There were so many items to choose from this week for Weekend Reads — probably because it was Peer Review Week — that we decided to split them into two posts. Here’s part 2:
- If Volkswagen can be criminally charged, why can’t scientists who commit fraud? asks Richard Smith, a member of the board of directors of the Center For Scientific Integrity, our parent non-profit organization.
- Editors have come up with ingenious ways to boost their journals’ impact factor. Which ones are acceptable? asks Ben Martin (sub req’d).
- With the Nobel Prize announcements starting tomorrow, Vinay Prasad takes an opportunity to explain why big science awards like these are folly.
- “The what, why, and how of born-open data,” courtesy of Jeff Rouder.
- Alice Meadows would love to see last week’s Peer Review Week become an annual event.
- Verity Warne offers an infographic of data about peer review at Wiley, and a collection of tips for peer reviewers.
- What are the impressions of peer review around the world?
- Representatives of ScienceOpen, Wiley, ORCID, and Sense About Science described why peer review is important to them.
- “Think. Check. Submit.” Charlie Rapple highlights an effort to prevent ending up with a predatory publisher.
- Do you have a randomized controlled clinical trial that you’d love to see performed? Take part in DreamRCT.
- The reaction to PLOS ONE’s article processing charge hike “may be PLOS’ second wave of pragmatism colliding with fundamentalist open access ideology,” says Phil Davis.
- A Dutch amoeba newsletter has been hijacked, reports Jeffrey Beall.
- Dan Kahan offers a model of what to do when you learn your theory is wrong.
- Yesterday, we highlighted Hilda Bastian’s thoughts on the mess that the decision to end a trial can have. Here’s more from her on one particular example, the SPRINT blood pressure treatment trial.
- “A Russia-based article broker has appeared that offers various services to researchers, including writing research papers and also arranging the publication of researchers’ manuscripts in impact factor and Scopus-indexed journals,” Jeffrey Beall reports.
- “The US government is considering whether to continue its ban on funding ‘gain-of-function’ studies that make viruses more dangerous,” Sara Reardon reports.
Like Retraction Watch? Consider making a tax-deductible contribution to support our growth. You can also follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, and sign up on our homepage for an email every time there’s a new post. Click here to review our Comments Policy.
The Beall blog entry about the Russian broker is very important. What that blog story suggests is that three parties are needed for this business venture to be a successful enterprise: a) the Russian agent; b) the target journal (which seems to receive a financial “incentive”; c) the authors. I am really concerned with b). Is there more information about which Scopus or WoS journals exactly have joined this scheme? I ask because this sounds like a ghost authorship practice.
The chief motivation for advocating the criminalization of research misconduct appears to be outrage rather than logic.
In the U.S., the bulk of research misconduct includes many actions that would not meet the three to four “elements” needed to legally define something as a “fraud” under the U.S. criminal law. But that narrow criterion does not preclude prosecution of some acts of research misconduct as crimes *when the facts warrant.* Criminalizing research misconduct is a banner in search of a pre-existing parade. Why put a square wheel on the cart?
Given that research misconduct can already be prosecuted as a crime, do the editorial and research communities really want to abrogate their professional judgments to those of the political community? Do you want to cede those prerogatives to trial by jury, lawyers, and dueling experts?
Towards the end of my twenty years at ORI, I was impressed by the improved quality of investigations that the U.S. institutions ran. Sure, there were shortcomings at times; but is Dr. Smith arguing that research institutions can’t learn, improve, nor do better investigations than the non-scientists in the criminal justice system?
How much of this is motivated by a perception that Science must be out of whack because of the attention to the large number of retractions? But as that number is still far, far less than the 1% incidence of sociopathy that occurs in the population in general. Criminalizing research misconduct is a recipe for making scientific research less transparent, not more so.