Weekend reads: Ousted at MD Anderson; an “under-recognized variety of plagiarism;” a data thug rolls again

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The week at Retraction Watch featured revelations about a Harvard lab being investigated by federal officials; a researcher who blamed a dead colleague for plagiarism; and the retraction of a paper on mindfulness. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

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3 thoughts on “Weekend reads: Ousted at MD Anderson; an “under-recognized variety of plagiarism;” a data thug rolls again”

  1. It would have been nice if that Journal of Informetrics article about the effect of open access on research quality was an empirical study instead of a game theory analysis.

    It’s 2019. We recently had an unenforceable $50 million US court order against OMICS and predatory publishers are a problem so big Cabell’s is making money off keeping a list of them. We’ve had years of people pointing out the perils of pay-to-publish and editorial boards resigning over pressure to accept mediocre papers. Is it too much to ask that if you’re going to point out the obvious that you should be doing it with a bit of data?

  2. Senator Chuck Grassley wants to know “how foreign entities may influence taxpayer-funded research”.
    As a “foreign entity” publishing science, I can give this one to the senator for free: There are a number of us who will do all we can to influence research in our fields, anywhere and funded by anybody.

  3. The Stanford Daily article on the Stanford Medicine Dean’s Lecture event featuring GlaxoSmithKline CEO Emma Walmsley was captured in the WayBack machine:

    https://web.archive.org/web/20190417175253/https://www.stanforddaily.com/2019/04/17/glaxosmithkline-ceo-talks-pharmaceutical-industry-and-leadership/

    Unclear to me as yet why that report needed retracting. What is the Dean and/or GSK trying to hide??

    The web page for the Dean’s Lecture Series states:

    “The Dean’s Lecture Series is free and open to the Stanford community.”

    That doesn’t appear to be “off the record”. Since when is “free and open to the community” off the record??

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