Weekend reads: Subscription journals doomed?; Are scientists most often wrong?; “Buxom grapefruits”

The week at Retraction Watch featured an update on a Harvard lab whose PI is subject to a restraining order by one of his grad students, and the retraction of a paper that used male-only pronouns. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

• “Sci-Hub’s cache of pirated papers is so big, subscription journals are doomed,” suggests Daniel Himmelstein. (Lindsay McKenzie, Science)
• “The attitude that scientists are always right should be changed; they are most often wrong!” (International Urogynecology Journal)
• “Breaking ice with buxom grapefruits:” A new predatory journal sting, this one hosted by Dorothy Bishop.
• “Journals are going to do what they’re going to do, and it’s pretty clear they’re doing it for their own interests,” our co-founder Ivan Oransky tells Creaky Joints in a conversation about retractions and embargoes. “I wish that weren’t the case.”
• The president and CEO of the French National Research Agency (ANR) resigned last week “following months of controversy over how the agency handles grant proposal evaluations.” (Elisabeth Pain, Science)
• “The journals I have been publishing in are not familiar to some of the members of recruitment panels I’ve met with.” Farah Ishtiaq on “how age and success are linked in acquiring faculty positions in India.” (Naturejobs)
• “The University of Oxford’s academic reputation is being exploited by Ukrainian businessmen selling millions of pounds worth of fake awards and honours,” according to the Times (UK).
• “Hypatia may be the subject of fewer critical tweets and blog posts, but controversy at the feminist philosophy journal, which stirred outrage in April after it published an article that linked transracialism to transgender people, has hardly abated.” (Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez, The Chronicle of Higher Education)
• Metrology – “the science of measurement: practitioners develop internationally agreed reference points so that measures” – can help make science more reproducible, researchers say in Nature.
• “Publishers should care less about publishing flashy stories and more about disseminating solid science. Individual scientists should emphasize excellence and rigour over stockpiling more and more papers and grants.” Stop running science like a business, says Michele Pagano. (Nature)
• Marc Edwards, whose work we’ve highlighted, shared the new Disobedience Award for his work exposing misconduct that led to contaminated drinking water in Flint, Michigan. (MIT)
• A controversial new book about the last days of former South African President Nelson Mandela has been withdrawn by the publisher. (BBC)
• The U.S. FDA will not “object to an IRB’s waiving or altering the informed consent requirements for an FDA-regulated clinical investigation that presents no more than minimal risk and involves adequate human subjects protections.” (Ropes & Gray)
• The emphasis on novelty in science should “be replaced by a renewed emphasis on predictive power as a characteristic of good science,” writes Barak Cohen. (eLife)
• The U.S. Office of Research Integrity has released a checklist designed to help institutions determine whether their procedures for responding to allegations of research misconduct comply with regulations.
• The “Wellcome Trust has changed its policy on the sharing and management of research outputs to include original software, reagents and cell lines.” (Rebecca Hill, The Register)
• “[F]or the majority of researchers, the role of publishing is not so much to ensure the widest possible dissemination of their findings at the lowest cost, but to build up their standing and their professional portfolio.” (Marc Couture, University Affairs)
• Science needs an IMDb for authors to promote the idea of “data authorship­­,” write two researchers in the New England Journal of Medicine.
• “Can we trust research in science and medicine?” asks Brian Earp in a series of videos.
• Everything clinical trialists need to know about journalology, in one online course. (Our co-founder Ivan Oransky was interviewed for the course, from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, but we do not receive any revenue from the fees.)
• “At a meeting in Amsterdam in late June, representatives of funding agencies commiserated and explored new ways to reduce application pressure and ‘reviewer fatigue,’ while safeguarding or improving the quality of reviews.” (Jop de Vrieze, Science)
• “Ömer Günal, the dean of the faculty, replied that Mercanmade use of the theory of evolution “too much” and they would “have trouble in a period like this” if they publish his paper.” (soL International)
• “I think my colleagues at COPE would agree with me that the state of publication ethics is somewhat of a moving target.” Geraldine Pearson, Co-Chair of the Committee On Publication Ethics, discusses her experiences and the organization’s role in tackling research and publication misconduct. (Mimi Nguyen, SAGE Connection)
• A stem cell researcher who threatened a bioethicist with a lawsuit if he didn’t retract a paper speaks. (Paul Knoepfler, The Niche blog) Here’s the original Ars Technica story about the suit, by Beth Mole.
• Some journals charge to publish while others don’t, so should authors pay to publish their work? (Milton Packer, MedPage Today)
• The Association of Research Integrity Officers aims to support research integrity officers at institutions, including by hosting a conference — though it will be closed to outsiders. (The Office of Research Integrity blog)
• “The commitments made by companies to transparency of trials were highly variable. Other than journal submission for all trials within 12 months, all elements of best practice were met by at least one company, showing that these commitments are realistic targets.” (The BMJ)
• For one megateam of scientists concerned about reproducibility, a p-value cutoff of 0.05 isn’t strict enough.They want to make it even lower. (Kelly Servick, Science)
• After black mold was found in medicine intended for patients, a top NIH scientist’s complaints preceded rollbacks on restrictions placed on his lab. (Joe Williams, Roll Call)
• “If you are allowed to dream, what do you see as the article of the future?” Journal editors and directors weigh in. (Lenny Teytelman, protocols.io)
• “I find the episode amusing because it allows us to calculate just how far behind the time surgeons are,” Richard Smith, a member of our parent non-profit’s board of directors, writes of a recent retraction because of the use of male-only pronouns. “The answer is 30 years. I say this because the BMJ introduced a policy of non-sexist or inclusive language in 1987.”
• “A less obvious detail about this study is the care we’ve taken to make our results reproducible.” Archaeologists explain. (Jacobs and Marwick, Slate)
• One way to fix the reproducibility crisis is give young scientists better training in handling large datasets, says Erin Becker, associate director of Data Carpentry. (Inside Higher Ed)
• An independent reanalysis of a landmark trial wasn’t so independent after all — it was performed by the original authors. (Peter Doshi, The BMJ)
• “Furthermore, to question peer review as a researcher is in some ways to put one’s reputation on the line: ‘is s/he only attacking peer review because his/her work isn’t good enough?’ is the type of question that others might ask.” (Martin Eve, Times Higher Education)
• Dietician Elizabeth Fourie is one of many researchers who attended the 11th Obesity and Endocrinology Congress — and she says the whole conference was a sham. (Timna Jacks, The Age)

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