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Sending thoughts to our readers and wishing them the best in this uncertain time.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- A retraction by a formerly high-profile researcher for “inadvertently misidentified” images;
- the tale of the zombie papers;
- recognition for a sleuth.
Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- “Responding to peer reviews is never fun. It’s harder when COVID-19 shuts down your lab.“
- “Journal publishers promote flexibility during COVID-19 pandemic.”
- The COVID-19 ‘Infodemic’: Here are some of the researchers stepping up to stop the spread.
- “Given the immense volume of research being undertaking on the pandemic, Mr Oransky said he’d be unsurprised if there was a new miscommunication or misunderstood claim every day.“
- “I think everything needs to be scrutinized beyond belief.” A look at coverage by the media of studies of coronavirus.
- Should professors turn a blind eye toward plagiarism during a pandemic?
- Oops. A retraction of a coronavirus press release.
- “Krishnakumar Pillai submitted an essay that was found to be almost 90 per cent copied from other people’s work. But when he was accused of plagiarism, he said it must have been as a result of the software he used to check his spelling.”
- In data up until 2013, “China stands out with the fastest retracting speed compared to other countries,” according to a new study.
- “The citation count of journals discontinued [from Scopus] for publication concerns, increases despite discontinuation.”
- Guest authors are plagiarists, says David Sanders.
- “After a detailed review by the Editor, we have decided to retract this article due to a legal dispute concerning the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS-8) which was adapted for use in this article.” Another paper falls to legal threats.
- Open access: “Supposed to change scientific publishing,” or “being corrupted by money anyway?”
- “The findings suggest that the five articles were likely fraudulent…” Reviewing high-profile retractions in criminology.
- “You see, we just wasted some time and money doing experiments based on a paper that was very exciting, and published in a journal with nice, soft pages. And it all turned to, um, excrement.”
- A look at retractions in dentistry.
- “Tweet counts do not seem to be useful for research evaluation purposes.”
- Synchronized editing: “A growing suite of tools allows teams of researchers to work collectively to edit scientific documents,” reports Nature.
- “Acceptance of the work in Publications of the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences (RIMS) — a journal of which Mochizuki is chief editor, published by the institute where he works at Kyoto University — is the latest development in a long and acrimonious controversy over the mathematicians’ proof.”
- “In 2005 the scientific misconduct case of a noted researcher concluded with, among other things, the retraction of 10 papers. However, these articles continue to be cited at relatively high rates.”
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