Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.
Sending thoughts to our readers and wishing them the best in this uncertain time.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- More questions about a paper about hydroxychloroquine and COVID-19.
- More than 40 retractions or expressions of concern for papers that likely reported on organ transplants from executed prisoners in China.
- The tale of the secret publishing ban.
- A paper that plagiarized a paper that plagiarized — but isn’t being retracted.
Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- “This YouTuber Made Up A Name For A Body Part. It Ended Up In A Peer-Reviewed Medical Journal.”
- “We thank Big Bird from Sesame Street for comments on the manuscript. Several trained monkeys transcribed videos.” A predatory journal sting involving birds.
- “Unfortunately people in times of crisis forget that science is a proposition and a conversation and an argument.” Our Ivan Oransky talks to the New York Times about COVID-19 and speed limits.
- “China’s government has started asserting tight control over COVID-19 research findings.”
- Should researchers be wary of studies of coronavirus being done in China? It’s a mixed picture, according to a story in Denmark’s Weekendavisen quoting our Ivan Oransky.
- “Multinational commercial publishers control so much of the scholarly communication landscape that it is difficult to even entertain the idea of a time in which they do not dominate research dissemination. It’s hard to see the virus changing that.”
- The rush to publish during #COVID19: Our Ivan Oransky on CBC’s The National, along with Timothy Caulfield.
- “If the audience does not understand the underlying facts of a story, climate change skeptics or supporters of unproven COVID-19 therapies can present facts that support the outcome they want to support, sowing doubt and confusion.”
- “[T]he integrity of governmental decision-making is increasingly coming under pressure, risking harm to both patients and to the public confidence needed to respond effectively to this pandemic.”
- “Modern science has specialized, and peer review is pretty good when it functions inside a narrow community. Peer review is not good when you need to confront different bodies of knowledge with and against each other.”
- “Research integrity even more important for research during a pandemic,” says ENRIO.
- “Rapid Registered Reports initiative aims to stop coronavirus researchers following false leads.”
- “More than 3,700 researchers based at Australian institutions…as of mid-2019 appeared on the editorial boards of journals that are potentially predatory.”
- “The University of Michigan released recommendations Monday to overhaul policies that govern the dismissal of tenured faculty, includes elimination of severance pay when a faculty member is terminated for cause involving ‘moral turpitude or scholarly or professional misconduct.'”
- “President of Europe’s premier science funder resigns amid criticism that he neglected post.”
- An analysis finds “no evidence of systematic biases against women in reviews or editorial decisions,” but the authors stress caveats.
- A new paper concludes that “distributed peer review is statistically the same as a ‘traditional’ panel” when it comes to grant reviews.
- “Because if you come second, your study will most likely be rejected from your journal of choice for not being deemed novel. You will likely endure the protracted journey of finding a journal that will consider your work, or find yourself in need of adding more results to provide ‘sufficiently novel insight’. It doesn’t have to be like that. “
- “Time constraints are the most common reason researchers in developing countries turn to plagiarism, a survey of more than 700 researchers from low- and middle-income countries found.”
- “The problem, as I see it, is that we have difficulties with confirming conclusions that are in the literature, and while our negative results have value, they are difficult to publish. And there is a reason for this.”
- “In recent decades, the credibility of much of the evidence base for some of the most popular therapeutic and preventive interventions has been undermined by the identification of sponsorship bias.”
A reminder of a few Retraction Watch appearances in the media during the pandemic:
- “Quick retraction of a faulty coronavirus paper was a good moment for science.” (STAT)
- “The Science of This Pandemic Is Moving at Dangerous Speeds.” (WIRED)
- “Strong caveats are lacking as news stories trumpet preliminary COVID-19 research.” (Health News Review)
- “Science Communications In the Time of Coronavirus.” (On The Media)
- “What do hydroxychloroquine, ibuprofen and blood type have to do with coronavirus? Looking at the COVID-19 myths causing confusion.” (ABC Australia)
- Will “the race to uncover the mysteries of the [coronavirus]…lead to a torrent of ‘bad science‘”? Our Ivan Oransky speaks to Kenneth Cukier for The Economist’s Babbage podcast.
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