The week at Retraction Watch featured the story behind a Nature retraction, and the retraction of a paper by a pioneer in the field of exosome research. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- Nobel Prize winner Tim Hunt has resigned from an honorary professorship at University College London, after making sexist comments at the World Conference of Science Journalists. (Ivan was one of the witnesses.) The incident also gave rise to a Twitter hashtag, #distractinglysexy.
- The editor of a special issue of an MDPI journal says the publisher is trying to deceive people.
- How much does irreproducible research cost the U.S. each year? $28 billion, says a new analysis.
- Five journals are looking into charges that a climate skeptic “failed to disclose financial ties to the fossil fuel industry in papers published by the journals since 2008,” the Climate Investigations Center reports (via PLOS).
- The fallout from the Michael LaCour Science retraction continues: He’s deleted his Twitter account. We argue in The Verge that the way the case unfolded shows how scientific self-correction is changing. Social science is not a giant liberal conspiracy, argues Jesse Singal, and Congress shouldn’t cut funding to it, says John Sides. See more in a roundup by Tabitha Powledge.
- Two groups of researchers trying to improve on a popular cognitive screening test “have been asked to remove those tests from their websites by the company that manages copyright,” Kristina Fiore reports.
- “Do physicists need empirical evidence to confirm their theories?” ask Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser.
- Drawing on a study of citations to studies posted on Academia.edu, Michael White makes suggestions on how to change publishing.
- “Scientific retractions and fraud explored:” Ivan appears with Nature editor-in-chief Philip Campbell on The Guardian‘s science podcast.
- A book by sociologist Alice Goffman on life in inner city Philadelphia is drawing a lot of scrutiny.
- The publisher of a tell-all book about socialites living in New York City’s elite Upper East Side will be adding a disclaimer to all future editions following a New York Post story showing inconsistencies in the work.
- “Human experiments: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:” A series in The Conversation takes a look at the history of human experimentation.
- “The perverse academic promotion and incentive system that views high-profile journals as the pinnacle of success corrupt us by rewarding those who cut corners, or worse, cheat for a shot at glory,” says Joseph Ting.
- How are clinical researchers adapting trials in today’s age? Kate Yandell explores.
- When it comes to critiques, “you need to consider each comment thoughtfully and try to imagine where it is coming from and what the person is really saying to you,” says DrugMonkey. “Assume that they are acting in good faith instead of reflexively jumping behind paranoid suspicions that they are just out to get you for nefarious purposes.”
- A high school student headed for Brown plagiarized her valedictory address from Chipotle.
- What makes a good abstract? Wiley’s Vikki Renwick offers tips.
- “Retraction of scientific papers for fraud or bias is just the tip of the iceberg,” says Ian Roberts.
- “To make the most of the current data deluge, we must reward interdisciplinary researchers who identify and apply the most appropriate analysis methods,” argues Vicki Chandler.
- Sally Rockey, the head of extramural research at the NIH also known for her blog, is resigning to lead an agricultural nonprofit.
- Tim Pomeroy explains “Why everything we know about nutrition is wrong.”
Comment on the Pomeroy’s blog – anyone who has put the time into reviewing the nutrition science literature knows the limitations of short term dietary recall data. The problem is not the quality of the recall but the duration. The “true” average consumption of calories or nutrients may require weeks or months of recall data. Basiotis et al (1987) (http://jn.nutrition.org/content/117/9/1638.full.pdf – free access from publisher) suggests the minimum number of days needed to arrive at an acceptable average for calories (3 days), calcium (7 to 10 days), vitamin A (39 to 44 days) and other nutrients. Their references include a paper from the 1950’s so this is not a recent discovery. According to Google Scholar, Basiotis et al is cited in 461 articles.
The main use for the NHAMES dietary recall data is to get a sense of the food preferences of the US national population. It is used by US nutritional programs such as WIC, the school lunch program and SNAP. In working with the data, I learned that the typical kid, regardless of race or ethnicity, really likes french fires. Research has long argued that more days of recall are needed to get good estimates of typical food consumption. The barrier to get more days is the cost. The time needed to conduct the dietary recall survey can be 30 to 60 minutes per person per day. To maintain the quality of the survey, it is conducted by a registered dietician.
The Basiotis et al paper and similar papers are not discussed in the paper (Archer et al (2015)) mentioned in the blog. I am really surprised that the Archer et al article missed these papers. By focusing on only one paper, Pomeroy has contributed to the problem.
darn autospell, it is french fries and not french fires.
I think Pomeroy’s comments are geared more at associations between diet and disease, not just indices of caloric intake or estimating micronutrient status.
We should have some difficult conversations with journals and their editors. Part of their overhead costs involve editors and various items related to referring articles to experts and reviewers for input and quality control. They are paid large sums of money to cover those costs and their profits seem to be pretty high especially at the big name journals. Maybe it’s time to start grading the journals on how well they’re doing their job and renegotiating their fees. If they want to balk at that then how about all university ORI offices clear each research effort for integrity, validity type issues and then the university sends the manuscript off to another university for review and the reviewing university can serve as reviewers and if they endorse it they can simply put it on their website and charge a small fee to download it and let it grow from there. If the university athletic conferences can create their own networks (like the SEC Network for example) then I’m sure universities can get together and create their own publishing networks.
Tim Hunt:
Let’s use scientific approach instead: ask Hunt’s female employees for opinion, not his wife or heads of ERC, EMBO, Sainsbury Lab and other senior peers. Let us simply collect data evidence from the most appropriate source: those who Hunt was actually talking about.
I haven’t seen anyone take this outlandish option so far: ask all the “girls” (who cry when criticized or try to seduce poor Tim Hunt) about their work experience.
At PubPeer, a small summary and update on the Naohito Aoki, Tsukasa Matsuda and Alex Ullrich papers:
https://pubpeer.com/publications/78342E41345E00D803E8C637F35328#fb31988
On the editorial front, significant developments have been taking place in the past week at the Archives of Biological Sciences:
http://retractionwatch.com/2014/07/07/serbian-journal-lands-in-hot-water-after-challenge-on-24-hour-peer-review-that-cost-1785-euros/#comments
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jun/15/scientist-tim-hunt-should-be-reinstated-after-girls-row-says-boris-johnson?CMP=share_btn_fb
Let him speak for himself.