Weekend reads: Potti trial to begin; fraudster post-doc fired; how to avoid predatory journals

booksThis week at Retraction Watch featured a hotly debated guest post from Leonid Schneider and two ORI findings. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

8 thoughts on “Weekend reads: Potti trial to begin; fraudster post-doc fired; how to avoid predatory journals”

  1. Excellent coverage of the latest developments in the upcoming trial involving Anil Potti, M.D. and Duke University. Paul Goldberg’s article regarding Duke University’s legal strategy in The Cancer Letter is a must-read.

  2. The Cancer Letter describes Duke’s legal strategy as “We Did No Harm,”

    They seem to be abandoning the entire concept of “informed consent”. “Yes, the subjects were lied to about the nature of the therapy for which they volunteered, but no worries because they weren’t actually any worse-off as a result.”

    By extending that rationale, Duke University could apply any experimental therapy without even bothering to inform or consult the patients, as long as it wasn’t expected to make them worse.

  3. We have to watch the Macmillan-Springer deal [1, 2] extremely carefully, because of its sheer scale: “Joint venture will create a leading publishing group with c. EUR 1.5 billion turnover and 13,000 employees”. Springer publishes over 2900 journals and 190,000 books. Post-publication peer review of this collection must be a priority in 2015.

    [1] http://www.springer.com/gp/about-springer/media/press-releases/corporate/holtzbrinck-publishing-group-and-bc-partners-announce-agreement-to-merge-majority-of-macmillan-science-and-education-with-springer-science-business-media/43672
    [2] http://www.springer.com/gp/

    1. Contrast these numbers with those indicated by Elsevier on sciencedirect.com:
      http://www.sciencedirect.com/
      “ScienceDirect is a leading full-text scientific database offering journal articles and book chapters from nearly 2,500 journals and 26,000 books.”

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