Weekend reads: LaCour loses job offer; new Science data guidelines; Macchiarini grant funding frozen

This week at Retraction Watch saw us report on thousands of retractions from IEEE, which will have a serious effect on retraction record-keeping, a bizarre case of author impersonation, and a look at dentistry in outer space. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

• Princeton has rescinded its job offer to Michael LaCour, the co-author of the now-retracted Science paper on gay canvassing for same-sex marriage, Jesse Singal reports.
• Science has released new guidelines for reporting data and methods in studies. Ivan weighs in.
• The Swedish Research Council has frozen grant payments to the Karolinska Institutet center run by Paolo Macchiarini, who is facing misconduct allegations. The Institutet has “has received 31 replies from the co-authors of the criticized articles,” about 1,000 pages’ worth, in response to an external report finding evidence of misconduct, according to a spokesperson. “Because of the vast amount of material it is today not possible to set a date for when Karolinska Institutet’s decision will be made.” Update: Science has a response from Macchiarini.
• In the midst of brutality in Syria, Reed Elsevier’s Reed Business Information unit helped Bashar al-Assad’s banks despite sanctions, and threatened to sue BuzzFeed for revealing the story.
• Researchers need to be their own guardians, argues Judith Stark.
• What can we learn from Diederik Stapel? asks Tom Bartlett, who interviews the fraudster.
• The author of a short and amusing paper on article titles titled, well, “Short and amusing,” is conducting a new study and is looking for participants. The new study is of the relationship between general personality characteristics and preferences for reading, sharing, and citing preferences papers. If you have a few minutes, fill out his online survey and share it with your colleagues.
• The most retracted scientists in the world, ranked. Julia Belluz, of Vox, picks up on our leaderboard. So does Tony Dokoupil of MSNBC, who interviews Adam and Ivan on retraction trends.
• “What goes into making a scientific manuscript public?” Bjoern Brembs explains.
• “[W]ithholding the results of clinical trials is research misconduct,” says Ben Goldacre.
• “Science fraud getting you down? Here’s who you can trust.” We’re partial to Sarah Fallon’s first answer.
• There’s a new book out on “the messy realities of research and emerging, creative opportunities.”
• How do we “change an expanding and ‘successful’ science culture that is currently destroying its own foundations?” asks Reto Obrist.
• Basel University’s newspaper profiles us (page 22, in German).
• “I once heard that it is more time consuming and harder to write a paper with bad data, and have to endlessly go back and fix things, than to collect it right the first time,” writes Olivia D’Aoust.
• George Washington University has asked a judge to dismiss a case brought against it by Rakesh Kumar. Here’s the motion to dismiss, and a brief in support of the motion.
• How should journalists use sites such as PoliSciRumors to report on alleged fraud? asks Ben Lyons.
• “Does Big Grape Juice Control Nutrition Research?” Beth Skwarecki interviews Michele Simon.
• A judge “ordered that American journalists could not report on a government abuse of power for 180 days,” Ken White writes at Popehat.
• “I’ve got news for you,” writes Jessica Langer: “if you take a tenure-track position at a university that uses a significant amount of adjunct labour, you have sold out.”
• Tips from Jonathan O’Donnell on hitting grant application deadlines on time.
• “There is no acknowledgement of mentorship in federal regulations and research on how to teach research integrity is woefully underdeveloped, especially for international trainees,” write Barbara Redman and Arthur Caplan.
• How can pre- and post-publication peer review “best be redrawn to deal with the twin problems of scientific non-reproducibility and fraud increasingly encountered at the frontiers of science?”
• How do we fix the broken postdoc pipeline? Five autism researchers weigh in.
• “How medicine is broken, and how we can fix it:” Ben Goldacre and Carl Heneghan offer thoughts.
• “Despite Retraction, Researchers Still Concerned that Sequencing Study Data was Fabricated.” GenomeWeb’s Monica Heger follows up on a retraction we covered earlier this month.
• What is MyScienceWork “doing to make access to research more available for global researchers?” An interview with CEO & Co-Founder Virginie Simon at PeerJ.
• “Will Book Publishers Ever Start Fact-checking? They’re Already Starting,” reports Boris Kachka.
• Institutions should release translated versions of misconduct reports more quickly, says Chris Hartgerink.
• The story of a private genetic testing lab “offers a view inside the intoxicating brew of hype and hope” in the field, Reed Abelson and Julie Creswell report in The New York Times.
• Which part of tenure is more important — employment protection, or academic freedom? asks Cathy Sandeen.
• A sting has nailed a predatory publisher in Korea, reports Jeffrey Beall.
• “Peer review is often thought of as ancient and unchanging, but it is neither – and it shouldn’t be treated as a sacred cow,” says Aileen Fyfe. More on the history of peer review from a chapter in a new book.
• Court decisions on scientific misconduct cases are rolling in in Germany, Debora Weber-Wulff reports.
• “How Do You Know Which Health Care Effectiveness Research You Can Trust?” Stephen Soumerai, Douglas Starr, and Sumit Majumdar offer a guide.”