Weekend reads: A week of whistleblower news, including what happens when one gets it wrong; questions about a widely covered study of men with guitar bags

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a request: Our co-founder Ivan Oransky is celebrating a birthday this coming week, and he’d like nothing more than a gift to Retraction Watch to support our work. Here’s your chance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured a psychology researcher who did the right thing; 15 retractions by journals because of questions about where organs came from; and a foiled paper on aluminum. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

• “The research lab, the promising cancer breakthrough and the whistleblower who discovered fake data.” And are whistleblowers welcome in Canada?
• “An anonymous whistleblower is claiming that UC San Diego, one of the top research universities in the world, is putting at risk thousands of people each year because it’s not following basic rules meant to protect human research subjects and values grant funding over safety.”
• What happens when a whistleblower gets it wrong?
• “An expected whistleblower complaint is the latest escalation in a fight between the…CDC…and its former head of climate work.”
• “Remember that music paper where women were more attracted to a guy with a guitar case than a sports bag?” Sam Mehr has some questions about it.
• “When so many email addresses on journal articles don’t work, we have a problem.”
• Louis Wozniak, a fired University of Illinois professor, has lost his court bid to be reinstated.
• “We have no idea how long it is between when they discover an error and when they retract. It may take decades.” A profile of Retraction Watch in O Globo.
• “Novartis dismissed the top two scientists at its gene therapy division shortly after [its] CEO…learned of internal data falsification,” STAT reports.
• “At Top Medical Journals, Women Are Gaining Ground — Slowly.” One major medical journal has never had a woman as an editor in chief.
• “Roughly two-thirds of the 398 medical faculty members who completed the survey are concerned about data fabrication, falsification, and other types of scholarly fraud…Medical faculty are more concerned about these issues than other faculty, as roughly 51 percent of scientists, 45 percent of social scientists, and 44 percent of humanists are concerned about data fraud and fabrication.”
• “The findings indicate that certain aspects of research integrity need elaboration among Chinese biomedical researchers. Participants had a vague understanding of general concepts related to research integrity.”
• “First, Pakistan’s medical universities are alien to the concept of research. Professors themselves violate research rules with impunity and the same malpractice trickles down to the student researchers. Garbage in, garbage out.” Why hundreds of doctors from Pakistan recently lost their jobs in Gulf states.
• “When I read an article, I often have the sinking feeling that the authors didn’t actually read some of the papers they are citing.”
• “The open-science movement is like the free press. It’s not perfect, but when it works it can be one of the few checks against powerful people and institutions.”
• A psychiatry publication bucks a trend, going from open access to subscription.
• “And Canada might have use for an equivalent of the United States’s independent Office of Research Integrity, which has the authority to investigate potential cases of misconduct and to publish its findings.”
• “Due to the publication of the article by the supervisor without the knowledge of a college student, this article is retracted.”
• The Society for Personality and Social Psychology “is now in a position where its journals have fallen far behind alternative outlets for social and personality psychology in regard to transparency, openness, and policies that foster replicability.”
• “What difference do retractions make?” A preprint takes a look at their effect on meta-analyses.
• “More detailed guidance on the inclusion/exclusion of retracted articles in systematic reviews is needed.”
• “A range of problems currently undermines public trust in biomedical research.” A new paper discusses “four erroneous beliefs” that may be contributing to a lack of focus on the need to maintain this trust.
• Could eye-tracking software help catch students cheating on exams?
• Some University of California scientists will resign from Cell editorial boards to protest an impasse between Elsevier and the university.
• “A new study points out that the eco-system of predatory journals is evolving cautiously to bypass standard methods used for their detection.” (Down To Earth)
• “Overall, our study indicates pulmonology research is currently lacking in efforts to increase replicability.”

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