Another busy week at Retraction Watch. Here’s what was going on around the web in scientific publishing and related issues:
- “The part of our paper that I [Conley] regret is our crazy biological interpretation. I don’t know what I was thinking or why reviewers didn’t spank me on that…” A wonderfully honest quote from a researcher who studies political attitudes.
- The “stripey nanoparticles” controversy made it into the news pages of Science last week. Neuroskeptic takes on claims by the author of the criticized work that he’s being cyberbullied.
- Reproducibility was a major topic in the news this week following a Nature commentary by the NIH’s Francis Collins and Lawrence Tabak discussing the funding agency’s efforts in the area. A political scientist suggests researchers can learn from Jane Austen and literary critics. And Tammy Powledge has a roundup.
- The publisher of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery has acquired Pre-score, “a new journal metric product that seeks to help readers identify journals that conduct ethical, rigorous peer review, and to quantify peer-review approaches upon publication of individual articles.”
- There’s “no universal agreement as to what extent text must be paraphrased to avoid the stigma of plagiarism:” A Kansas professor “addresses the issues of plagiarism, misrepresentation, and related topics in scientific writing in the hope it will assist authors as they assess and improve their writing skills.”
- “Either Yale students are filthy, or something’s wrong with the data.” Psychology researcher Dan Simons praises scientists who performed painstaking replication studies, and says that John Bargh, the author of the original study they were trying to replicate, should withdraw it “until it can be verified so that it doesn’t mislead the field.”
- A look at the world’s shortest science papers.
- Who are the best writers of scientific papers, asks Derek Lowe?
- “[T]his could really, really, really be the beginning of the end – a true catastrophe.” Nature Genetics might publish a non-genome wide association study (GWAS)?
- Doing the right thing: Scientific American notes that the study a 2011 story was based on has been retracted.
- “We face being buried under an avalanche of Chinese science,” argues a professor of nanomedicine.
- Researchers are defending a Japanese study of Alzheimer’s that has come under fire, Science reports.
- The HHMI Bump: Papers by authors about to become HHMI Investigators see 12% more citations, says a new analysis.
- A group of scientists and others have begin a petition to have the retracted Seralini GMO-rats paper reinstated. The site that hosts the survey is edited by GMOWatch’s Claire Robinson.
- Plagiarism isn’t limited to scientific papers. Check out these faked pictures of fetuses in the womb.
RW readers may also be interested to hear about this: Benjamin Hayempour, whose two retracted papers have both been featured on RW and who threatened to sue RW, has now issued a DMCA takedown notice against a blogger (and RW reader) ‘Andrew Oh Willeke’ and forced the deletion of a post critical of Hayempour:
Read about the legal chill here: http://washparkprophet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/benjamin-hayempour-attempts-improper.html
Google cache saves the freedom of the press:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:C8VCa8RauvkJ:washparkprophet.blogspot.com/2013/12/graduate-student-benjamin-hayempour.html+&cd=1&hl=de&ct=clnk
CORRECTION: I stated that “Benjamin Hayempour… has now issued a DMCA takedown notice”. In fact it is not known who is responsible for the notice, but Andrew Oh Willeke writes that it was “no doubt filed by Hayempour or someone acting on his behalf.”
I’m afraid that Benjamin Hayempour is walking on shifting sands.
Has anyone notified the NIH or the authors of the plagiarised articles yet? It would be interesting to see what would happen if the original authors were to file DMCA takedown notices of his “papers” on PubMed. Also, the NIH should probably be made aware…
For futher enjoyment/consumption, some videos of expert BJH lecturing on various topics… http://www.askimo.com/pages/PlayVideo.aspx?vid=4340
The answer to the question: “What is a brain tumor” is enjoyable.
Note that that video now gives the “Expert” as Ayden Jacob, his new name. But the interviewer introduces him as Benjamin Jacob Hayempour.
There’s an even more interesting angle to this. If the DMCA takedown was emitted in the knowledge that it was false, that is an offence. The blogger can probably sue whoever sent the takedown notice, since a proper takedown notice must target a copyright infringement (yet nothing was copied) and come from the copyright holder (or agent). Who owns the copyright in plagiarised work? The original journal in most cases. Probably not the plagiarising author… And that’s before one considers fair use.
https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2004/10/15
That is very interesting boog! I wonder if Andrew Oh Willeke is aware of that. He certainly should be. That would be a great twist. Is nskeptic in touch with him?
I am aware of that fact, although the practicalities of pursuing that possibility are unclear at this time. I will probably wait a couple of weeks and see if the DMCA complainant files a lawsuit or allows the post to be reinstated before I take any other action.
FWIW, the DCMA takedown ultimately lapsed and the post has been restored.
Regarding the shortest science papers, I note the two-words editorial recently published in “Evolutionary Anthropology” is behind a paywall… Fortunately, there is a 100% overlap between keywords and that editorial.
The no-word paper (available free of charge!) is brilliant, because it makes sense and has an actual scientific content.
#nature genetics #nongwas
PLoS one is “seriously considering” to publish a scientific relevant paper
(However the authors must still pay for it)
Perhaps a little pre-emptive, but what will it cost to use “Pre-Score”? I am cautious (and so should you) about these new models and metrics that lack transparency from the word go: “We are preparing to announce partnerships with several organizations within the scholarly publishing industry.” And “The preSCORE Advisory Panel is comprised of diverse individuals with decades of experience in the scholarly publishing industry. An official announcement with bios of each Advisory Panel member will be posted shortly.” Speed is of the essence to gain trust. And if this is a paid service, who is benefitting? Iremain suspicious as there are few truly altruistic services nowadays.
Re: shortest science papers:
Shortest paper on the unsuccessful treatment of writer’s block is an exhilarating lecture, and, I imagine, one of the early cases of open review! (Referee’s comments were published in the footnote.)
It is worth adding that the findings of this study were successfully (oh, irony!) replicated in a multi-site cross-cultural study published only recently (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2078566/).
Isn’t this a case of plagiarism?
Yes, but the important point is that the consequences of this plagiarism are huge: once you consider that the Upper’s paper (1974) may be plagiarized, then you must admit that any published article plagiarizes the Upper’s article, including all articles not yet published.
This is similar to the fundamental property of the empty set (the set for which cardinality is zero) in axiomatic set theory: because two sets are equal if they have the same element(s), there can be only one set having no elements. The empty set is thus unique, and is a subset of all sets of any kind and of any cardinality. For more accurate details, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_of_empty_set
Now, the union of a set A with the empty set is A. In other words, the next article you will publish contains the Upper’s article… Do you want to retract the full post-1974 scientific literature, which massively plagiarized the Upper’s article without proper citation?
That’s a toughie. But taking into account that the original study is cited, and also that this clearly isn’t the case of unattributed use of text or data, I would venture a guess that the answer is no…