The week at Retraction Watch featured a discussion of whether peer reviewers should replicate experiments, and a look at whether social psychology really has a retraction problem. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- “As seductive as metrics are, however, they’re often fool’s gold.” Citation cartels: How some authors game the system. The latest from our co-founders in STAT.
- Men get more credit for co-authorship than women, and they’re more likely to earn tenure through co-authored papers as well. (Scott Jaschik, Times Higher Education)
- A new study of authorship in neuroscience journals suggests that “age probably plays a role in (partly) explaining gender asymmetry, both in science in general and in neuroscience in particular.” (Journal of Informetrics, sub req’d)
- “Reviewers should not steal ideas from the paper to design their own research. Besides, they should ensure that no one else steals them.” Amitav Banerjee lays out the etiquette and ethics of peer review.
- The Conversation removes a story on the effects of video game violence after the research paper is retracted. See our coverage of the paper here.
- “Blog posts are free, open access, and indexed by search engines.” Just one of the many reasons they’re better than scientific papers, says C. Titus Brown, perhaps in satire. (Living in an Ivory Basement blog)
- “The scientific record was full of so much human-generated misconduct, error, sloppiness, gaming, and outright fraud that when the Federal Agency of Retraction Enforcement, headed by Ivan Oransky, was asked to compare several cases of potential retraction for addition to their centralized blacklist, his staff was unable to tell which were done by humans and which by algorithms.” Two (very) fictional stories about the future of scholarly literature. (Christopher Kelty, UCLA Law Review)
- A new paper compiles the emerging misuses of the Journal Impact Factor and the attempts to bolster it or move beyond it. (Journal of Korean Medical Science)
- U.S. president-elect Trump’s pick for a senior post plagiarized more than a dozen sections of her PhD dissertation. And the publisher of her 2012 book has pulled electronic versions, also citing plagiarism.
- Double blind reviews may be able to limit bias and focus attention on the quality of the research itself, but the growing use of preprints can undermine the process, says Nick Brown.
- “There is a growing interest in OA publishing, but that enthusiasm is not always matched by funds from either granting agencies or the university.” (Robin N. Sinn, Sue M. Woodson, and Mark Cyzyk, College & Research Libraries News)
- “Regulation of research integrity should not be seen as a panacea and, as noted in the report, can have many drawbacks.” The UK Research Integrity Office responds to the latest report on research integrity in the country.
- A new paper by a number of researchers active in “meta-science” lays out a manifesto for reproducible science. (Nature Human Behavior) Is it a prescription for better science (and better science journalism)? Tamar Haspel takes a look. (Undark)
- Despite the recent attention toward the statistical crisis in science, many working scientists still don’t have a clear grasp on the problem, argues Stijn Debrouwere.
- Rising rates of identity theft in academia are aiding in the spread of junk science, say three researchers. (Science and Engineering Ethics, sub req’d)
- A Smithsonian mammalogist falsely accused and then cleared of research misconduct leaves the institution. (Michael Balter)
- “Under no circumstance may anyone, including a public affairs officer, ask or direct any researcher to alter the record of scientific findings or conclusions.” (Chris Mooney, Washington Post, on the US Energy Dept.)
- More and more predatory journals are looking to pounce on unsuspecting researchers, and they’re developing new tactics to appear legitimate. (Alex Gillis, University Affairs)
- Nature Human Behavior editors “strongly encourage those scientists engaged in hypothesis-driven quantitative research to consider submitting their work as a registered report — there is nothing to lose, but much to gain.”
- One letter by the persistent Alem Matthee was enough to undermine the influential PACE trial’s results on treating chronic fatigue syndrome. (Jason Murphy, news.com.au)
- “It is a shame that the review process is confidential, as it allows the journal to hide what actually happens behind their closed doors.” In the wake of a rejected paper, an author publishes his appeal and a journal’s response. (Romain Brette)
- “Can scientists and their institutions become their own open access publishers?” asks Karen Shashok.
- According to a new study, “a U-shaped relationship exists between the extent of contribution and author order: the participation levels in contribution lists were highest for first authors, followed by last and second authors, and then middle authors with the lowest levels.” (Scientometrics, sub req’d)
- “Twitter can help with scientific dissemination but its influence on citation impact is less clear,” says Jose Luis Ortega. (LSE Impact Blog)
- After just two years, Elsevier has decided to discontinue a journal featuring negative results in plant science.
- “[L]ow replication and an absence of perfect controls can sometimes indicate GOOD science – because the experiments are conducted in a context where realism is prioritized.” (Andrew Hendry, Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics)
- Research funded by the Gates Foundation can’t be published in some of the world’s top journals, “because the journals do not comply with its open-access policy.” (Richard van Noorden, Nature)
- One of the researchers who was central to the idea of STAP stem cells – two papers on which were retracted – insisted they were real in a recent declaration to the U.S. Patent and Trade Office. (Paul Knoepfler, The Niche)
- “James McCrostie was shocked to discover the extent of ‘predatory conferences’, but even more shocked by those abetting them.” (Times Higher Education)
- “Young scholars must not be afraid of receiving feedback, even, and especially, if negative; and they must learn early on to present their work well and as often as possible.” (Co-Pierre Georg and Michael Rose, LSE Impact Blog)
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