Weekend reads: Museum director sues after suspension; Nobelist ’embroiled in research scandal;’ spider biologist lawyers up after retractions

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• a three-part series on what happened when some researchers tried to correct the sports science literature;
• a story of how flawed science involving panthers led to policy decisions;
• a journal that declined to retract a retraction.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

• “Michigan State University Museum Director Mark Auslander is suing MSU and three people he claims retaliated against him after he revealed decades of financial mismanagement.” The story begins here.
• “A stem cell company co-founded by the leading geneticist Professor Sir Martin Evans conducted unlawful medical trials in Greece.”
• “Now, Pruitt acknowledges in a new interview that a lawyer he hired has sent several journal editors and co-authors letters cautioning them about airing this matter on social media and admonishing them to follow retraction guidelines set up by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).” A researcher whose work is being questioned by colleagues — and some of which has been retracted — lawyers up.
• A paper on treating coronavirus with traditional Chinese medicine “promised much more than it delivered.”
• A Harvard professor sues the school, “citing a dispute concerning his employment contract” — aka a tenure denial.
• “Wow, that was rough. My dad just found out that my lab has run out of research funding,” Dr Saunders wrote.
• “Luckily,” says biotech founder Sarah Richardson of prestige publishing, “I don’t give a crap about that.”
• “A former West Virginia University professor admitted to a fraud charge…” Lewis was employed by the People’s Republic of China’s “Global Experts 1000 Talents Plan.”
• “Scientists Say Another Panic-Fueling Vaping Study Needs to Be Retracted: A paper that claimed vapes are a gateway to cigarettes relied on faulty methodology, experts say.”
• “Hundreds of scientists who post their peer-review activity on the website Publons say they’ve reviewed papers for journals termed ‘predatory’, an analysis has found.”
• “Equating citations with impact thus underestimates the impact of highly cited papers. Real citation practices thus reveal that citations are biased measures of quality and impact,” argues a new preprint.
• “The best research is done not when we pretend that we are perfectly objective, but when we acknowledge that we are not.”
• Why are hundreds of papers retracted every year? Our Ivan Oransky talks to BYU Radio.
• Remember, folks — particularly journalists covering journal studies — it’s weird embargo time season.
• PNAS lifted the embargo early on Friday of last week on a paper because the corresponding author’s institute posted a press release days before the embargo was scheduled to lift.
• What is “white hat bias?” David Allison explains.
• “[Q]uality of reporting in preprints in the life sciences is within a similar range as that of peer-reviewed articles, albeit slightly lower on average, supporting the idea that preprints should be considered valid scientific contributions.”
• “But for more normal journals, how poisonous is suggesting reviewers?”
• “For three years, part of DARPA has funded two teams for each project: one for research and one for reproducibility. The investment is paying off.”
• “[T]he overall quality and originality of published academic research can be improved by introducing randomness into the peer review process,” argue two researchers.
• “Imagine your excitement when you receive your first email inviting you to present your esteemed article in Rome. Is this invitation a dream come true or predatory?”
• “Enforced, structured reporting and processes to assess relevance are required to make conflict of interest disclosures fit for purpose.”
• “Editor’s note: Retraction and apology for racist op-ed illustration choice.”

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