Weekend reads: The Trump administration gets something right about science; a journal refuses a metaphor; should journals use Nazi science?

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The week at Retraction Watch featured an expression of concern following a journalist’s questions; a kind of plagiarism that software will miss; and researchers who blamed a ghostwriter for plagiarism. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

• The Trump administration may have just gotten something right about science, even if was for the wrong reasons, say our Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky in The Washington Post.
• A journal refuses to publish a paper because the “use of the fairytale Sleeping Beauty as a metaphor for ignored scientific work is culturally insensitive and in danger of being ‘sexualised’.”
• “Whether it is ever appropriate to use immorally acquired medical and scientific information remains an unsettled question in bioethics and medicine and for journals and publishers.” (Arthur Caplan, Surgery, on Nazi science)
• “Are there cross-cultural differences in plagiarism? Is it helpful—let alone fair—to try to generalize attitudes toward plagiarism across cultures?” (Diana Simon, SSRN)
• “The error was offensive, and it was an error of judgment to publish it.” The New York Times deletes a cartoon of Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog with a Star of David collar leading a blind skullcapped  Donald Trump.
• Matthew Cobb “explores the hidden world of prestige, profits and piracy that lurks behind scientific journals.” (BBC)
• “Many of Europe’s major research universities are ignoring rules thatrequire them to make public the results of clinical trials.” (Nature)
• A “data thug” is tired. “I do this job for no money, it takes takes ages, and has led some people to resent the fact that I breathe.” Earlier: Our profile of James Heathers and Nick Brown.
• “Confront fraudulent research before it spreads,” says John Ross, as an investigation into fishy fish research spreads. (Times Higher Education)
• “Around half of the researchers participating in a new survey haveadmitted ghostwriting referee reports on behalf of senior faculty.” (Dalmeet Singh Chawla, Physics Today)
• “Breaking with their 156-year history, members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) today voted overwhelmingly in favor of amending the elite organization’s bylaws to allow ejection of members who breach the group’s new Code of Conduct, which outlines offenses including sexual harassment.” (Meredith Wadman, Science)
• “We believe there is merit in considering more socially responsible criteria for ranking universities, and this could encourage better research practice internationally if such tables become as valued as the current quantity-focused tables.” (Adrian Barnett, David Moher, F1000Research)
• Rick Anderson finds Cabell’s blacklist of journals “to be a carefully crafted, honestly managed, and highly useful tool for libraries, faculty committees, and authors.” (The Scholarly Kitchen)
• “The National Institutes of Health, the U.S. government’s premier health research agency, isrefusing to allow two of its doctors to respond to government investigators…” (Wall Street Journal)
• “Data from a Korean study published online last September, indicating reduced risk for mortality or transplant with TDF versus entecavir, have been retracted and replaced, according to a letter in the April 25 issue of JAMA Oncology from two of the original paper’s authors.” (Molly Walker, MedPage Today)
• Germany’s Federal Family Minister Franziska Giffey plagiarized in her doctoral thesis, according to Vroniplag. (Der Spiegel)
• “A University of Tennessee journalism professor is disputing allegations he breached journalistic ethics by plagiarizing the words and conclusions of others in a report a conservative advocacy group paid him $115,000 to write.” (Jamie Satterfield, Knoxville News Sentinel) He and the group settled the case.
• “The ousted dean of Temple University’s business school on Thursday filed a $25 million lawsuit against the university and its president, charging that they had defamed him in various announcements about the rankings scandal.” (Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed)
• “A Winnipeg physician involved in a controversial stem cell research company has been barred from practising medicine for a year by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba.” (Karen Pauls, CBC)
• “Seven current and former female employees have sued officials at a global health institute that is part of the Mount Sinai Health System’s Icahn School of Medicine in New York City, claiming age and sex discrimination.” (Meredith Wadman, Science)
• “Papers should be published according to the merit of their scientific contribution, not the polish of their presentation, says Michael White.” (Nature)
• “Grant reviewers award lower scores to proposals from women than to those from men, even when they don’t know the gender of the applicant,” Holly Else reports. (Nature)
• “A long held belief in academia that scientific skill correlates with the prestige of a researcher’s doctoral institution does not stand up to scrutiny.” (Bradley van Paridon, Chemistry World)

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