The week at Retraction Watch featured the year’s top 10 retractions, more than two dozen retractions at Elsevier for fake peer review, and the resignations of two editors in chief over a controversial paper. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- “A search of other reviews in the journal by Professor Milward…reveals at least 13 previous mentions of the term ‘lady author’ between 2013 and 2017.” A journal apologizes. (Rachael Pells, Times Higher Education)
- Want to win a Nobel Prize? Retract a paper! That kind of advice may seem far-fetched, but it has a point, say our co-founders in Slate.
- First Nature, now Cell: Another top journal editor is stepping down. This time it’s Emilie Marcus. (Elsevier)
- The National Academy of Sciences will place PNAS Editor-in-Chief Inder Verma on temporary leave Jan. 1, 2018, in response to gender discrimination lawsuits at the Salk Institute. (John Travis, Science)
- “There’s no evidence that the HPV vaccine causes serious harm, but an investigation shows the trials weren’t designed to properly assess safety,” reports Frederik Joelving. (Slate)
- “When evaluated by narrowly defined quality measures, women are often found to outperform men.” Women are held to a higher standard in peer review, says Erin Hengel. (CEPR Vox)
- Marta Teperek asks, “Should researchers committed to and promoting reproducible research be additionally rewarded?” (Political Science Replication)
- An algorithm for finding problematic data flagged 12 papers in Anesthesiology. Now, editors at the journal hit back at the “Carlisle method.” (Anaesthesia)
- Swedish prosecutors are re-examining manslaughter charges related to Paulo Macchiarini and failed trachea surgeries. (The Local Sweden)
- A paper linking cell phone radiation to health problems like autism “has potential to cause serious harm and should never have been published,” David Grimes and Dorothy Bishop write. “But how do we justify such a damning verdict?” (Child Development)
- When it comes to publishing, “the medical community could all benefit from a little patience,” says Valentin Fuster of the call for preprints of clinical trials. (Journal of the American College of Cardiology)
A kiwi’s guide to determining whether a publisher “is likely to be a bona fide operation, as opposed to a ‘predatory’ publisher.” Works elsewhere, too. (Royal Society of New Zealand) - A new version of a controversial report on Syria, retracted earlier this fall, “finally saw the light of day.” (Max Fisher, New York Times)
- “Female grant applicants are equally successful when peer reviewers assess the science, but not when they assess the scientist.” (Preprint, bioRxiv)
- “[My] impression of a lot of research misconduct is that the researchers in question believe they are acting in the service of a larger truth,” writes Andrew Gelman.
- “Los justicieros que persiguen los engaños.” “The vigilantes who pursue the deceptions.” Retraction Watch in Spanish. (Lucia Caballero, El Confidencial)
- “Politics Moves Fast. Peer Review Moves Slow. What’s A Political Scientist To Do?” asks Maggie Koerth-Baker. (FiveThirtyEight)
- “How Badly Can Cherry-Picking and Question Trolling Produce Bias in Published Results?” (Journal of Business and Psychology)
- “Legal and illegal sources of paywalled journal articles are aiding researchers and undermining subscription models,” writes Dalmeet Singh Chawla. (Physics Today)
- In Malaysia, “researchers seldom report incidents of research misconduct because it takes too much time, effort and work to report them, and some are just afraid of repercussions when they do report it.” (Science & Engineering Ethics)
- “Unregulated reporting of clinical trials opens the door to fraud and corruption, undermining medical advances and public health objectives, a report has warned.” (Deborah Cohen, The BMJ)
- “Unregulated herpes experiments expose [a] ‘black hole’ of accountability,” writes Marisa Taylor. (Kaiser Health News, via STAT)
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