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The week at Retraction Watch featured a new entry on our leaderboard; a third retraction for a prominent Cornell psychology researcher; and a former postdoc banned from Federal funding after lying about the extent of his misconduct. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- “More science than you think is retracted. Even more should be.” In The Washington Post, our co-founders explain how every retraction tells a story. “At least half of the time, that story involves misconduct or fraud.”
- When do acknowledgements tend to contain “explicit words of gratefulness?” The answers — including gender — may surprise you. Here’s a new preprint. (PsyArXiv)
- Temple University has settled, for $5.5 million, “class action lawsuits from students who were outraged to learn that the business school’s top ranking for its online program was based on false data.” (Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed)
- “Most experts will not have published in predatory journals. But it is still worth the time to explore the question, especially about pivotal articles on which the experts are relying − whether the expert is your adversary’s or your own.” What attorneys should know about predatory journals. (Bill Childs, Drug & Device Law)
- The deputy editor of The Indian Express is facing allegations that he plagiarized in a 2017 book. (Ayush Tiwari, NewsLaundry.com)
- “The disclosure statement (page 1747) has been updated to include disclosures for Drs. Howard A. Burris, Carlos L. Arteaga, and Denise Yardley.” (NEJM) The correction follows reporting by ProPublica and The New York Times.
- “These data were provided by unimpeachable authorities. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (among the premier institutions for cancer research in the world) and ATCC (the most highly respected repository for cell lines and reagents) disagree with the authors’ assumptions about the specificity of the origin of the cell lines.” A retraction notice in DNA And Cell Biology appeals to authority.
- “The issue of plagiarism has only recently become a priority in Kosovo, with many factors hindering advancement and development in this area.” (International Journal for Educational Integrity)
- “There is a long history of fraud in every sphere of human activity, and science is no exception.” (Int J Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism)
- “[A] reflexive defense to criticism – even when coming from outsiders who have agendas – risks undermining our ability to correct science as there may be truth in what critics say.” (Hindawi blog)
- “To conclude, plagiarism is not well-known to North African [university health doctors] UHDs.” (Accountability in Research, sub req’d)
- “Jenkins congratulates the team on correcting the literature and says he’s not sure how they missed it.” (Tien Nguyen, C&EN)
- “Compared to the USA, India has a much lower share of female first authors but smaller variations in gender differences between broad fields.” (Journal of Informetrics)
- “The Retraction Watch Database has launched. Here’s what you need to know.” Our Ivan Oransky talks to Gary Allen of AHRECS.
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