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The week at Retraction Watch featured a dental researcher who is up to 18 pulled papers; the retraction of a paper claiming that people feared contagion less in the dark; and the mass resignation of a journal’s editorial board. You’ve no doubt read lots of stories about CRISPR’d babies. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- “Science is self-correcting, we are told. But, it can only be self-correcting if we transcend our human need to defend and instead acknowledge there is something to correct.” (Michael Inzlicht, PsyArXiv)
- “The [peer review] system imposes undue emotional burdens. With its not-infrequent destructive reviews, the system exerts unnecessary stress, especially on newer researchers struggling to be published.” (Ronald Barnett, Times Higher Education)
- “It is likely that some important research that is published in articles that never need to be retracted may never have been conducted in the first place if some research that was published in a retracted paper was not published first. ” A look at retractions from Science from 1983 until 2017. (K. Brad Way, Line Edslev Andersen, Scientometrics, sub req’d)
- Our database “reveals scientific research’s commitment to accountability but highlights flaws in its enforcement,” writes Ashima Kaura. (The Varsity) Perhaps. But here’s the report of the investigation into one of the cases discussed.
- “That’s why Retraction Watch has argued for the release of university investigations, he said, citing an article on why Cornell University hasn’t released its findings in the Brian Wansink research misconduct case, among other similar incidents elsewhere.” (Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed)
- “Harvard researchers are far from immune to retractions, according to new data published online last month.” (Amy L. Jia and Sanjana L. Narayanan, The Harvard Crimson)
- The National Science Foundation and The Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education have issued “Companion Guidelines on Replication & Reproducibility in Education Research.”
- “Authors and journal were forced to publish this correction due to legal threats by Steven Trubow and Donald Morisky from the company MMAS Research LLC…” A troubling correction. Background on those threats here.
- FOIA laws “have been misused by anti-science groups to target scientific research,” says Michael Mann — who is releasing his emails to counter what he says are anti-science groups.
- “The issues raised by the piece are legion.” “Things got out of control” at Michigan State, writes Sarah Brown. (Chronicle of Higher Education)
- “The University of Michigan is claiming vindication from a federal court ruling last week that said it must let faculty cross-examine their accusers in disciplinary proceedings.” (Greg Piper, The College Fix)
- “Students and faculty of the psychology department are asking for a revamp of the screening process for visiting scholars after a controversial psychologist’s request to conduct research at Northwestern was approved without scrutiny.” (Rachel Kupfer, The Daily Northwestern) The psychologist, Satoshi Kanzawa, figured in a post in our archives.
- “Scrutinizing a company’s study on a widely used pesticide, chlorpyrifos, academic researchers find shortcomings in analyses and public disclosures of results.” (Anna Azvolinsky, The Scientist)
- “She said that the most common complaint against the accused teacher was that he was not delivering lectures in the classes. ‘The students even produced an audio CD in which Poonia was heard talking to the students in indecent language in the classroom. It was also alleged that Poonia used to force his students to arrange paid subscriptions for a magazine published by his wife.'” (Vishal Joshi, Tribune India)
- “‘Scooping’ Hurts Science and Scientists,” writes Quincey Justman, the acting editor of Cell Systems.
- “In the midst of a recent research fraud lawsuit, Duke has created a new role to maintain scientific integrity.” (Christine Wei, The Duke Chronicle)
- What motivates grant peer reviewers? (bioRxiv)
- 13 corrections in the New England Journal of Medicine, for undisclosed conflicts of interest, following reporting by The New York Times and ProPublica.
- “Preprints are coming to clinical research,” writes our Ivan Oransky. “Reporters, are you ready?” (Fundación Gabriel García Márquez para el Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano blog)
- “Chemists like to experiment, just not with opening peer review,” reports Andrea Widener (Chemistry & Engineering News). More from Tien Nguyen.
- “Journal rankings are a poor way to determine if a researcher or their research is worthwhile.” (Cormac Bryce, Michael Dowling and Brian Lucey, Times Higher Education)
- RELX, Elsevier’s parent company, “is plotting a £100m takeover of Times Higher Education, the weekly magazine.” (Mark Kleinman, Sky News)
- To quote Billy Joel, sometimes working too hard can give you a heart attackackackackackack. “On page 1217 of this article in the middle of the abstract, ‘3 monthsnthsnthsnthsnths of therapy’ should be ‘3 months of therapy‘.” (European Journal of Heart Failure)
- A journal says that it “discourages submissions from industry.” Hmm. Read more from Derek Lowe, In The Pipeline.
- One in five authors of German textbooks on anesthesiology, critical care, and emergency medicine had undisclosed conflicts of interest with makers of hydroxyethyl starch, a controversial compound, according to a new paper. (Christian Wiedermann, ZEFQ) The substance was at the center of research by the #2 author on our leaderboard.
- “Modern science is moving away from Michael Polanyi’s vision of ‘the Republic of Science’ and gradually becoming subordinate to political and economic social institutions.”
- “New COPE guidelines on publication process manipulation: why they matter.” (Jigisha Patel, Research Integrity and Peer Review)
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