This week at Retraction Watch featured 43 papers retracted at once for fake peer reviews. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- Monsanto wants a WHO report linking their weed killer to cancer retracted.
- A pilot project by Nature Publishing Group’s Scientific Reports to offer fast-track peer review for a fee has sparked the resignation of one of the journal’s editorial advisory board members. A number of journals already offer the service, however.
- 41% of those who responded to a survey in China say there’s no reason to report research misconduct.
- A year after former ORI director David Wright resigned in a sharp letter, the job remains unfilled. Applications opened again this week for the post, which pays up to $240,000.
- “The five biases pushing women out of STEM.”
- Three tips for understanding science journalism, from Anna Leigh Clark.
- The New York Times Magazine turns Ivan’s tweet about Carl Zimmer’s genome into a cartoon.
- “Is science broken? The reproducibility crisis.” A discussion at the University College, London.
- “This is why you shouldn’t believe that exciting new medical study,” writes Julia Belluz.
- Here’s “how to make scientific research more trustworthy.”
- Donald Kornfeld describes steps the NIH can take to prevent research misconduct.
- Mauricio Tuffani reveals that Brazilian graduate programs use 201 journals from predatory publishers in their rankings. Tuffani has more on the inner workings of Brazilian academia here and here.
- An author is unhappy that U.S. researchers are getting credit for something first discovered by Europeans.
- A physicist is defying a U.S. government order that he redact nuclear secrets from his memoir.
- On May 7, the Humboldt Foundation will announce its decision on the future of a suspended professorship it awarded to Jens Förster. More on the Förster case here.
- Leonid Schneider’s background on the Olivier Voinnet case has been translated into English.
- Fazlul Sarkar case update: PubPeer filed a stay this week to avoid releasing anonymous commenter information, and the court date to discuss the terms of that release was cancelled.
- The UCSF Faculty Association is not happy that the Manhattan Institute is co-sponsoring a symposium.
- How can the article review and submission process be improved? asks the Scholarly Kitchen.
- How should colleagues handle plagiarism allegations? A case exercise from the ORI.
- This is the BEST trial! And a look at acronyms in clinical trials from 2006, by Ivan.
- “Have research ethics committees got it wrong?” asks Tim Spector.
- “One weird trick to get a research grant.”
- Debora Weber-Wulff has updates on some VroniPlag Wiki cases.
- “Presidents of universities and research institutions should uphold the scientific integrity of their researchers, including those in affiliated state agencies, and ensure that they are not subjected to pressure from political, economic, or other interests in the conduct and reporting of their science,” writes Marcia McNutt, editor-in-chief of Science.
Given the crisis in traditional peer review, the permeability of online submission systems and the wider-than-expected existence of fake peer reviews, it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate a valid study from a so-called “predatory” journal and one from a “reputed” journal. In many instances, I personally see no difference in the handling of manuscripts, anonymous peer review and opaque editorial policies between many journals in both “groups”. The fact that such a high population of Chinese scientists feel no reason to report research misconduct, and the fact that so much research is being rewarded in Brazil based on publications in potentially non-academic journals should be the alarm bell that was (should have been?) sounded 2-5 years ago, when the BRICS members fortified, when the Beall blog emerged, and when main-stream STM publishers started to create their own OA fleets of journals to counter the flow of scientists away from their traditional journals to so-called “predatory” OA journals. The fact that we see fallibility in the systems of mainstream publishers – fortified by retractions and increasing cases reported at PubPeer and PubMed Commons – breeds uncertainty among scientists about the security of their papers and engenders mistrust in what was once perceived to be fail-safe. This crisis in science is turning out to be an opportune moment for some to take advantage, and others to reap unexpected benefits.
