Weekend reads: #MeToo in a political science journal; 15 articles that challenged dogma in 2018; an entire editorial board resigns

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The week at Retraction Watch featured a sixth retraction for a researcher cleared of misconduct; a retraction for “something that we have never seen before in any study;” and two retractions that took more than four years. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

• “He Denied Sexual Harassment Allegations In An Academic Journal. Now Two Universities Have Found Against Him.” (Peter Aldhous, BuzzFeed) Background about a #metoo moment in political science here.
• From dairy to diabetes, here are 15 articles that challenge the prevailing wisdom, or dogma, from 2018. (Eric Topol, Medscape)
• The entire editorial board of an Elsevier journal “resigned Thursday in protest,” reports Lindsay McKenzie. (Inside Higher Ed). More from Nature.
• “The patient died in January 2014. The article was published in April 2014 but does not mention this fact.” Another retraction for Paolo Macchiarini, this one from Biomaterials.
• “Is it Time to Revise the Definition of Research Misconduct?” asks David Resnik. (Accountability in Research sub req’d)
• “It is difficult to undertake scientific research, yet alone give convincing evidence-based advice to policy makers, if expert statistical bodies cannot agree on counts of child deaths and populations in advanced countries.” (Rigby et al, The Lancet)
• “Research ethics and integrity has become one of the top strategic priorities in doctoral education in Europe,” according to a new report. (Brendan O’Malley, University World News)
• “Additional issues were raised regarding the methodology and interpretation of the data.” An extensive retraction notice from PLOS ONE.
• “Research funders are being ‘taken for a ride’ by publishers who launch new so-called mirror journals that mimic existing titles in an open-access format, according to the man spearheading an international effort to make more scholarship freely available.” (David Matthews, Times Higher Education)
• Findings of a new study “suggest that open peer review does not compromise the process, at least when referees are able to protect their anonymity.” (Nature Communications)
• Websites like ResearchGate and Academia.edu “pit scientists against each other in a global game of measurement and mentions,” say Alexandra Lippman and Christopher Kelty.
• “Mixed Realities, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality in Scholarly Publishing: An Interview with Markus Kaindl and Martijn Roelandse.” (Alice Meadows, The Scholarly Kitchen)
• A retraction in PLOS ONE earns a correction when an author changes her mind about whether she agreed with the move. It was one of a pair. And here’s the background on the case, which led to one scientist’s departure from a university.
• “Scientists, for example, could be scaled on behaving like chimpanzees or bonobos,” suggests a study. (Scientometrics)
• “The University of The Bahamas has fired Professor Felix Bethel,setting the stage for a potentially ugly legal battle.” (Rashad Rolle, Tribune 242)
• A university wants a U.S. Federal court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a disciplined philosophy professor. (Mark Shaffer, Ironton Tribune)
• Slovakia Parliament Speaker Andrej Danko copied large parts of his thesis from the work of other authors, but his alma mater won’t say “plagiarism.” (Slovak Spectator)
• “A new analysis of biomedical awards over five decades shows men receive more cash and more respect for their research than women do.” (Uzzi et. al., Nature)
• A former researcher at the University of Malaysia is up to six retractions. Background here; full retraction count here.
• “Journal websites often do not contain information about reviewer selection, review criteria, blinding, the use of digital tools such as text similarity scanners, as well as policies on corrections and retractions.” A group of researchers wants to change that.
• “A Beginner’s Guide to the Peer Review System,” courtesy of Carolyn Trietsch. (Inside Higher Ed)
• South Africa “now awards roughly US$7,000 for each research paper published in an accredited journal.” (David William Hedding, Nature)
• “EU regulators based a decision to relicense the controversial weedkiller glyphosate on an assessment plagiarised from industry reports, according to a report for the European parliament.” (Arthur Neslen, The Guardian)
• “The simple fact is that editorial boards and publishers will, from time to time, have differences of opinion on the future operation and direction of a journal.” (Tom Reller of Elsevier responds to a recent mass resignation)
• “Chinese reviewers: sign up for unique IDs, please.” (Cristina Muñoz-Pinedo, Nature)
• “We evaluate which journals have published the most preprints, and find that preprints with more downloads are likely to be published in journals with a higher impact factor.” (Abdill and Blekhman, bioRxiv)
• “So I decided to order a paper,” says Kelly. “And I have to say I’m not entirely surprised by what I got.” (Anna Dodd, The Martlet)
• “The corrected results based on reanalysis include fewer events and, probably because of the exclusion of events rejected by the end points committee, the estimated treatment effects are slightly enhanced.” (NEJM)
• What does hippopotamus sauce have to do with sharpshooters? A debate on preregistration.
• A paper about the potential health risks of living near cell towers was retracted for “overlap” with a previous study.
• “Suppose someone offers me a shit sandwich. I’m not gonna want to eat it. My problem is not that it’s a sandwich, it’s that it’s filled with shit.” (Andrew Gelman)
• Don’t replace one problem with another, a group of editors tells Wiley over plans to switch their journal to open access based on article processing charges. Background here.
• India’s government “has decided to remove a clause in the draft clinical trials rules that mandate the sponsor (the entity initiating the trial) to pay 60% of compensation upfront in case of death or permanent disability of the patient, in a major relief for pharmaceutical companies.” (Teena Thacker, Live Mint)