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:
- A study finding no evidence of racial bias in police shootings earns a correction that critics call an “opaque half measure”
- Doing the right thing: Researchers retract clinician burnout study after realizing their error
- The circle of life, publish or perish edition: Two journals retract more than 40 papers
- “[I]t took a long time for the scientific community to realize that he was simply making things up”
How many papers about COVID-19 have been retracted? We’ve been keeping track, as part of our database. Here’s our frequently updated list.
Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- “If you look at her trajectory, it’s this kind of trajectory that we have seen at Retraction Watch, when someone tries to flip the script. ‘No, it’s not that my research was flawed, and that I was wrong, it’s this big conspiracy theory again.’” More: Who is Judy Mikovits?
- “Thomas F. Khairy was on a school bus with his classmates, returning from seeing a play in early March, when he received the message confirming that he was going to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The 15-year-old couldn’t tell anyone around him, as the news was under embargo.”
- “Even in light of expedited publication, it is important to remember that “the role of the journal is to say: ‘This has been fairly peer-reviewed, statistically reviewed, and can be relied on,’ rather than, ‘This is coming out at you as fast as it possibly can.’””
- “Three changes that journals have made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic with potentially lasting effects on the research publishing industry.”
- “COVID-19 has reinforced the importance of preprints as an indispensable means for rapid research dissemination,” says a journal.
- “A review of the current concerns about misconduct in medical sciences publications and the consequences.”
- EU officials say that “a young Greek researcher had defrauded the European Research Council Executive Agency of about €190,000.”
- “Scientific work in times of Corona.”
- “A scientist’s career is not a smooth arc but rather a series of thresholds and deadlines, some more deadly than others.”
- A researcher says enough is enough review requests.
- “Despite [peer review’s] critical importance, it curiously remains poorly understood in a number of dimensions.”
- “Psychology research on COVID-19, we argue, is unsuitable for making policy decisions.”
- “[T]he rush to publish findings quickly in the midst of the crisis does little for the public and harms the discipline of social science.”
- “Speed can be a good thing, if researchers understand the context. But it also means that reporters eager for scoops are seizing on what sound like important and impressive findings that are likely to soon be meaningless.”
- Is the coronavirus pandemic moving peer review to Twitter? asks Justin Fox.
- “Scientific research on the coronavirus is being released in a torrent. Will that change how science is published?”
- “Do Tenure and Promotion Policies Discourage Publications in Predatory Journals?”
- “Now, one start-up company says that its platform — called Scite.ai — can automatically tell readers whether papers have been supported or contradicted by later academic work.”
- “South Australia’s corruption watchdog is investigating allegations of improper conduct by University of Adelaide vice-chancellor Peter Rathjen, and the university’s handling of the allegations.”
- “Statisticians win $20 million to address shoddy forensic science methods.”
- “Errors in Meta-Analysis Should Be Corrected.”
A reminder of 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.
- “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.
- 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.
- The rush to publish during #COVID19: Our Ivan Oransky on CBC’s The National, along with Timothy Caulfield.
- “You’re seeing papers published in the world’s leading medical journals that probably shouldn’t have even been accepted in the world’s worst medical journals.” Our Ivan Oransky speaks to Mother Jones.
- To change your understanding, or to change your behavior, based on a single study, is a mistake.” Our Ivan Oransky talks to PRI’s The World about COVID-19.
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