Why the public has lost it’s faith in science, one only need to look at the record, first eggs are bad for you now they are good, first fat is bad for you, now its good, first we have a food pyramid now we have a food plate, vaccines are bad for your children, now they are good the list is long and never ending, all anybody has to do is read Retraction Watch. The disinformation and conflicting research is epic. We live in the 15 minutes of fame era and the need to publish or perish is tragic, publishers only print sensational works that are newsworthy, and almost dare otherwise honest researchers to fudge the data (by not requiring the original data), whether discarding more outliers or cutting and pasting slides. Where 80% of the studies are not reproducible in the basic medical field (would you own a car that would only work 1 in 5 times, when you tried to start it) this number is probably much worse in the fields of business, economics, psychology, sociology, accounting, etc. How many business change practices based on the research and the resulting books, got burned because of flaws in the research. I personally would rather read the research papers that don’t get published, that would really advance science etc..
http://ajp.amjpathol.org/article/S0002-9440(14)00657-9/fulltext
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/13/the-truth-wears-off?currentPage=1
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0020124
Reviewers who only have time to do a scan of the work presented to them or doing “pal” review forgetting that they have a legal obligation to bring objections to the editors. Reviewer turn a blind eye to a fellow researcher who they suspect are committing fraud/fudging, or they are reviewers/co-editor of journals and have been coauthors with people submitting papers to be reviewed. Even the FDA is not a reliable watch dog.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/reporting-research-misconduct/
All of you need to look at the most recent case in the supreme court of Salinas vs Texas, as to why this borders on criminal conduct. (your silence/failure to deny/object can be used as an admissions of guilt), and that was not the first case, it was just the last.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-246_7l48.pdf
Science today is filled with fraud and group think.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0005738
When a federal agency with a 6 billion dollar budget (NOAA), must adjust, ACTUAL temperature readings to support an agenda something is terribly wrong with “science”. The last graph from their own website (the difference between raw temperatures and final data sets), shows they are adjusting from almost 0 in the 1900’s to almost .6 degrees in 2010. This means they are getting WORSE at collecting real data, and when they must backfill/infill almost 50% of the data points, the results are meaningless (would you like to be on trial in court, if 50% of the evidence against you was based on guess work, (I don’t care how “educated” your guess is). As a disclosure my brother in law works for a wind farm company.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html#QUAL
When other well respected scientist offer doubt about the effect of CO2 on global warming, they are threatened with investigation (by a sitting member of congress no less, which is really ironic that a congressman is questioning the ethics of anyone) and job loss, something is wrong in the scientific/academic community that doesn’t speak out (if you agree or not). If you question funding of a project, just take a look at your own department and what business/organizations sponsors a “chair” or look at your universities trust fund and who has contributed to it and what strings were attached to the contribution.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/02/statement-by-dr-willie-soon/
Retraction Watch recently linked to a blogger promoting the global warming theory, who challenged an accepted “peer reviewed” scientific paper.
http://retractionwatch.com/2015/01/24/weekend-reads-potti-trial-begin-fraudster-post-doc-fired-avoid-predatory-journals/
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/peer-reviewing-climate-denial
Calling for person of differing views to be criminally charge, that s not science.
https://theconversation.com/is-misinformation-about-the-climate-criminally-negligent-23111
And climate change is just one area of dispute, vaccines, health, antibiotics the list could go on. Does anyone remember plate tectonics, geocentric, blood letting? Advances are made because of the free exchange of ideas and the willingness to be the “Tenth man”
I had a business law professor who told us, after the Marinda warning ruling in the 60’s, “Be careful what right you want people to violate, because the same people WILL go after one you like or need”.
“When a federal agency with a 6 billion dollar budget (NOAA), must adjust, ACTUAL temperature readings to support an agenda something is terribly wrong with “science”.”
This is nonsense, Scott. They are not adjusting readings to support an agenda, but because they know adjustments need to be made because of a variety of changes in the reporting stations, from moving stations to an altered time-of-observation. If you do not correct for those issues, you are doing it wrong.
It is like measuring temperatures in the rectum or ear, then switching to oral measurements, and not taking into account the known temperature difference between the two. Suddenly that significant fever isn’t all that bad anymore, but for some inexplicable reason the patient does not feel all that much better.
Marco I did not want to get into a debate about global warming. I understand the need for TOBS. However I don’t believe they should be adjusting modern readings that have the latest technology, but that is for another post, and I probably should have left out the words “support an agenda”. Poor choice of wording on my part and I apologize. I confess that my climate change skills consists of two meteorology classes in college in the early 70’s.
