Weekend reads, part 1: Pirating paywalled papers; a sex scandal and fudged data at Stanford

The week at Retraction Watch featured a lot of movement on our leaderboard, with a new total for Diederik Stapel, and a new entry. It also featured a lot going on elsewhere, so here’s part I of Weekend Reads (we’ll have more tomorrow morning):

• Meet the scientist who came up with #icanhazpdf, the Twitter hashtag that encourages piracy of paywalled studies.
• “Phills says that Gruenfeld confessed to him that she fudged research on the paper that launched her career, and charges that, in the two years since learning about it, Stanford has looked the other way.” A business school sex scandal has many dimensions (Vanity Fair).
• A scientist created an alter ego. Then he interviewed himself. Fascinating, by Brooke Borel in BuzzFeed.
• David Tuller takes a look at the PACE trial of interventions for chronic fatigue syndrome (in three parts).
• Two researchers claim the rate of questionable research practices in psychology isn’t as high as studies say (sub req’d).
• “We have no fucking clue.” A “dirty rant about the Human Brain Project.”
• Patience is a virtue: Our sister blog, Embargo Watch, reports on a change to three gastroenterology journals’ embargo polices that is long overdue.
• A new paper argues that “publication consultants should provide an annual return that details the papers, dissertations and thesis that they have consulted on.” (sub req’d)
• The legacy of those who insist HIV does not cause AIDS is deadly, writes Charlie Jane Anders in Gizmodo.
• Does a commonly used technique distort data? Jef Akst explores in The Scientist.
• About 14% of international applicants to U.S. anesthesiology residency programs plagiarize, as do 4% of U.S. applicants, according to a new study (sub req’d).
• The Wesleyan student government didn’t like a highly criticized op-ed in the student newspaper, so they slashed the paper’s funding, Jezebel reports.
• Fabulist Stephen Glass has repaid Harper’s $10,000 for an assignment he fabricated. (Speaking of Harper’s, retractions make the Harper’s Index this month.)
• “It thus becomes evidence that these papers by Prof. Cope were not published at the time claimed, and I protest against the dates they bear being accepted as authentic.” A publishing complaint from 1872.
• Does a new metric from the NIH reveal “the real nature of scientific impact?” Ask Stefano Bertuzzi.
• “‘This is officially becoming a trend,’ Alison McCook wrote on the blog Retraction Watch, referring to the increasing number of retractions due to fabricated peer reviews.” The New England Journal of Medicine picks up the fake peer review story.
• Oops: The Washington Post pulled a story about Vice President Joe Biden entering the presidential race, after a glitch.
• Nature Publishing Group is launching a new journal, Nature Human Behaviour.
• A different kind of peer review: The Russian Secret Service will now vet some research papers, Nature reports.
• Consumer Reports retracts a Tesla recommendation.
• Should researchers who commit fraud in the lab face criminal charges in court? asks Roger Collier in the CMAJ.
• “From 2005 to 2014, we found that only 26 percent of randomized trials published in core headache journals were compliant with trial registration requirements, and that 38 percent of registered trials published results that did not match what authors initially planned to report,” says Melissa Rayhill of a new study she and colleagues have published.
• “The use of inadequate statistical methods can easily result in risky and wasteful outcomes,” write Scott Goddard and Valen Johnson on reproducibility.
• Using junior researchers’ work without permission can lead to peril, notes David Matthews in Times Higher Education.
• “How does academic research feed into the parliamentary process?” asks Caroline Kenny.
• Ten tips for presenting a conference paper, from Edward James and Farah Mendelsohn, via Times Higher Education.
• Presenting controversial findings? Upload a preprint first, say some researchers. Rachel Becker reports in Nature.
• “We need to change the paradigm of scientific research,” write two researchers in a new paper. “We cannot grow at all costs.”
• Predatory journals are luring researchers in Arab countries, reports Benjamin Plackett.
• How does Hollywood – and TV – depict graduate students? Patrick Bigsby takes a look.

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