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The week at Retraction Watch featured a profile of an image detective who works for free; our first Forensic Friday in which readers could hone their skills; and the story of the authors who retracted a paper so that they could publish it in a higher impact factor journal. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- The survey “shines a light on a practice that should be abandoned: “Ghostwritten peer reviews. (Beryl Benderly, Science)
- “Failure to report the results of clinical trials threatens the public’s trust in research and the integrity of the medical literature, and should be considered academic misconduct at the individual and institutional levels.” (Joshua Wallach, Harlan Krumholz, Annals of Internal Medicine)
- “Intimidation, bullying and ‘scientific sabotage’ are common among staff at Dutch universities and colleges,” say two new reports.
- “After all, time spent on manuscript hostage negotiations doesn’t count toward tenure.” How a researcher “became easy prey to a predatory publisher.” (Alan Chambers, Science)
- A retraction in PLoS ONE earns a correction.
- “But academic publishing remains disproportionately white, as South Africa struggles with the legacy of apartheid.” (Sarah Wild, Nature)
- “Thus, data sharing is the exception even in suitable research fields with relatively strong norms regarding data sharing.” (Thelwall et al, bioRxiv)
- “Editors expect referees to identify misconduct; referees seldom know about this…” A white paper on publication ethics in philosophy.
- You’ve heard of Improbable Research. Here’s impossible research.
- The “condensation revolution” begins as a journal mandates “a new, two-word title format.” (Collectively Unconscious)
- “Journals should consider ways to ensure computational reproducibility for publications that make claims based on computations, to the extent ethically and legally possible.” A new report from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
- “The study does not examine why some researchers resort to spin but Khan speculates it may be unconsciously done or reflect concerns that medical journals are less willing to publish studies with negative findings.” (Patrice Wendling, Medscape)
- When it comes to studies of apixaban, “This study found that 46% of all meta-analysis publications had conclusions altered by publications with falsified data…” (JAMA Internal Medicine)
- People of Hong Kong: Our Ivan Oransky will be speaking at the University of Hong Kong on June 6.
- “The crisis of predatory publishers sucking the blood of science:” ABC’s Science Friction talks to Beall, Bohannon, and Moher.
- “Why is plagiarism bad?” We understand why the authors of this piece included a section on that, but find it dispiriting that it’s necessary.
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