Edit: He HAS LOST his job for the scale of this retraction.

[NNadir]

Last edited Fri Jul 10, 2026, 11:04 AM - Edit history (1)

Edit: I made a serious error in the original post. The first author is Khaled Axel Djebbari, not Dr. Li. He, not she, is responsible for the direct fraud; however she should have supervised him better to catch what he was doing.

I have modified my comments in this post to correct this error.

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.