Weekend reads: Förster defense crumbling, peer-reviewed journalism, heated rhetoric about replication

Another busy week at Retraction Watch, with Harvard dominating the news about scientific misconduct here and elsewhere. Here’s what else was happening around the web:

• Replication in psychology was once more a subject of discussion, with Harvard professor Dan Gilbert calling the “replication police” bullies and “assholes,” the latter in a tweet that he seems to have deleted. There was more thoughtful commentary at The Guardian and elsewhere.
• There was more on Jens Förster this week. Science reported on emails that throw his defense into question (paywalled), and Neuroskeptic crunched the numbers to figure out if fabrication was likely.
• “I think journalistic organizations from the Financial Times to FiveThirtyEight should be thought of as prospective participants in the peer-review process, meaning both that we provide peer review and that our work is subject to peer review,” says FiveThirtyEight’s founder and editor in chief Nate Silver.
• The Winnower, a new site dedicated to post-publication peer review, has launched. Their Chaff section includes contributions from people whose names Retraction Watch readers will find familiar.
• What motivates peer reviewers? Cash? Recognition? More time?
• “Of course the justices make mistakes. And, of course, they can correct them. They just need to use a process that is more in keeping with the integrity and rigor of the process that produces the opinions in the first instance.” The Supreme Court could be more transparent about the changes they make to rulings, according to a story in The New York Times.
• If a scientific finding sounds absurd, is it? La Nacion takes a look at observational studies (in Spanish).
• The governor of Maine “has suspended payments to a state consultant that was caught plagiarizing from a progressive think tank.”
• A group of scientists, including one Dow Chemical employee, argues that a number of National Cancer Institute reports on formaldehyde should be retracted.
• “There was nothing special about Albert Einstein’s brain.”
• Still, “It is not easy to explain Albert Einstein’s work in the language of Ernest Hemingway,” writes the readers’ editor of The Hindu.
• Is scientific retraction “a synonym for pseudoscience?”
• A former student at the University of Leeds is fighting to complete her PhD after having it her funding revoked.
• U.S. cancer center ads rely more on emotion than evidence, says a new study.
• An Arizona State University professor has been accused of plagiarism for the second time.
• “[J]ournal impact factors should not be used in evaluating research,” says a professor at the University of Kansas.
• Is it ethical to submit a paper with the name of a co-author who can’t be contacted? asks someone at Academia Stack Exchange.
• Nature has launched a journal, Scientific Data, whose “bread and butter articles will be formal descriptions of data sets, called Data Descriptors,” The Scientist reports.
• The Conversation (Australia) has retracted and corrected an item on student fees and debt.