[1] The blog was launched in August 2010[2] and is produced by science writers Ivan Oransky (Former Vice President, Editorial Medscape)[3] and Adam Marcus (editor of Gastroenterology & Endoscopy News).

[6] Oransky described an example of a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that reported a potential role for a drug against some types of breast cancers.

[7] Oransky and Marcus claim that retractions also provide a window into the self-correcting nature of science, can provide insight into cases of scientific fraud, and can "be the source of great stories that say a lot about how science is conducted".

[11] In 2023, in the wake of the resignation of Stanford University president Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Oransky and Marcus co-authored op-eds in Scientific American[12] and The Guardian.

They also assessed that, despite recent scandals involving research misconduct, the academic community was not interested in exposing wrongdoing and scientific errors.

This method is based on the argument that fraudulent publishers recycle identical papers to create a fictitious archive for a hijacked journal.