Another busy week at Retraction Watch, which kicked off with an introduction to our first-ever intern. This coming week, Ivan will be in Zwettl, Lower Austria, speaking at the Vienna Biocenter PhD retreat, and in London, speaking at the UK Conference of Science Journalists. Here’s what’s been happening elsewhere:
- Two competing reports on Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), one of which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, have “pitted Saudi Arabia’s former deputy minister of health, Ziad Memish, against infectious diseases specialist Tariq Madani of King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, who recently became the Saudi government’s chief scientific adviser on MERS,” according to Science.
- Here’s why scientists should be willing to criticize others’ work in public. Smart post by Bob Finn.
- “Often very capable researchers make foolish mistakes, so we should all be alert to our own susceptibility.” A quote from “Beyond the fringe: when science moves from innovative to nonsense.”
- “That’s not science,” writes Brian Switek of studies proposing that our skulls evolved to take punches. “That’s storytelling.”
- A new publication ethics organization has been launched in China, and other news from the June issue of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Digest.
- The dismissal of a lawsuit against Facebook for not retracting anti-Israel posts has been affirmed.
- There’s now a song to sing while you fudge your data.
- Retraction Watch en Español: La Nacion’s Nora Bar takes a look at the growth in errors and retractions.
- Cassava researchers fold under industry pressure: SciDev.net picks up a story we covered last month.
- The June issue of the Office of Research Integrity’s newsletter focuses on mentoring, and includes a piece by Donald Kornfeld.
- How predictive and productive is animal research? ask Gary Schwitzer and Fiona Godlee.
- “Physics envy: Do ‘hard’ sciences hold the solution to the replication crisis in psychology?” asks Chris Chambers.
- Spend money earlier in life, says a new paywalled paper that gives readers a way to spend $35.95.
- The University of Alaska, Fairbanks, has been fined for the death of 12 muskoxen.
- Chris Hedges: Pulitzer Prize winner, lefty hero…plagiarist?
The link to the Bob Finn article is broken.
Fixed, thanks.
Simon Silver’s paper (“Beyond the fringe: when science moves from innovative to nonsense.”) is very justifiably critical of two journals loved by science writers.