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:
- the retraction of a French study on hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19
- the retraction of a well-publicized study from a JAMA journal about physician burnout
- a tenth retraction for an associate vice president of research
- another whodunit
How many papers about COVID-19 have been retracted?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:
- In a survey of about 600 faculty, “A specific type of authorship fraud—gift authorship—was perceived to be the most prevalent overall. The least common fraud was a form of data fabrication (i.e., creating data from a study that was never actually conducted).”
- Hamsters, cats, dogs, and other fake authors: Researchers take a look at “Civil disobedience in scientific authorship: Resistance and insubordination in science.”
- Despite being found to have committed research fraud, a doctor regains her medical license. Background here.
- “Are women publishing less during the pandemic? Here’s what the data say.”
- “Ruin a journal name by changing one letter.” Go ahead.
- When it comes to finding “incorrect nucleotide sequence reagents in biomedical papers,” asks a new paper, “To what extent does the leading publication format impede automatic error detection?”
- “But one of the biggest things that people [in the media] could do to improve would be to recognize that scientific studies, especially in a fast-moving situation like this, are provisional. That’s the nature of science.”
- “Several retracted publications and retraction notices failed to adhere to The Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines in the handling of full-text (retain with a watermark or note) or stating the underlying reasons for the retraction.” Retractions in rehabilitation and sports sciences journals.
- “I read your new idea that you shared on Slack this morning and I’ve been doing my best all afternoon to break it.”
- “I look at peer review as an independent analysis. It’s like a quality control.”
- “In a new course this fall, students will create and study the history of digital fakes.” Perhaps Elisabeth Bik could be a guest lecturer.
- “With the recent appointment of an HHS leader as its permanent director and a former Johns Hopkins misconduct official to another key post, the HHS Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has a full complement of permanent leaders for the first time since 2016.”
- “They redesigned PubMed, a beloved website. It hasn’t gone over well.”
- “Demonising researchers who publish their code discourages openness, say Neil Chue Hong and Simon Hettrick.”
- “Well, the issue here is that we’re beginning to see that scientific papers reproduce at a rate lower than expected. In psychology, economics, and some parts of medicine and biology, we’re learning that about 60% of the papers do not replicate.”
- “Post-pandemic, I expect that the use of preprints will continue to steeply rise, and with it we might see more services that review or curate preprints.” Also: “Scientists are drowning in COVID-19 papers. Can new tools keep them afloat?”
- “Confirmation bias is a risk within the scientific community; it is positively rampant in the broader public.” Should preprints be made public? asks the Grumpy Geophysicist.
- “A deluge of poor quality research is sabotaging an effective evidence based response,” say leaders in evidence-based medicine.
- Coronavirus “Pushes Science And Its Controversies Centre Stage,” writes Stéphane Orjollet at AFP.
- “Rock samples aren’t archived or shared. They need to be, geologists warn, pointing to a ‘reproducibility crisis.’” (Washington Post)
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