More than 200 papers on ways to prevent brain injury after a stroke contain problematic images, according to an analysis published in PLOS Biology. As Retraction Watch reported last year, René Aquarius and Kim Wever, of the Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands, first noticed these patterns in 2023 when they started working on a systematic review of animal studies in the field.

Of the 608 studies they analyzed, more than 240, or 40 percent, contained problematic images. So far, 19 of those articles have been retracted and 55 corrected. Almost 90 percent of the problematic papers had a corresponding author based in China, and many appeared in major journals such as Stroke, Brain Research and Molecular Neurobiology.

In total, their analysis found 37 of these papers in research fields other than early brain injury. Overall, 133 of the 608 articles contained an image that also appeared in another publication, a pattern typical of paper mills or image reuse among an author group.

Source https://retractionwatch.com/2025/10/30/widespread-image-reuse-manipulation-uncovered-in-animal-studies-of-brain-injury/

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