The week at Retraction Watch featured an adventure in irony as a paper on plagiarism was retracted for…plagiarism, as well as another retraction for high-profile cancer research Robert Weinberg. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- Science and medicine have a “publication pollution” problem, argues Art Caplan. (Paywalled paper here.)
- “In science,” writes The Boston Globe‘s Carolyn Johnson, “irreproducible research is a quiet crisis.”
- Science funding is broken, part 1: “NSF graduate fellowships are part of the problem,” says Terry McGlynn.
- Science funding is broken, part 2: Crowdfunding is not the answer, says Lenny Teytelman.
- “It’s not plagiarism because I could have written it if I had time.” Mind-boggling responses to misconduct allegations, courtesy of Debra Parrish.
- “Science’s Big Scandal: Even legitimate publishers are faking peer review,” says Charles Seife in Slate.
- John Bohannon — who has carried out a sting of predatory publishers — takes a look at hoax paper-detecting software (paywalled).
- Monopoly, the publishers’ edition.
- BioMed Central is launching a new journal on research integrity and peer review, helmed by Liz Wager, a member of The Center For Scientific Integrity’s board of directors.
- Mauricio Tuffani, of Folha de San Paulo, continues his analysis of how many predatory publishers Brazilian funding agencies accept as legitimate.
- “Thanks to a generous benefactor,” Reuters reports, “young mothers doing laboratory research at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston can receive major grants to keep them from falling behind while they raise their children.”
- Researchers at UK government agencies must now have all contacts with the media approved, Science reports.
- Beyond The Bad-Apple Approach: A review of a 2013 book on scientific misconduct (paywalled).
- At the upcoming American Society for Microbiology meeting, Carl Zimmer will try to separate the microbiome from the hyperbolome.
- “The difficulty of retracting incorrect information increases the importance of traditional journalistic values, including accuracy, taste, perspective, context, and fairness.” A reporter reflects on five years of iPhone reporting for radio.
- “Writing up a study for publication brings temptations that conflict with faithful warts-and-all reporting,” says Hilda Bastian.
- Johns Hopkins is being sued for $1 billion over a study that gave people in Guatemala STDs. Commentary from the Hastings Center here.
- The current issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters examines trends in open access publishing.
- Both PubPeer and Fazlul Sarkar are seeking appeals in scientist’s case against the site’s commenters.
- Native Americans have European ancestors? Not so fast, says a new paper.
- So, you’ve got your own lab. What next?
- The president of the University of Minnesota admitted making “misleading or inaccurate” statements in the aftermath of the suicide of a psychiatric patient taking part in a university clinical trial when he died.
- “[W]e should stop applying a common standard regarding plagiarism to all research fields and instead openly acknowledge that there are differences in what aspects of a paper are important to scientific development in different research areas,” argues Gert Helgesson.
- Klaas Sijtsma says that “research data and the research materials should be made publicly available so as to allow verification” and that “researchers should more readily consider consulting a methodologist or a statistician,” but that both measures “run against common practice to keep data to oneself and overestimate one’s methodological and statistical skills, thus allowing secrecy and errors to enter research practice.” The paper, which is paywalled, is part of a group of pieces in Psychometrika looking at questionable research practices.
- Five ways to get scientific articles noticed and advance the conversation, from Victoria Costello at PLOS.
- “Writing a Good Peer Review to Improve Scholarship: What Editors Value and Authors Find Helpful,” from a journal editor in chief.
- “Publication bias and ‘spin’ raise questions about drugs for anxiety disorders,” according to a new study.
- Klaus Fiedler questions the framing of efforts to identify p-hacking and plagiarism.
- Want a Nobel Prize? Make your audiences laugh first, says Michael Brown.
- Le Monde covers the Olivier Voinnet case.
- Here’s how corporations took over the First Amendment, according to Joe Pinsker, writing in The Atlantic.
- A Stanford graduate student stands accused of poisoning her classmates with paraformaldehyde.
- “Science hoaxes: Why do we fall for them, and who benefits?”
- A new book says critics were too tough on plagiarist Jonah Lehrer, but Daniel Engber of Slate says not so.
- Journal publishers should provide a platform for lay summaries of papers, argue two researchers from the University of Washington.
- How can scientists use Google Scholar for scholarly profiling?
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Both of the interesting papers are behind paywalls…. If people write interesting papers, but no one can read them, do they really mean anything?
Both PubPeer and Fazlul Sarkar are seeking appeals in scientist’s case against the site’s commenters.
Sarkar’s appeal begins with the suggestion that PubPeer is not a party to the lawsuit (and thus should not have been allowed to argue, or to present a motion to quash). WUT?
The lawsuit is between Sarkar (party 1) and Does (parties 2). Pubpeer is subject to a subpoena, but is not a party to the lawsuit, similar to how a witness is not usually a party. Pubpeer has not been sued, in other words, but only the anonymous commenters have.
For the record, Sarkar does not argue that the court should not have considered Pubpeer’s motion to quash. Sarkar instead argues that the court should not have considered Pubpeer’s arguments in a motion for summary judgement (apparently called disposition in Michigan). Sarkar argues that because one defendent (I assume, one of the anonymous commenters), one of parties 2, actually showed up and filed such a motion for themselves, and so there was no need for Pubpeer to step in.
Personally I don’t think that Sarkar makes a very good argument, because even if Doe’s motion touches on this subject, Pubpeer could still be said to be stepping in on behalf of the other Does (who may not even be aware of being involved in this nuisance lawsuit). And even if they do prevail on this argument, the court of appeal will simply send the case back to the lower court, for that court to reconsider the same arguments but made by a “real” party.
Or even exist. There’s something quantum-entangly about Sarkar’s application. As the other appellants point out, though, Sarkar failed to mention the Email Of Doom in the first place.
