The week at Retraction Watch featured the retraction of 11 papers by a controversial researcher in Italy, and a look at the controversy over lead in the water supply. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- “How Australian scientists are bending the rules to get research funding.”
- “[S]ome current attempts to upgrade or otherwise modify the peer-review system are merely sticking-plaster solutions to [its] fundamental flaws, and therefore are unlikely to resolve them in the long term.” Researchers from Canada, Portugal and Spain suggest ways to fix peer review once and for all.
- “Crazy structure alert!” See Arr Oh and Derek Lowe are puzzled by a new paper.
- “A lot of what’s published is incorrect,” writes Lancet editor Richard Horton.
- Ivan and COPE’s Charon Pierson did a Reddit Ask Us Anything on Wednesday. Check it out.
- Mass media corrections and retractions: NBC changes a story about the kidnapping of its correspondents, and BuzzFeed faces criticism for the removal of some posts.
- First, there were fake papers. Now, the creators of SCIgen have a way to create fake conferences.
- “Is peer review just a crapshoot?” asks a journal editor.
- What happened to the PhDs? Help solve the mystery. Related: Here’s how Nature readers would like to solve the postdoc problem.
- “Lots of people write accurately about science and how we need to stick close to findings,” says Aaron Carroll. “They’re never considered visionaries.”
- The frayed promise of a psychiatry clinical trial: The New York Times looks at the Markingson case.
- Andrew Gelman describes “a silly little error, of the sort I make every day.”
- “Overall, these results suggest that the NIH’s project selection appears generally in line with its purported mission,” write the authors of a study of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act boost grants. “In particular, our results contrast starkly with the frequent criticism that the NIH is extremely risk-averse and unwarrantedly favors experienced investigators.”
- In Toronto on April 27? This looks like a worthwhile event featuring John Ioannidis and former ORI director David Wright. Also available by webcast.
- The former director of the National Library of Medicine reflects on his 31 years there. More here on Donald Lindberg’s retirement.
- “How should journalists cover quacks like Dr. Oz or the Food Babe?” Julia Belluz of Vox asks Ivan and others. “The media should reserve its fire for pseudoscience promoted by public figures and government institutions,” says Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times.
- Related: Belluz profiles Oz, and an, um, interesting group of doctors demand his resignation from Columbia. And to jog your memory, here’s a retraction of a paper that supported a diet he once promoted.
- The bizarre tale of a company that publishes more than 100,000 theses annually as books (German).
- “Mega-Journals and Peer Review: Can Quality and Standards Survive?” asks an American Chemical Society journal editor.
- “A group organized on the internet called attention to serious flaws in the reporting of a study. We then witnessed the self-correcting of science in action.” If only.
- “Citations are not enough,” argue two researchers. “Academic promotion panels must take into account a scholar’s presence in popular media.”
- Surprising finding: Faculty preferred hiring women to men, in an experiment.
- A different way to look at problematic behavior in scientific publishing.
- Eva Amsen reviews Frank van Kolfschooten’s 2012 Ontspoorde Wetenschap (Derailed Science).
- Jeffrey Beall documents more fake peer review.
- In today’s world of preprints, online first, and post-publication peer review, what does it mean to “publish?” asks Karin Wulf.
- What’s it like to publish as a medical student?
- Is science throwing early career researchers into the deep end when it comes to peer review? Sarah Hayes gives her perspective.
- Meet the research press release police: Kirk Englehardt profiles the new Health News Review.
I found this selection of good reads outstanding! Unfortunately I cannot read all of them. I would like to make comments on two of them:
1) Concerning this interesting paper on how to fix peer review, I should comment on what I was taught about peer review when still a student in Brazil. I was told it was always double-blind and that editors search for the best reviewers in the field based on their experience. (which actually was true in many local journals at the time). Took me years to realise quite often it is usually not blind to reviewers, and I still remember how shocked I was when inquired about “potential reviewers” for my paper upon submission. Or when my advisor at the time asked a colleague to review a paper in his place, from authors we knew well. Just the other day I still was uneasy when Nature offered the “new option” of opting for a double-blind peer review. Many of my younger colleagues back in my country still believe a blind, unbiased process is the standard practice.
2) Concerning “Is peer review just a crapshoot?” I find the survey highly biased, considering publishers are directly economically interested in the obtained conclusion that peer review with editors is efficient. There is no control behind the quality of peer review, and it puzzles me why data was so narrow when the publisher could have analysed much more info from other journals. Also why Chinese authors were the only group focused on?