Let’s talk about the Wall of Shame. As a peer-reviewed medical journal, we have a fundamental responsibility to ensure that potentially dangerous medical misinformation is not published. With traditional research integrity methods sometimes falling short, we decided to conduct an experiment by highlighting authors who have committed egregious ethical violations as well as the institutions that enabled them. While we will never abandon this responsibility, we have decided to remove the Wall of Shame tomorrow, May 12th, 2023.

Why, you may be asking? Especially when the Cureus community of authors, readers and reviewers were overwhelmingly supportive? We recognize that this is an ongoing problem, but we have determined that there are better ways of addressing academic fraud and dishonesty than by publicly sharing lists of authors. We wish to recenter the focus on correcting the academic record, as that is the ultimate goal of any correction or retraction. We will continue to vigorously investigate allegations of academic fraud and dishonesty, and we will do so objectively, without levying judgment on authors deemed to have acted unethically.