It’s been another busy week at Retraction Watch, mostly because of the unfolding Jens Förster story. Here’s what was happening elsewhere on the web:
- This week, On The Media is replaying a 2013 episode featuring Retraction Watch. Listen on your local NPR station, or here.
- The Journal of Cell Science‘s Mole — not known for his love of anonymous whistleblowing — urges scientists to “relax” their “concern, bordered on hysteria,” over replication.
- In the days before news of yet another potential scandal in social psychology broke, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology announced new guidelines for submissions. Excerpts include “Authors are encouraged to describe exploratory work honestly” and “Bad methods do not argue for the strength of results.”
- And Pacific Standard did a deep dive into problems plaguing the field in “The Reformation: Can Social Scientists Save Themselves?” The piece quotes Ivan and says that Retraction Watch is “undertaking the Sisyphean task of digging good science out from under the avalanche of error in papers that pour forth at the rate of more than one million a year.”
- A paper’s analysis is so bad that Lior Pachter wishes the study was behind a paywall.
- Does blogging about science put your grant applications at risk?
- Rising retraction rates may be a signal of integrity, not the other way around, says Daniele Fanelli. (subscription required)
- The pocket guide to bullshit prevention, courtesy of Michelle Nijhuis.
- Neuroskeptic says the Lewandowsky et. al. conspiracy ideation-climate skeptic paper in Frontiers never should have been retracted.
- And a group calling itself Friends of Science says another of Lewandowsky’s papers should be retracted.
- Phil Davis has suggestions for how to improve the Impact Factor.
- Do sexual abuse of children and research misconduct have something in common? asks Richard Smith.
- The head of the committee investigating the STAP stem cell studies has resigned, because of “anonymous allegations that at least one of his own papers contained problematic data,” Nature reports.
- There’s a lot of untapped value in the scientific literature, says the vice president of research at Qiagen.
- Is using pseudonyms to criticize other people’s work a new form of misconduct? (subscription required)
- “Research press releases need better policing,” argues Margaret McCartney.
- “We need to stop fetishising journal articles as the ultimate marker of a scientist’s value,” Adam tells Victoria Parsons at Medium.
- A bit meta, but interesting: PeerJ asks PeerJ author David Solomon why he published a paper there about authors who publish in mega-journals such as PeerJ.
- A journal published by a company on Jeffrey Beall’s list of possible predatory publishers refuses to post a letter criticizing one of its studies.
- “From fraudsters to fudgers: Research integrity is on trial.”
- Maybe Retraction Watch is staffed by “retraction agents.”
- At PLOS Opens, Catriona MacCallum reviews the recent release of some data that reveal the true costs of publishing.
The last link (to PLOS Opens) is broken.
Fixed, thanks.
That “Friends of Science” thing is hilarious. Their argument at the end boils down to a demand to retract a paper because it supposedly humiliates certain people, which they claim violates free speech. One would think that freedom of speech actually _includes_ being allowed to say things even if it humiliates others!
Well, “Friends of Science” is an amusing name for the entity described in some detail at SourceWatch.
One key person is Tim Ball, for example.
Weenkend “silly” read #1
http://i.imgur.com/0I8pOV2.png
Weenkend “silly” read #2
http://i.imgur.com/ziPUUtn.png
Weenkend “silly” read #3
http://i.imgur.com/Y49TmvG.png
The mole would have us all pat the fraudsters on the back and nominate them for more awards.
By the mole’s reasoning, we should all be enjoying Piltdown man discussions in our archeological text books.
Throw away your collected data, sayeth the mole. No need to keep scientific evidence laying around, just in case some pesky bitter anonymous “scientist” might care to actually do some science with it. Not to worry if your results are not reproducible . . . whyyyy they still might turn out to be really really good one day! I look forward to further discussion about this chaotic world of the mole, where irreproducible results yield such important advances.
How on earth is science “self correcting” if not for serious practitioners pointing out shoddy presentations by cheaters? How is it “revenge” to point out shoddy science?
And what does it say about our culture that the cheaters “have careers that allow them to mix with the society that the bitter ones found themselves excluded from”?
Does the mole mingle with such society? Methinks the mole doth protest too much.
RIKEN to Check 20,000 Papers for Doctored Images and Plagiarism (ScienceInsider)
http://news.sciencemag.org/asiapacific/2014/05/riken-check-20000-papers-doctored-images-and-plagiarism
“RIKEN President Ryoji Noyori has asked all laboratory and research group leaders to check all of their previous publications for doctored images and plagiarism.” That’s like asking the fox to guard the henhouse. An independent committee needs to be established. MEXT should finance this and should then expand this to all state-financed universities. All members of the independent committee should be suitably qualified, should also include an international panel, and should remain anonymous, to avoid conflicts of interest.
Mole:
How ironic is it that someone castigating anonymous whistleblowers publishes under an anonymous pseudonym???