinate-your-child" hysteria nonsense.

[NNadir]

3. The first author is Professor Baikun Li (identified by an asterisk in the citation).

Professor Baikun Li.

The discovery of the fraud originated in the University of Connecticut's Research Integrity office, probably after a tip, possibly from one of the authors she plagiarized, or even a co-author.

It's a very serious matter.

[mwmisses4289]

4. Thank for the explanation.

[highplainsdem]

2. Generative AI often seems to bring out the worst in a lot of AI users. It's great for fraud.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Oh, she just misunderstood the meaning of "U Conn".

Seriously, this is hard to believe. Experiments might be hard to reproduce, but DFT calculations could be checked by researchers everywhere. How long did she expect this to evade detection ?

Who am I kidding ? Having read "Betrayers of the Truth*", I'm no longer shocked to hear of scientific fraud in scientific publication. My former (late) thesis advisor had an entire article plagiarized, and published as a review article under another author's name -- with almost no changes in the text.




*It's hard to imagine how much revision would be needed to update this book for the era of the Internet and Fake Intelligence (FI).

[multigraincracker]

6. Love science. Self correcting over time.

That’s what makes it better than religion.