Highlights at Retraction Watch this week included a case of overly honest referencing and the story of how a medical resident flagged up a pseudoscientific study. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- “The publishing world is moving faster and faster,” says Kent Anderson, publisher at AAAS/Science, “and the ledger doesn’t usually seem net positive.”
- “A systematic literature review of blank pages in academic publishing.” More on this critical issue from Glen Wright.
- Scientists who refuse to admit error “may be enjoying the lucha, but they’re missing out on the quiet satisfactions of science,” says Andrew Gelman.
- Meta: “Misleading Headlines” is running headline on an an interesting paper about the effects of misleading headlines.
- “[H]aving a Nature paper is not a prerequisite for getting a faculty position,” Lenny Teytelman concludes.
- What should the Cochrane Collaboration do next? Ben Goldacre has some ideas.
- “Why it’s crucial to get more women into science,” from National Geographic.
- “ESA can land their robot on a comet,” says Alice Bell. “But they still can’t see misogyny under their noses.” The Rosetta scientist who wore a shirt covered with half-naked women during a press conference has apologized.
- More women are publishing original ophthalmology studies, but not editorials.
- “What does it take to get your grant targeted by Congress?” Jeffrey Mervis tries to answer.
- Why not name a publisher after Pyrex?
- Older papers are increasingly remembered and cited, reports John Bohannon. More from Phil Davis.
- Badges: The way to tell who did what in a paper?
- The French government will pay Elsevier 172 million Euros over five years for access to journals.
- What science writers and scientists can do in response to threats and harassment.
- A service designed to help researchers find the right journal fit for their work.
- An investor site follows up on a story we covered involving a company whose work is based on research by a scientist in Italy facing charges of research fraud.
- Self-study? “I have spent my life studying how people make mistakes,” says the co-author of Jonah Lehrer’s next book.
- Is this the “best correction since forever,” courtesy of Breitbart?
- The correction in this 1996 Slate piece has disappeared, along with the corrected text, according to writer Alex Beam.
- A business professor will be scanning theses by 1,000 senior politicians in Germany to look for plagiarism.
- “Six Italian earthquake advisors, charged with manslaughter for not sounding the alarm on a 2009 temblor, had their convictions overturned.”
- Can post-publication peer review endure? asks Times Higher Education.
- Medical science has a data problem, says Newsweek. And who’s sharing data globally?
- Some microbiome studies may be wrong because of contamination, says Ed Yong.
- What is a science blog? asks Paige Brown Jarreau.
“Pyrex Journal of Biomedical Research” contradicts its own title in the journal scope section:
“The primary criteria during the review and selection process of the submitted papers are; sound theoretical basis, valid empirical application and analysis, and contribution to the fields of agriculture [SIC!]. The primary criteria in the final selection of the papers once the review process is complete are quality, originality, and relevance to the international agricultural fields.”
http://www.pyrexjournals.org/pjbr/index.php
Great stories. A few reactions of my own:
a) Glen (Always) Wright, (Special) FX Coudert, P (Aston) Martin Bentley, Graham (Stainless) Steel, N Sylvain (Red) Deville, the authorship of the “A systematic literature review of blank pages in academic publishing” can only be accessed by Twitter account. I wonder if this could be a new trend in science publishing: access by Twitter and Facebook accounts? Fortunately, that PDF was open access. However, that cheeky piece indicates a darker reality, the fact that publisher may be making money off PDF files of retracted papers and off blank papers. I am not sure of the accuracy of the claims by that “paper” or by Glen Wright because when one enters “This page is intentionally left blank” as the keywords into Elsevier’s http://www.sciencedirect.com search engine, there are no hits. This suggests that Elsevier may have cleaned up such cases, invalidatng thus the story (at least with respect to Elsevier). A similar search on SpringerLink reveals 1030 hits, but impossible to discern which are valid from which are not. However, if you add the word “retraction” into SpringerLink, the very first and possibly many of the 48,292 hits, indicates that access to “something” costs $39.95 / €34.95 / £29.95 *:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11427-008-0042-8
If true, that seems to be counter to the open access for retractions principle by COPE, of which Springer is a paying member.
b) The fact that the French government will pay Elsevier 172 million Euros over five years for access to journals is scary and is one more reason why the content of Elsevier journals needs to be even more closely examined by post-publication peer review. This contrasts to the recent boycott by Dutch Universities who are trying to force Elsevier to make all content open access. Maybe the French Government could politely tell that it will pay Elsevier 172 million euros if they make all content open access?
c) NOtice how Elsevier has expanded its repertoire of “retraction” types to four:
“•Article Withdrawal: Only used for Articles in Press which represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been accidentally submitted twice. Occasionally, but less frequently, the articles may represent infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like.
•Article Retraction: Infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like. Occasionally a retraction will be used to correct errors in submission or publication.
•Article Removal: Legal limitations upon the publisher, copyright holder or author(s).
•Article Replacement: Identification of false or inaccurate data that, if acted upon, would pose a serious health risk.”
http://www.elsevier.com/about/publishing-guidelines/policies/article-withdrawal
d) In response to the THE piece “Can post-publication peer review endure?”, PPPR will not only endure, it will grow.
I’m rather surprised that anyone would run such a wordy slug to fill out a signature; a running head of “Notes” was sufficient for U.S. postal regulations last I checked.
Plagiarism scandal in German medicine widens:
https://plus.google.com/101046916407340625977/posts/RX8XVGMP7eA
@Rolf, Wageningen University (The Netherlands, http://www.wur.nl ) has digitalised all PhD theses and has added all of them to http://library.wur.nl/WebQuery/wda?dissertatie/nummer=* (some of the new theses still have an embargo, all others can be downloaded for free).
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Wageningen University even made a press release when they digitalized the last thesis ( http://www.wageningenur.nl/nl/show/Alle-Wageningse-proefschriften-gedigitaliseerd.htm , in Dutch).
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It is hard for me to imagine that all paper versions of a PhD thesis of a Dutch politician would be ‘lost’, as seems the case for some PhD theses of German politicians.
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http://edepot.wur.nl/205640 is just an example of a PhD thesis of a former member of the Dutch goverment (1983, Cees Veerman). This thesis can be found within a few seconds.