The week at Retraction Watch featured a study suggesting that 2% of studies in eight medical journals contained suspect data, and the announcement of a retraction on a professor’s blog. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- Two companies whose stocks plummeted after a Nature Methods study claimed CRISPR introduced unexpected mutations want the study retracted because of alleged errors. (Antonio Regalado, Technology Review)
- “A policy with a couple of weak sticks and no carrots.” In STAT, our co-founders weigh in on a new data sharing policy from a group of journal editors.
- We can’t trust scientific journals to tell the truth, says Julian Kirchherr. (The Guardian)
- Political co-authorships “corrupt the integrity of the research process,” says a new review. (Clinical Anatomy, sub req’d)
- Reuters has retracted an article about a transgender politician in the UK, but didn’t say why.
- Coercive citations: “How much is the h-index of an editor of a well-ranked journal improved due to citations which occur after his/her appointment?” A new study tries to find out. (Publications)
- What’s the strangest way you’ve decided authorship order? Glen Wright has a few. (Times Higher Education)
- “How can you help fight the file drawer problem?” asks Christopher Chartier. “Eliminate your file drawer!”
- “After a careful review of sourcing and editorial procedures, U.S. Army WTF Moments is retracting a series of reports centered on the 3-10 Infantry Brigade Combat Team, headquartered at Fort Polk, La, and has accepted the resignation of editor Mike Trysom.” (U.S. Army WTF Moments)
- A new tool “checks that the data sets underlying published studies are made freely available.” (Dalmeet Singh Chawla, Nature)
- “Do ResearchGate Scores create ghost academic reputations?” asks a new paper. (Scientometrics)
- “Are we witnessing the beginnings of true revolution in scientific publishing?” Notes from the Society for Scholarly Publishing meeting. (The Scholarly Kitchen)
- “Can it really be true that 50% of research is unpublished?” ask Paul Glasziou and Iain Chalmers. (BMJ Blogs)
- A newspaper has retracted 11 articles by an intern fired for making up quotes. (Sydney Smith, iMediaEthics)
- “The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is dropping a controversial, 1-month-old plan to cap the amount of support an individual scientist can receive in order to spread funds to more investigators.” (Jocelyn Kaiser, Science)
- A new study “suggests that citation counts, and the rewards that have come to be associated with them, may be more stochastic than previously appreciated.” (PLOS ONE)
- Why are claims of record-keeping errors keeping millions of dollars in research into communication disorders at the NIH in limbo? Lenny Bernstein tries to find out. (Washington Post)
- Can we get the Journal Impact Factor genie back in the box? wonders Sandra Schmid. (Sheryl Denker, PLOS Blogs)
- Nick Brown explores John Carlisle’s article on problematic data in clinical trials that we covered Monday.
- The latest issue of Lingua, whose board decamped to publish a journal elsewhere last year, “seems indicative of a serious decline in quality in my view,” writes Martin Paul Eve.
- “It’s time for universities to crack down on fake science publishers and the academics who use them, legal experts say.” (Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen)
- “China’s domestic institutions are fully capable of embracing an approach that values quality rather than quantity.” (China.org.cn)
- Third time’s a charm? A paper referred to as a “pile of dung” has been accepted yet again. (Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen)
- “A University of Tennessee journalism professor is being accused of plagiarism in a report a Republican-leaning advocacy group paid him $115,000 to author.” (Jamie Satterfield, Knoxville News-Sentinel)
- What’s the threshold for excessive self-citation by a journal? Phil Davis tries to figure it out, using reverse engineering. (The Scholarly Kitchen)
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