What hasn’t really come to the forefront in this case so far, is that the anonymous commenter (if Sarkar is to be believed) does appear to have engaged in some silly behavior – namely contacting institutions directly, falsely claiming Sen. Chuck Grassley is investigating Sarkar, and then talking about such things in public.
The problem for Sarkar, is that all he really wants is the identity of the commenter, but not for the purposes of what the commenter actually said on PubPeer. He just wants their ID so he can go after them for what they said in private correspondence to the institutions. As such, the focus defamation and 1st amendment seems ill placed. PubPeer didn’t publish anything defamatory, they just published a comment by someone bragging about something they’d done, with that secondary event potentially being defamatory in nature.
Imagine instead, if a friend of Sarkar had overheard the anonymous correspondent bragging about their letter-writing exploits in a coffee shop, and then passed on the information to him. Imagine also that this friend knows the name of the person but won’t tell. Would Sarkar have that right to sue his friend to uncover the identity of the coffee shop bragger? What about the coffee shop owner? Can Sarkar demand to see their CCTV recordings? As far as I can tell, if a crime has been committed then Sarkar might have fair cause to go after the information he is seeking, but so far he hasn’t proven that a crime has been committed. A letter got sent, and he lost a job offer, and those two things may or may not be related.
1) I believe that Dr. Arthur Caplan claim that “predatory publishers” are the first and main reason for the degradation of science publishing’s “trustworthiness, utility, and value” might not be that accurate. Compare with what Dr. Seife states: “The SCIgen scandal shows that even old-fashioned big-budget scientific publishing houses are sometimes faking the process of scholarly peer review.”
2) How much will it cost to publish a paper, for example, an opinion paper, in BMC’s new journal Research Integrity and Peer Review?
3) Are the identities of commentators at RW shared with any member of Board of Directors of The Center For Scientific Integrity (http://retractionwatch.com/the-center-for-scientific-integrity/board-of-directors/)?
4) “Researchers at UK government agencies must now have all contacts with the media approved.” What about sites like PubPeer and PubMed Commons, or even blogs like RW? This law seems short-sighted and the clamp-down on scientists and freedom of expression continues.
Re: #3, Retraction Watch’s agreements to keep names of commenters and other sources confidential do not change now that The Center For Scientific Integrity has a board of directors. Nor has it changed as our relationships with others have grown. So the answer is no.
Thanks for your question.
Re #2: Our journal is sustained using article processing charges (APCs) of £1370. However, we are aware that many researchers in this field lack any formal funding to pay for publication; therefore, we encourage anyone who is unable to pay the APC to ask about waivers or discoutns on submission.
Several papers by Prof. Maria Pia Cosma are being questioned at PubPeer:
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=+Maria+Pia+Cosma
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=M+P+Cosma
She has provided a response for four with the same wording: “Thank you for this note, I am considering the matter and I got already in contact with the journal to handle the possible imprecision. Maria Pia Cosma”
EMBO Rep
https://pubpeer.com/publications/C330264E334F7D358BCA255F6E2DB1#fb28175
Am J Hum Genet
https://pubpeer.com/publications/BF657BA5848A6CCFC9041C1CD4F91D#fb28174
Human Mol Genet
https://pubpeer.com/publications/455476D41E0457BF409091867EA89E#fb28173
EMBO J
https://pubpeer.com/publications/7B8AF80BA03943EA70B307946CCC23#fb28172
And more detailed explanations for two other papers being questioned:
Mol Cell
https://pubpeer.com/publications/43D229CE50CAC900509F635F611EBA#fb28171
Cell
https://pubpeer.com/publications/9A95DC80EA54D591EE073D5BE1A047#fb28170
In the 2010 paper (Hum Mol Genet), she is listed as being at:
1 Telethon Institute of Genetics and Medicine (TIGEM), and
2 Institute of Genetics and Biophysics (IGB), CNR, via P. Castellino 111, Naples 80131, Italy, and
4 Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), c/Aiguader, 88, Barcelona 08003, Spain
I have written to the editors to complain and I have also requested Dr. Jacco Flipsen, the Vice President of STM Publishing – Life Sciences, to provide a suitable public explanation about whether this is an acceptable way to attract authors for Springer books. You decide.
“Greetings!
Dear Contributor
Being a researcher in area “PGPR-plant interaction”, I’m asking chapter title for full publication in Springer-India.
Springer, India has become agreed to publish an edited book under the banner “Microbial-mediated Induced Systemic Resistance in Plants”. We would therefore invite you to contribute a chapter of your choice with described theme.
At the moment we’re only collecting the chapter titles.
We would request you to send the tentative title, name of the author (s) with complete address, their email ID and corresponding author.
Once, this is achieved, Springer – India shall be asked to issue the agreement letter along with instructions. We expect chapter to be received upon signing an agreement with Springer-India.
As per the Springer protocol, you will be signing an agreement with the publisher.
Please do not start writing the chapter unless agreement is signed and instructions are received.
Your cooperation is solicited
Sincere Regards
Editors:
Devendra Kumar Choudhary, Ph.D.
Amity Institute of Microbial Technology (AIMT), Block ‘E-3’, 4th Floor, Amity University Campus, Sector-125, Noida-201313, Gautam Buddha Nagar, UP (India), Tel: +91-120-2431182, 4392132, Fax: +91-120-2431268, 4392502, E-mail: [redacted]
Ajit Varma, Ph.D.
Amity Institute of Microbial Technology (AIMT), Block ‘E-3’, 4th Floor, Amity University Campus, Sector-125, Noida-201313, Gautam Buddha Nagar, UP (India), Tel: +91-120-2431182, 4392132, Fax: +91-120-2431268, 4392502, E-mail: [redacted]”