Weekend reads: Data sharing fees block access; Machiavellianism and gossip in science; “power pose” redux

The week at Retraction Watch featured a look at where retractions for fake peer review come from, and an eyebrow-raising plan that has a journal charging would-be whistleblowers a fee. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

• Many researchers use sharing fees to keep their data locked up. The latest from our co-founders in STAT.
• Machiavellianism is positively associated with self-reported research misbehavior, but narcissism and psychopathy are not, says a new study in PLOS ONE.
• A new survey finds “that scientists are often reticent or unable to take formal action against many behaviors they perceive as unethical and irresponsible. As a result, they resort to informal gossip to warn colleagues of transgressors.” (Social Problems, sub req’d)
• Amy Cuddy has responded to her co-author’s comments on their 2010 “power posing” study: “By today’s improved methodological standards, the studies in that paper — which was peer-reviewed — were ‘underpowered,’ meaning that they should have included more participants.” (New York Magazine) Her co-author, Dana Carney, has said she does not think the paper should be retracted.
• “Women don’t submit as often, but when they do they have a higher acceptance rate.” American Geophysical Union journals release one of the most detailed breakdowns of gender bias in peer review. (Alexandra Witze, Nature)
• Frontiers compares its rate of retraction to that of other publishers. (Gearoid Faolean, Frontiers blog)
• Why are papers rejected? Jack Grove talks to Hilary Hamnett for the answer. (Times Higher Education)
• OMICS, being sued by the U.S. government for deceptive trade practices, has been quietly buying journals in Canada, The Star and CTV report.
• “For the first few years, it will be free to publish in eLife.” No more: The journal will now charge $2,500. (press release) More from Declan Butler at Nature.
• Want to make sure scientific results can be replicated? Seek out training in study design and data analysis. (Monya Baker, Nature)
• Should we use double blind peer review? Bob O’Hara takes a look at the evidence. (Methods in Ecology and Evolution blog)
• Ian Cree talks about the benefits of open peer reviewwith Francesca Martin for BioMed Central’s podcast.
• Just how dishonest are we, and can peer review curb the impetus to lie in research? Elsevier’s Darren Sugrue wondered, so he talked to Dan Ariely and Yael Melamede, who made the film “(Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies.”
• “The problem is where he accuses me of having published statistically faulty research.” Susan Fiske doubles down on charges of “methodological terrorism.” (Rafi Letzter, Business Insider) Ideas for civil criticism: Uri Simonsohn responds to Fiske’s piece.
• Are the Nobel Prizes good for science? ask Arturo Casadevall and Ferric Fang. (FASEB Journal)
• Industrial and organizational psychology has a “lack of research integrity,” write Sheila List and Michael McDaniel. (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology)
• Economics is more controversial and medicine has more high-profile scandals, so why is so much of the replication debate focused on psychology? asks Andrew Gelman.
• “What’s clear is that we need more thoughtful reviews from qualified people.” So how do we motivate more researchers to review? (Shannon Palus, Slate)
• “There are forces swirling in the air that have the potential to undermine [peer review] as a cornerstone of the scientific process,” which is why we must stand up in favor of it, argues Emilie Marcus. (CrossTalk)
• “In our experience, once it is determined that there are valid concerns surrounding a paper, most authors are willing to take the responsible course of action.” The editors of Cell Metabolism respond to the “common perception is that journals are reluctant to take action on reported concerns of data manipulation because months and sometimes years go by before anything happens.”
• Which reference software makes the least mistakes? EndNote, Mendeley, RefWorks or Zotero? (The Journal of Academic Librarianship, sub req’d)
• “From where I sit, the peer review process is not unlike the families described by Leo Tolstoy in his masterpiece Anna Karenina: ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’” Milka Kostic reflects on the relaunch of Cell Chemical Biology.
• Are unique author identifiers enough to prevent confusion in the scholarly literature? Look at the names of these two authors, who should know. (BMJ Innovations)
• A researcher accused of “duplicating his own work on 15 occasions, denied all charges and blamed the jealousy of his colleagues as the reason behind them.” (Munish Pandey, Mumbai Mirror)
• The new euphemism for plagiarism: “Unauthorized collaboration.” (Daily Pennsylvanian)
• Janssen failed to share data on problems with a blood testing device during and after a key clinical trial used by the FDA to approve a drug, Deborah Cohen of The BMJ reports.
• A petition started by Bernard Carroll, John Nardo, and John Noble “asks Congress to mandate coordination of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to guarantee fidelity of clinical trials reporting and of scientific claims for medical products (drugs and medical devices).”
• Phil Davis visualizes citation cartels. (Scholarly Kitchen)
• “Biomedical experts plan to create a scoring system that will help researchers choose reliable antibodies for their experiments,” writes Monya Baker at Nature. “The only problems: figuring out how such a ranking would work — and getting manufacturers to adopt the standard.”
• Does productivity – in numbers of papers published – mean less quality? Anna Azvolinsky explores a recent paper in PLOS ONE that took a look. (The Scientist)
• Sitting around twiddling your thumbs because you haven’t been asked to review a paper recently? PeerJ has a solution for you.
• “[T]here may be serious work to do to get nursing’s (reporting) house in order,” finds an analysis of how often clinical trials published in journals were previously registered. (Journal of Advanced Nursing)
• “Research Integrity Practices in Science Europe Member Organisations:” A new report from Science Europe.
• How do researchers at the French National Research Center (CNRS) feel about open access? (Emerald Insight)
• What’s the relationship between institutional repositories, copyright, and open access? (Science & Technology Libraries, sub req’d)
• “Positive trials of tPA for ischemic stroke are cited approximately three times as often as neutral trials, and nearly 10 times as often as negative trials, indicating the presence of substantial citation bias,” according to a new analysis. (Trials)
• “Scholars and academics who came together for a workshop recently agreed that a social research ethics governing body needed to be established in Nepal.” (Amrita Limbu, The Kathmandu Post)
• “Scientific journal publishing is too complex to be measured by a single metric,” say editors of Mem. Inst. Oswaldo Cruz. It’s “time to review the role of the impact factor!”
• Elizabeth Moylan discusses “how publishers can recognize and reward the work that peer reviewers do.” (BioMed Central blog)
• How common is irreproducibility in hydrogen storage material research? (Energy & Environmental Science, sub req’d)
• Ben Goldacre talks to Australia’s ABC Radio about fighting bad science.

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