Weekend reads: The fate of fraudsters; TV doctors sting a predatory journal; best paper title ever?

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• A whistleblower’s allegations about hundreds of dodgy papers from four groups
• The retraction of 20 book reviews by a PhD student for plagiarism
• The retraction of a highly cited Science paper
• A professor’s departure after retractions for data anomalies
• A ban on federal US funding for a researcher who has received more than $17 million in grants

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 31.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

• “What happens to serial scientific fraudsters after they’re discovered?” Jeremy Fox takes a look, based on our leaderboard.
• ‘Frasier Crane’ and colleagues sting a predatory journal — in a ‘study’ of journal editors.
• “Someone has been waiting their entire career to use this pun…” Another nomination for best paper title ever?
• “Journals independent of large commercial publishers tend to have less hierarchically structured processes, report more flexibility to implement innovations, and to a greater extent decouple commercial and editorial perspectives.”
• “Why unethical papers should be retracted.”
• “Just as lab scientists are not allowed to handle dangerous substances without safety training, researchers should not be allowed anywhere near a P value or similar measure of statistical probability until they have demonstrated that they understand what it means.”
• A look at the “remarkable growth” of publisher MDPI. Here’s a selection of our coverage of issues in their journals.
• “Seventeen of the senior-most officials at Russian universities, known as rectors, have published plagiarized papers in international predatory journals, according to a new report.”
• Is this a way to detect coercive citations? Related coverage by Nature.
• “[T]he realisation that the research climate is suboptimal should provide the impetus for change,” say authors of a study.
• “Institutional Approaches to Research Integrity in Ghana.”
• “Georgia Tech scientist gets lighter sentence in fraud case because of her work on coronavirus.”
• Is this a way for journal editors and co-authors to check for fudged data?

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