Weekend reads: A deluge of papers, reviewed in haste; a dog food study faces scrutiny; the trouble with research evaluations

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• The tale of why it’s so difficult to publish a critical letter
• A disappearing act
• An apology by an anesthesiology researcher for misconduct
• The temporary withdrawal of a COVID-19 “baby cage” study
• A cancer researcher being sued for $900,000 in unpaid legal fees

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 22.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

• “For example, at JAMA, from January 1 to June 1, 2020, more than 11 000 manuscripts were submitted, compared with approximately 4000 manuscripts submitted during the same period in 2019.”
• “In this analysis of full-length original investigations published in 16 medical journals, the median time from receipt to final acceptance of COVID-related articles was 8 times faster compared to non-COVID-related articles published in a similar time frame in the previous year.” An earlier preprint had similar findings.
• “Peer-Reviewed Scientific Journals Don’t Really Do Their Job.”
• Controversy swirls around a recent article about dog food.
• Science lifted the embargo early this week on a study of dog genetics after a news outlet broke it.
• A clarification in Nature.
• “Despite 13-year-old legislation intended to boost reporting, little has changed—a disservice to patients who took on the risks.”
• “With hundreds of predatory journals appearing and disappearing on a regular basis, researchers need to be vigilant in their approach to unfamiliar publishers.”
• “Institutions Pushing Back Against Removing PIs From Awards, Despite Harassment Findings.”
• “Does tweeting about research attract more citations?”
• It’s an honor to have our work cited in a paper whose title pays homage to Douglas Adams.
• “Of course it’s easier to stumble when the time is short. But I’m tired of hearing that everything was fine before the pandemic. Because it wasn’t.” (Danish)
• “Researchers may be tempted to attract attention through poetic titles…but would this be mistaken in some fields?”
• “We must all abandon the illusion that a single study will tell us the truth about a matter.”
• “Thus, the practice used to reward scientists and institutions in Ukraine probably does not encourage Ukrainian scientists to seek the optimal channel for the presentation of their research outputs. Instead, most Ukrainian scientists are trying to quickly publish as many papers as possible.”
• “[R]obust, rigorous replication efforts do not fail: they invariably succeed at strengthening our body of knowledge and moving science forward.”
• “Some articles get retracted. Some get withdrawn. What’s the difference?” asks Jeffrey Aronson in the BMJ.
• “Why was it canceled? It was canceled because the NIH was told to cancel it.”
• “In multivariate analysis, participants with higher academic rank, those who had a good level of English or who attended English courses and those who attended workshops in scientific writing were less tolerant toward plagiarism.”
• “An unusual lawsuit alleges scientific misconduct at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, one of the United States’s three nuclear weapons labs.”
• A former University of Colorado professor  diverted $700,000 meant for the university to his company, says an audit.
• “Despite its outsized reputation, peer review is no guarantee of useful knowledge or truth.”
• An archaeologist is suing a reporter who wrote about allegations of her misconduct for $18 million.
• Speed, COVID-19, and trust in science: A conversation with our Ivan Oransky. Ivan will be part of a panel at the 1st Virtual Session of the VI BRISPE on Thursday, July 2.
• Current faculty evaluation practices “may reinforce research practices that are known to be problematic while insufficiently supporting the conduct of better quality research and open science.”
• “In other words, current research assessments are inadequate and ignore practices which are essential in contributing to the advancement of science.”
• Another happy user discovers our Zotero integration. More here.

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