My point was that science is not based on consensus, and what is a fact today may not be a fact tomorrow, that is true in a court of law as well. To call for punishment of skeptics is wrong on so many levels, and is not science, I could have picked several other topics to show the same group think and suppression of ideas. Some in the science and publishing industry have to do a better job of not scaring the public and sensationalizing the research. When 81% of the people want food containing DNA, labeled that it contains DNA, something is wrong with the presentation/education, (anything we put in our mouth has DNA, even if it is only bacteria in the water) (page 4)
http://agecon.okstate.edu/faculty/publications/4975.pdf
Although I do not have much interest in a discussion on climate change either, the way I understand the temperature record is that there is no adjustment of the actual temperature readings. There is an adjustment of the anomalies, and then it does not matter whether the past anomaly is moved down or the modern anomaly is moved up (or rather a combination of both). It thus does not mean we have gotten worse at measuring temperatures.
I agree that we should be better in educating the general public. It is rather shocking to see that so many Americans want food with DNA labelled. That’s even (much) worse than the number who do not believe in evolution.
As far as I recall, one argument for OA was specifically that BRICS countries will benefit by avoiding massive subscription costs. But now money talks. OA and peer review follow. If money can buy faster (better?) peer review, then how again are BRICS countries going to compete against Harvard?
JATDS and John Doe,
Yesterday, in a friendly private message, a full professor asked me for my report on predatory journals accepted by the database Qualis, of the Brazilian federal agency CAPES. He asked me specifically why I have included in this list the “Journal of Clinical & Experimental Cardiology” (OMICS).
He is now speechless since I showed him what the journal advertises on its own website: “21 day rapid review process with international peer-review standards” (http://omicsonline.org/submitmanuscript-clinical-experimental-cardiology-open-access.php).
The fee charged (APC) is $ 2700 USD (http://omicsonline.org/instructionsforauthors-clinical-experimental-cardiology-open-access.php)
“Faster peer review” and “potentially non-academic journals” seem often large-hearted assessments.
Mauricio, well, a YouTube video of an OMICS paper/journal, particularly the background music, may convince some that it’s maybe worthwhile to pay these astronomic APCs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3UDYczK4MI
But supportive of your stance on the Beall blog:
http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/07/10/is-omics-publishing-group-sneakily-trying-to-buy-its-way-into-pubmed/feed/
My own recent disagreements with OMICS saw the withdrawal of 9 editors, including the editor in chief, from the editor board of Journal of Plant Biochemistry & Physiology:
http://esciencecentral.org/journals/editorinchief-plant-biochemistry-physiology-open-access.php
http://esciencecentral.org/journals/editorialboard-plant-biochemistry-physiology-open-access.php
Of course, any plant scientist, whether from Brazil or anywhere else, would not be able to assess this fact and reality just by looking at the OMICS web-site.
“A pilot project by Nature Publishing Group’s Scientific Reports to offer fast-track peer review for a fee has sparked the resignation of one of the journal’s editorial advisory board members. A number of journals already offer the service, however.”
I have been a peer reviewer for Scientific Reports (this news makes me less likely to do that in the future). When you agree to it, the time frame is one week, and they pester you by email for the review after that.
So it seems like in many cases they could collect the expedited review charge ($750) without doing anything extra. What are they going to do differently to justify the $750?
How can giving the fortunate , those who can afford to pay that exuberant charge, an unfair advantage over other authors be justifiable? This makes me sick. It is now very clear that money is the motive for all decisions.
Prof Margaret Buckingham, Pasteur Institute, Paris, France
Co-author of questioned paper at PubPeer:
https://pubpeer.com/publications/18845762
Guest editor of special issue on “Regenerative and Restorative Biology” in Turkish Journal of Biology:
http://journals.tubitak.gov.tr/biology/index.php
Question: should authors whose work being questioned at PubPeer, or in public, and who have not responded, or corrected the literature, serve as editors, guest editors, or even on editor boards of so-called academic journals?
I see this as a possible conflicting message to academia.
How can giving the fortunate , those who can afford to pay that exuberant charge, an unfair advantage over other authors be justifiable?
One sentence from a peer report I just received:
“English correction is absolutely necessary, authors use poorly language. Manuscript requires careful revision in formal aspect.” How does one go about dealing with this?
