Weekend reads: Jailed for speaking the truth; sexual harassment allegations at the Salk; children at risk in trials

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The week at Retraction Watch featured a debate over a flawed climate change paper, seven new retractions for a researcher under fire, and two chemists duking it out over credit for a 30-year-old technique. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

• “You must speak the truth a couple of times in your lifetime,” says a doctor jailed for speaking out against a popular Chinese tonic medicine. (Chris Buckley and Karoline Kan, New York Times)
• The Salk Institute has put cancer scientist Inder Verma — earlier put on leave as editor of PNAS — on leave after harassment allegations. He has allegedly sexually harassed women for decades, reports Meredith Wadman. (Science)
• A star psychiatrist about whom we’ve written “violated protocols and put children at risk.” How did ProPublica find patients in a trial involving misconduct, despite privacy rules? (Jodi Cohen, ProPublica)
• A grad student in India who recently resigned from her program takes to Facebook to make allegations about her former lab.
• “Female health researchers who applied for grants from Canada’s major health research funder were funded less often than male counterparts because of potential bias, and characteristics of peer reviewers can also affect the result,” according to a new study. (Press release from CMAJ)
• A new book “is a diatribe against modern academic working and publishing practices,” says James Hartley. (LSE Impact Blog)
• “I can’t understand how a serious editorial board can accept manuscripts from this guy.” Paolo Macchiarini publishes again. (Mark Warren, Science)
• A study of “sexy nurse” outfits would have been “more at home in a Carry On film than in the pages of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, an otherwise staid title published by BMJ Journals, where it appeared earlier this year.” (Richard Lloyd Parry, The Times, sub req’d)
• “Today, in-depth scientific endeavour is fading away in science, and what is emerging is the ability to sell the importance of a piece of science.” (F1000 blog)
• The Restoring Invisible and Abandoned Trials initiative is offering a $150,000 grant to complete a trial restoration. (PLOS blog)
• In what some call a key case, “the [U.S.] Supreme Court ruled that the Patent Office can not only issue patents, but can also retract them.” (Lucian Armasu, Tom’s Hardware)
• When do researchers submit the most papers? (Gemma Conroy, Nature Index)
• Econ Journal Watch apologizes for the title of a 12-year-old piece. “[We] at EJW now feel, sincerely, that that title was overly derisive, and that it was unprofessional on our part.”
• A university rector in Pakistan is facing plagiarism allegations, but the university is calling them “fake news.” (Rahul Basharat, The Nation (Pakistan); The Express Tribune)
• “What happens when science just disappears?” asks Sarah Scoles at WIRED, writing about journals that go dark. It turns out that there’s a company trying to deal with the problem.
• The data thugs are at it again, this time with Brendan O’Connor, and on the trail of duplication, aka alleged text recycling by Robert Sternberg of Cornell. (Nick Brown’s blog; commentary here by James Heathers)
• Journals often seem reluctant to print challenges to studies they’ve published. eLife says, “let the debates begin!” (Peter Rodgers, eLife)
• Encouraging PhD students to publish during their studies is growing in popularity, but brings some challenges. (Shannon Mason, Higher Education Research & Development, sub req’d)
• It’s time to publish peer reviews, says biologist Iain Cheeseman. (ASAPbio)
• Cambridge University rejected research by an academic using data harvested from Facebook because it was too deceptive. (Matthew Weaver, The Guardian)
• “[A]dding publications in lower-rated journals to what is typically considered a good publication record does have a significant negative impact on economists’ judgments of the value of the author’s contribution.” (The Journal of Economic Psychology, sub req’d)
• “When medical journals decline to allow a discussion of [conflicts of interest] then regulating them is made that much more difficult.” (Joel Lexchin and Barbara Mintzes, The BMJ)
• This is quite a correction from the Sydney Morning Herald.
• 10 reasons to share your data, from Amanda Barnard. (Nature Index)
• “Systematic reviews emphasize process at the expense of thoughtful interpretation,” writes Tom Siegfried. (Science News)
• “Fox television station has retracted its requirement to translate the station’s original programming broadcast in the Baltic states according to guidelines developed in Russia,” reports ERR.EE.
• “This study assesses the 10 most cited [randomized controlled trials] worldwide and shows that trials inevitably produce bias.” (Alexander Krauss, Annals of Medicine)
• A U.S. Army unit has retracted a memo that promised benefits for soldiers as compensation for receiving bad anthrax vaccines. (Meghann Myers, Army Times)
• The Matthew Effect: “Scientists’ early grant success fuels further funding,” reports Holly Else. (Nature)
• The BBC has withdrawn its series Human Planet from distribution, after a second editorial breach.
• “Encouraging doctoral students to publish during their candidature is becoming more widely accepted and practised, both in Australia and internationally,” writes Shannon Mason. However, “guidelines for students, supervisors and examiners have yet to catch up.” (Higher Education Research & Development, sub req’d)

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