We’ve been having some technical issues with the site, which may have kept some readers from accessing our content this week. We think we’ve figured out what was wrong, and fixed it, but in the meantime here’s what we were up to this week, in case you missed it:
- Here’s a new one: Three papers are retracted for being cited too often.
- A highly cited paper has received a major correction as a result of the ongoing battle over attitudes towards gay people, when a prominent — and polarizing — critic showed it could not be replicated.
- The U.S. National Library of Medicine is shutting down its commenting feature, PubMed Commons, after more than four years, saying participation was low.
- A paper about repetition retracted for duplication? Priceless.
- An researcher took another scientist to court over the ownership of data.
- Most respondents in a survey admitted to engaging in at least one behavior considered to be misconduct. But who confessed more often — scientists in industry, or academia?
- Another vaccine safety paper, another messy retraction followed by republication.
- A university decides to shoot the messenger, defending one of its faculty against allegations that he plagiarized the Pope.
- Paolo Macchiarini may have once been a star surgeon, but now he’s more like a meteor crashing to Earth.
- A researcher loses his fourth paper — three years after a PubPeer commenter said he was led to scrutinize it after seeing a post on Retraction Watch.
- Papers from prison, profs’ kids as co-authors, and more in Weekend Reads.
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