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Sending thoughts to our readers and wishing them the best in this uncertain time.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- The retraction of a paper claiming that aerosolized coronavirus spread much further than previously thought
- Two Elsevier journals that haven’t retracted papers a year after a university asked them to
- The retraction of a paper in Science on electromagnetics
- A Springer Nature journal that took four years to retract a plagiarizing paper
Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- “A scientific journal has published a correction from two authors who had previously penned a short report suggesting that the coronavirus had spread from a corpse — a highly unusual measure only taken after a Thai journalist contacted BuzzFeed News about the accuracy of the journal’s report.”
- “Coronavirus Is Forcing Medical Research to Speed Up.”
- “Compared to articles published in the same journals before the pandemic, turnaround times have decreased on average by 49%.”
- “People are dying from coronavirus because we’re not fast enough at clinical research.”
- “During the present COVID-19 omnishambles, I am afraid of us doing the above all over again, but faster.” Sit back and let James Heathers tell you a story.
- “A Number Of Coronavirus Studies Are Now Being Released. How Do We Gauge Their Validity?”
- “A Stanford University professor’s wife invited parents in a wealthy enclave of Northern California to sign up for her husband’s coronavirus antibody study this month, falsely claiming that an ‘FDA approved’ test would tell them if they had immunity and could ‘return to work without fear,’ according to an email obtained by BuzzFeed News.”
- “Small studies that build on basic science and preclinical research in early phases of drug development routinely generate signals of promise that are not confirmed in subsequent trials.” An argument “against pandemic research exceptionalism.”
- During the COVID-19 pandemic, “Editors of two journals say that they’re observing unusual, gendered patterns in submissions. In each case, women are losing out.”
- “Air pollution, COVID-19 and death: The perils of bypassing peer review.”
- “Today’s high-profile expert assertions can be disproven by tomorrow’s events.” “How not to lose the COVID-19 communication war.”
- “This Harvard Epidemiologist Is Very Popular on Twitter. But Does He Know What He’s Talking About?”
- A Swedish agency withdraws a report estimating how many in Stockholm will be infected with the coronavirus.
- “Research on covid-19 needs to be effective, efficient, and a help rather than a hindrance to clinicians, patients, and policy makers.”
- “COVID-19 lockdowns could lead to a kinder research culture,” argues Gemma Derrick in Nature.
- An ethics expert says COVID-19’s “influence on integrity could be more positive than negative.”
- “[K]vetching about rotten peer reviews has spawned Twitter accounts and even academic studies.” Bad peer reviews.
- A journal wins the first “This Image Is Fine” Award from Elisabeth Bik, for saying a problem wasn’t worth dealing with — then apparently changes its mind.
- JAMA has retracted and replaced a study claiming that patients at for-profit dialysis centers were much less likely to obtain kidney transplants.
- “[I]t seems to my inexpert eye that this article [on gaming] may have a few wrinkles that need ironing out.”
- “Our findings indicate that journal editors and reviewers should consider strict adherence to proper reporting guidelines to improve reporting quality and reduce waste.”
- “Despite their importance, FDA inspection reports are not proactively disclosed.”
- A researcher who was suspended from Kyoto University following a retraction from Science for misconduct has left his post permanently.
- “A fundraising email sent this week from suburban congressional candidate Jeanne Ives plagiarized a Chicago Tribune article about mail-in voting.”
- “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cannot block recipients of agency funding from participating on its science advisory boards,” a Federal judge has ruled.
- “In a notice now available on [India’s University Grants Commission] UGC website, the Commission says that reproduction of one’s own previously published work without citation is not acceptable.”
- A U.S. Supreme Court watcher finds a change to its citation style annoying.
- Google Scholar indexes a school lunch menu.
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