I have seen an action that concerns me deeply. The creation of profiles, by the publishers, for authors. In total, this has happened about half a dozen times, but how wide is the phenomenon? This has happened twice this last week, for different publishers, but the one I received today was from a Elsevier journal. I think it’s wrong, for the following reasons:
a) No invitation is made, formally, by the journal or publisher, to request us personally if we wish an account to be created in our name, or not.
b) An account is created, without our explicit permission, and then we are invited to review a paper, using robotized/automated systems.
c) I already have an account with this journal. Now the publisher has created one more.
I don’t know about other scientists, but I find this fundamentally wrong. It then brings into question: what else could be created, hypothetically, without our permission?
Identifying information, passwords and links that could identify me have all been redacted.
Case 1 (Elsevier) April 1, 2015
“Dear [redacted],
You have received this system-generated message because you have been registered by an Editor for the Elsevier Editorial System (EES) – the online submission and peer review tracking system for Biotechnology Reports.
Here is your temporary username and confidential password, which you will need for accessing EES the first time at http://ees.elsevier.com/btre/
Your username is: [redacted]
Your password is: [redacted]
The first time you log into this new account, you will be guided through the process of creating a consolidated ‘parent’ profile to which you can link all your EES accounts.
If you have already created a consolidated profile, please use the temporary username and password above to log into this site. You will then be guided through an easy process to add this new account to your existing consolidated profile.
Once you have logged in, you can always view or change your password and other personal information by selecting the “change details” option on the menu bar at the top of the page. Here you can also opt-out for marketing e-mails, in case you do not wish to receive news, promotions and special offers about our products and services.
TECHNICAL TIPS:
1) Please ensure that your e-mail server allows receipt of e-mails from the domain “elsevier.com”, otherwise you may not receive vital e-mails.
2) We would strongly advise that you download the latest version of Acrobat Reader, which is available free at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
3) For first-time users of Elsevier Editorial System, detailed instructions and tutorials for Authors and for Reviewers are available at: http://help.elsevier.com/app/answers/list/p/7923
Kind regards,
Elsevier Editorial System
Biotechnology Reports
For further assistance, please visit our customer support site at http://help.elsevier.com/app/answers/list/p/7923. Here you can search for solutions on a range of topics, find answers to frequently asked questions and learn more about EES via interactive tutorials. You will also find our 24/7 support contact details should you need any further assistance from one of our customer support representatives.”
Case 2 (Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências, Scielo)
“26-Mar-2015
Dear [redacted]:
Welcome to the Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências, the official Journal of the Academia Brasileira de Ciências (Brazilian Academy of Sciences), published since 1929. We use the ScholarOne Manuscripts site for online manuscript submission and review. Your name has been added to our reviewer database in the hopes that you will be available to review manuscripts for the Journal which fall within your area of expertise.
Your USER ID for your account is as follows:
SITE URL: https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/aabc-scielo
USER ID: [redacted]
PASSWORD: To set your password please click the link below. Clicking the link will take you directly to the option for setting your permanent password.
https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/aabc-scielo? [redacted]
When you log in for the first time, you will be asked to complete your full postal address, telephone, and fax number. You will also be asked to select a number of keywords describing your particular area(s) of expertise.
Thank you for your participation.
Sincerely,
Admin AABC
Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências Editorial Office”
PS. I wish to issue an erratum about point c). In fact, I do not have an account with this Elsevier journal. I had confused the title with two Springer journals with similar titles, for which I do have an account. Still, the fact that an account was set up with separate username and password is of great concern because, from about 1-2 years back, Elsevier started to consolidate author profiles under one username and password. So, why this journal was also not consolidated into the list of several dozen Elsevier journals to which I have an EES account is bizarre.
One more Elsevier-created profile by Elsevier, just came in on April 3, 2015.
“Dear Dr. [redacted],
You have received this system-generated message because you have been registered by an Editor for the Elsevier Editorial System (EES) – the online submission and peer review tracking system for Gene.
Here is your temporary username and confidential password, which you will need for accessing EES the first time at http://ees.elsevier.com/gene/
Your username is: [redacted]
Your password is: [redacted]
The first time you log into this new account, you will be guided through the process of creating a consolidated ‘parent’ profile to which you can link all your EES accounts.
If you have already created a consolidated profile, please use the temporary username and password above to log into this site. You will then be guided through an easy process to add this new account to your existing consolidated profile.
Once you have logged in, you can always view or change your password and other personal information by selecting the “change details” option on the menu bar at the top of the page. Here you can also opt-out for marketing e-mails, in case you do not wish to receive news, promotions and special offers about our products and services.
