News elsewhere about scientific integrity, publishing, and related issues abounded this week:
- Imperial College London is reviewing its procedures following the death of one of its faculty. David Colquhoun has more details, including the last email the professor sent.
- An analysis of 18 papers “suggests a systematic pattern of excess success among psychology articles in the journal Science.”
- Scientists are concerned that the culture of research — including how they’re assessed — can hinder scientific endeavors. Brian Pauw is one of them.
- “Would you pay $1,000 for the right to criticize bad science in the journal in which it originally appeared? That is what it costs to participate in postpublication peer review at the online Nature Publishing Group (NPG) journal, Translational Psychiatry.”
- “Good science is tough. But is it also harsh and severe? And if so, does it need to be?” Nature takes a look at the plight of postdocs.
- “This is what happens if you buy a scam dissertation.” Nick Wan explains.
- There are “many weaknesses in our current system for ensuring research integrity,” says Heather Coates.
- Does Stem Cell Research Have A Retraction Problem? Ivan’s slides from the World Stem Cell Summit in San Antonio, along with a writeup of the session from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine.
- Former Pope Benedict XVI has apparently retracted the conclusions of a 1972 essay favoring Communion for the divorced and remarried.
- “Journal editors seem to be unwilling to take actions in cases of article duplications,” concludes a recent study.
- Think scholarly publishing is nerve-wracking today? In early modern Rome, it “meant braving the Inquisition.”
- James Watson’s Nobel Prize sold at auction this week for $4.1 million. Before the sale, Adam Rutherford and Laura Helmuth had some choice words.
- “Why would a scientist fiddle their results?” asks a scientist.
- “Ivan Oransky, M.D., HS ’99, isn’t shy about ruffling feathers, and he wants the medical community to share his concerns about the ways in which medical and scientific news reaches scientists and the public.” A profile of Ivan in the Yale medical school alumni magazine.
- “The Zoological Survey of India has decided to withdraw a book on butterflies of Arunachal Pradesh from the market following charges of plagiarism by its author.”
- “I’m the one who screwed up, and I’m sorry. Here’s how this mess happened, and what we’re doing about it.” Annalee Newitz explains what an io9 story got wrong. Kudos.
- Nature is making its archive back to 1869 free to share and read.
- “Inbreeding:” Three-quarters of faculty at universities in Spain were trained where they now teach, according to El País (in Spanish).
- Did the media get it wrong when it said the oceans would be “empty of fish” by 2048?
- Haruko Obokata, co-author of the now-retracted Nature STAP stem cell papers, wrapped up her attempts to reproduce the work on Sunday.
- A Mirror story was based on a withdrawn study published in an OMICS journal, Jeffrey Beall reports.
- Consumers deserve to know who’s funding health research, says Paul Thacker.
- Doctors with ties to the testosterone industry tried to influence a New England Journal of Medicine poll about a case involving the hormone, Ed Silverman reports.
- The bizarre story of the missing University of Texas brains takes yet another twist. (Update: Ivan found them.)
- An in-flight magazine offers cancer treatment centers pay-to-play editorial pages.
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Mike Taylor and Michael Eisen have rebuttals to Nature’s “tiring out reviewers” opinion piece.
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How can editors and reviewers detect data manipulation? asks an author struggling with a figure.
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“Is the Abell Foundation’s president deceiving his board and potential investors?” A fascinating email exchange, from Charles Seife.
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The criminal case against neuroscientist Milena Penkowa may be reopened.
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A publisher called Pubicon? Really?
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“My Great-Great-Aunt Discovered Francium. And It Killed Her.” Terrific, tragic story from Veronique Greenwood.
Some important stries, and flash reactions:
1) Imperial College London. Shame on you. Wasted talent at only 51.
2) Nature Publishing Group. Shame on you for charging 1000$ for a PPPR report. There is no limit to the predatory model of profit by NPG. I propose inclusion on Jeffrey Beall’s lists.
3) RW + PubPeer + scholarlyoa = the modern inquisition (aka public PPPR).
4) Keep your eyes on the Obokata case. Independent of the final outcome, I do have one word for her “Omedetou”. It means congratulations, because she had the courage to complete the task, until the designated deadline, under a terrible state of duress. Show me another scientist anywhere on this planet that had the same courage as her.
5) “Journal editors seem to be unwilling to take actions in cases of article duplications,” Have to agree on that one for the plant scinces, where we are looking at near total denial. An aggressive push for PPPR is essential. 2015 is the year of La Revolucion Cientifica.
6) I wonder how common is the Spanish researcher inbreeding phenomenon in other countries?
