The week at Retraction Watch saw news of a settled lawsuit, and had us celebrating our sixth anniversary with the announcement of a new partnership. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- A group of clinical researchers seem to be doubling down on an idea floated in the New England Journal of Medicine that anyone who uses others’ data is a “research parasite.”
- “‘You are too smart to be Mexican’ and ‘Congratulations! You probably got the award because you are Latino:’” Racism in the lab. (Daniel A. Colón-Ramos and Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, New York Times)
- A U.S. doctor has been charged with insider trading while heading up a clinical trial. (Ed Silverman, STAT)
- Paying $8,000 to take part in an anti-aging blood transfusion trial without a control group? Sounds like a great idea, right? (Jocelyn Kaiser, Science)
- “Should science fraudsters be thrown into jail?” The latest from our co-founders in STAT.
- “This is a perfect storm of public relations hype combined with journalistic hype, resulting in headlines that ultimately mislead patients.” Don’t believe everything you read about that new Alzheimer’s drug. (Tom Chivers, Buzzfeed)
- What is the Geoscience Paper of The Future? A new article in Earth and Space Science takes a stab.
- What makes researchers happy at work? A paper in the International Journal of Mental Health Promotion tries to answer. (sub req’d)
- Women in physics still face big hurdles, reports Ramin Skibba. (Nature)
- “[H]ow much do we know about the clinical trials behind drugs approved by the FDA?” Moira Gunn talks to Jennifer Miller. (Biotech Nation Radio)
- “[A]uthors who are part of a kin tend to occupy central positions in their collaborative networks,” according to a recent PNAS study.
- Here’s a graphical guide to how the Olympics have had an impact on scientific research. (Ramin Skibba, Daniel Cressey, and Richard Van Noorden, Nature)
- There’s a fascinating description of the fight over publication of a paper about a famous subject in neuroscience in the middle of this New York Times Magazine piece. (Luke Dittrich)
- A former Harvard PhD student has settled a lawsuit with the university over claims he had been cheated of payments for development of a drug. (Brandon Dixon, The Harvard Crimson)
- Authors of a study that claimed a link between conservatism and psychoticism – but was later corrected – aren’t taking further criticism lying down. (Personality and Individual Differences)
- The entire September issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology is dedicated to methodological rigor and replicability. (sub req’d)
- Three researchers offer “a statistical definition for reproducibility and replicability.” (bioRxiv)
- “It therefore seems that many of our articles have a long scientific life and generate more citations than indicated by the [Impact Factor].” The journal Ultraschall (Ultrasound) takes a look at citation patterns.
- What’s it like to run an open experiment? Three soil researchers tried to find out. (Environmental Research Letters)
- The fact that men like to cite themselves more than women do isn’t an example of mansplaining, says Rebecca Onion. (Slate)
- Can you still call yourself a scientist if you’re no longer doing research? asks Lenny Teytelman (who does).
- “Authorship can be a confusing prospect,” says Francesca Grifo, introducing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s guide to authorship.
- Will the field of fMRI learn from mistakes revealed in a recent analysis? asks Anna Vlasits. (STAT)
- When it comes to tamping down grandiose claims about research it funds, the NIH could learn a lot from NASA, says Lior Pachter.
- “You have probably received a clever, personalized, and manipulative spam email from a journal called Internal Medicine Review.” Don’t believe it, says Jeffrey Beall.
- “A common parasite that infects laboratory zebrafish may have been confounding the results of years of behavioural experiments, researchers say – but critics say the case isn’t proven,” writes Petra Szilagyi. (Nature)
- UK physics researchers were dropped from an EU grant proposal because colleagues thought Brexit would have compromised the project, Richard van Noorden reports. (Nature)
- Want to start a new journal? Here’s Angela Cochran’s checklist. (Scholarly Kitchen)
- “Why bother teaching our students not to cheat when professors can get away with it?” (“Clark Baker,” Chronicle of Higher Education)
- Clinical trials? Who needs those? asks a prominent cardiologist. (Larry Husten, CardioBrief) Also: “Are Randomized Controlled Trials the (G)old Standard?” asks a new paper in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
- “Scribner has made changes to Siddhartha Mukherjee’s book, ‘The Gene: An Intimate History,’ after an excerpt in the New Yorker sparked a firestorm of criticism from scientists.” (Jessica Maloney, Wall Street Journal)
- “I don’t think a journalist should look at a journal’s impact factor while covering a study.” Some thoughts from Hilda Bastian. Our Ivan Oransky has a somewhat different take. (Tara Haelle, AHCJ’s Covering Health blog)
- What do Lisa Kudrow, aka Phoebe from Friends, Colin Firth and Natalie Portman have in common? They’ve published psychology papers. (Neuroskeptic, Discover)
- “For each additional female organizer” at two different academic conferences, “there was an average increase of 95% and 70% female speakers, respectively,” according to a new paper in PLOS ONE.
- “With so much more research being undertaken and published, the current system of dissemination can no longer guarantee that your work will find its audience.” A new social media tool for scientists hopes to change that. (Jeffrey Perkel, Nature)
- A group of researchers want a study on an antidepressant’s effect on teens retracted due to “gross misrepresentations” about the drug. (Ed Silverman, STAT)
- China’s Ministry of Education passes its first rules to define what academic misconduct is — and what the punishments for it will be. (Yanan Jiang, Beijing Today)
- A preprint suggests new and more transparent research practices that could curb questionable research. (ScienceOpen)
- “All four phony papers submitted by a pretend professor from an imaginary institution received acceptance.” James McCrostie explores Taiwan’s predatory journal plight. (Taipei Times)
- “Despite this lack of discriminating power, [Impact Factors] are sometimes (ab)used to judge individual papers or scientists in some institutions around the world.” (Jeremy Berg, Science)
- The bigger picture for preprints: Carly Strasser argues we have the opportunity to revolutionize how research is communicated for the better. (The Winnower)
- How much — and how badly — is scientific research being led by narcissists? Times Higher Education looks at one author’s analysis.
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