TECHNICAL TIPS:
1) Please ensure that your e-mail server allows receipt of e-mails from the domain “elsevier.com”, otherwise you may not receive vital e-mails.
2) We would strongly advise that you download the latest version of Acrobat Reader, which is available free at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
3) For first-time users of Elsevier Editorial System, detailed instructions and tutorials for Authors and for Reviewers are available at: http://help.elsevier.com/app/answers/list/p/7923
Kind regards,
Elsevier Editorial System
Gene
For further assistance, please visit our customer support site at http://help.elsevier.com/app/answers/list/p/7923. Here you can search for solutions on a range of topics, find answers to frequently asked questions and learn more about EES via interactive tutorials. You will also find our 24/7 support contact details should you need any further assistance from one of our customer support representatives.”
One more journal, published by Springer, creating an account without my explicit permission:
“On Sunday, April 19, 2015 5:12 PM, Sushil Solomon [redacted] wrote:
Dear Dr. [redacted, with an error in my name],
As the Editor of the journal Sugar Tech I want to ask you if you could review the article “[redacted]” for a possible publication in our journal.
This is the abstract:
[redacted]
If you would like to review this paper, please click this link: [redacted] *
If you do not wish to review this paper, please click this link: [redacted] *
If the above links do not work, please go to http://sute.edmgr.com/.
Your username is: [redacted]
Your password is: [redacted]
The manuscript reference is SUTE-D-15-00030.
If possible, I would appreciate receiving your review in 28 days. You may submit your comments online at the above URL. There you will find spaces for confidential comments to the editor, comments for the author and a report form to be completed.
With kind regards
Dr. Sushil Solomon
Editor-in-Chief
—
*If clicking the link above does not open an Editorial Manager window, your email program may have inserted some spaces and/or line markers into the link. Please open a browser window manually and copy and paste the entire link from the email into the url address box. The link starts with the letters “http” and ends with the letters “rev=X” (where X represents a number such as 0,1,2, etc.) Note that the end of the link may be shown on a different line in this email, and may be shown in a different color than the beginning of the link .The entire link must be copied and pasted into the browser in order for the correct Editorial Manager window to be displayed. After copying the link into the url address box, you must also remove any spaces and line markers (e.g. > or >>) by using the delete or backspace keys on your keyboard.”
I already have this journal listed on my consolidated profile, so this free will to create accounts by editors, superceding conolidated profiles, adds to the concerns (and this case is not covered by the note in the e-mail below).
On Tuesday, April 28, 2015 3:52 AM, South African Journal of Botany [redacted] wrote:
Dear Dr. [redacted],
You have received this system-generated message because you have been registered by an Editor for the Elsevier Editorial System (EES) – the online submission and peer review tracking system for South African Journal of Botany.
Here is your temporary username and confidential password, which you will need for accessing EES the first time at http://ees.elsevier.com/sajb/
Your username is: [redacted]
Your password is: [redacted]
The first time you log into this new account, you will be guided through the process of creating a consolidated ‘parent’ profile to which you can link all your EES accounts.
If you have already created a consolidated profile, please use the temporary username and password above to log into this site. You will then be guided through an easy process to add this new account to your existing consolidated profile.
Once you have logged in, you can always view or change your password and other personal information by selecting the “change details” option on the menu bar at the top of the page. Here you can also opt-out for marketing e-mails, in case you do not wish to receive news, promotions and special offers about our products and services.
TECHNICAL TIPS:
1) Please ensure that your e-mail server allows receipt of e-mails from the domain “elsevier.com”, otherwise you may not receive vital e-mails.
2) We would strongly advise that you download the latest version of Acrobat Reader, which is available free at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
3) For first-time users of Elsevier Editorial System, detailed instructions and tutorials for Authors and for Reviewers are available at: http://help.elsevier.com/app/answers/list/p/7923
Kind regards,
Elsevier Editorial System
South African Journal of Botany
For further assistance, please visit our customer support site at http://help.elsevier.com/app/answers/list/p/7923. Here you can search for solutions on a range of topics, find answers to frequently asked questions and learn more about EES via interactive tutorials. You will also find our 24/7 support contact details should you need any further assistance from one of our customer support representatives.”