7) Butterflies of Arunachal Pradesh by Parmod Kumar: Funny, strangely close resemblance to a case on PubPeer:
https://pubpeer.com/publications/28076B5AAF504B0E3720D9F53BB159#fb17924
Wonder when Springer Science + Business Media and 3-Biotech will take action?
Hilariously Nature had to add a correction to their news story
“Corrected:
The original headline on this article gave an exaggerated impression of the way in which content from Nature journals can now be accessed. As the story makes clear, read-only sharing must be facilitated by a subscriber.”
IMHO if things can be seen on-screen, they can be shared. People will find a way. Maybe taking pictures of the screen using their smartphones.
Really enjoy the ‘weekend reads’. Keep it coming.
I, too.
Highlight on Pubicon: Latin American Journal of Pharmaceutical Science, with its, ehrm, native editorial board: http://www.lajps.org
i know what you meant. i just searched one of the members on google you will be surprised how big they are! it appears that they are also members of other several online journals.
Is there such a thing as a perfect journal, I have started to wonder. I have learnt, over the past 2-3 years, that apparently not. Seeing quite a substantial number of retractions emerging from Nature, PNAS, JBC and other high-IF journals, it has become evident that the only reason why they were “perfect” or near-perfect for so long, was because the errors had not yet been discovered, either because the authors had covered them up or failed to report them, or because the publishers had failed their peer review, and editors had either resisted exposing the truth, or because the peer review simply failed to achieve perfection. It is this latter term, perfection, that I wish to focus on for a second. Does a perfect journal exist? And on RW, that probably means, is there any journal that does not have a single retraction?
I asked myself this question because I continue to experience fierce resistance to PPPR among members of the plant science community. I wish to single out four examples from four different publishers demonstrate that something is either chronically unhealthy, or something is seriously odd.
The first example. Scientia Horticulturae, horticulture’s #1 journal, published by Elsevier. Only 22 errata, and one retraction, in 2013:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304423813003828
i.e., near perfection. I estimate about 4000* papers having been published in total.
The second example. Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture, plant tissue culture’s (sensu stricto) #1 journal, published by Springer Science + Business Media.
Only 8 errata, and one retraction, in 2012:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11240-012-0193-y
i.e., near perfection. I estimate about 3500* papers having been published in total.
The third example. The Journal of Experimental Botany, published by Oxford University Press. Estimated 0 retractions, 77 errata, and in excess of 12,000* published articles. 5-Yr impact factor: 6.019.
The fourth example. Ranked 7/199 in plant sciences by ISI Journal Citation Reports, published by Wiley. Estimated 0 retractions, 40-50 errata/corrections, and in excess of 6500* published articles. Impact factor: 6.815.
* Estimates based on publisher’s search parameters.
I can thus conclude that PPPR is desperately needed, not only related to authors, but also related to editors/publishers. This is based on the hypothesis that there is a strong need to protect their images, and thus prevent the literature from being examined in detail.
Possibly the genetic research is more susceptible to problems with quality control, but I have been told by an organic chemist that you would often find published research that was impossible to reproduce. You would ask around and find that other chemists had the same problem. Then researchers found it easier just to move on, but obviously today some people are going to report it.
A look at pubpeer shows that some journals still believe in stonewalling. There are publications that are obviously flawed but both the authors and editors are reluctant to do anything about them. Maybe each journal has a paradigm shift where after they are forced to deal with the first few reports they are much more likely to review further reports.
JATdS, I do not think that counting retractions is the measure for “perfection” here. I think the way how peer-review, communications with readers and authors, and in general: how in case of mistakes/errors/misconduct the truth is told or not (and how quick) does tell about the quality of a journal! By the way, some of the society owned journals are in my impression rather good in that way. Think of physics journals like the Physical Review (APS) or J Appl Phys (AIP) which I think are quite good.
So sorry to read about bureaucratic non-scientists masquerading as scientists at Imperial College.
Veronique Greenwood wrote a fabulous essay about the life of her great-great-aunt, with sensible familiar background. This erudite article does very clearly raise the question of Marie Curie’s and co-workers actual goals. Was the lack of safety the price to pay for personal achievements?
Difficult to answer (Veronique Greenwood doesn’t), because it’s difficult to imagine the atmosphere in the “Institut du Radium” at that time. For example, how can we possibly believe today that they drank hot tea at 5 pm… in laboratory glassware ??!!!
There is also a less circulated photography of the team, where Marguerite Perey appears. The photo was taken during the Christmas party, in 1933, six months before Marie Curie’s death:
http://www.calames.abes.fr/plus/num/Calames-2014730177403341794#1
(if the URL don’t work with IE, please use other browser. Chrome is fine. It’s a low quality photo, unfortunately).
Marguerite Perey is seated, second from left. Sonia Cotelle, fourth from left. Apparently, they do not seem to be affected too much by radiations!