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The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- A retraction — and a lawsuit — for the “Prince of Panspermia“
- A disavowal — but not a retraction — of a paper on intelligent design
- A retraction from Science after authors blame the pandemic for image problems
- The retraction of a 30-year-old paper in a physics journal decrying feminism
- A demand letter sent to Retraction Watch
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 35.
Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- “How One Prominent Journal Went Very Wrong.” (Chronicle of Higher Education)
- “The Lancet’s Cutting Edge: Should medical journals enter the political realm?”
- “Most papers in this journal are not accessible and the Editorial Board consists mostly of deceased people.”
- “For Elisabeth Bik, a ‘paper mill’ is ‘arguably a laboratory, or at the very least a commercial company, which sells items for money.'”
- “I cannot express how incredibly uncontroversial it is to ask for money to perform skilled work.” On being paid to peer review.
- Tracey Bretag, a well-known figure in research integrity, has died.
- “Journals’ English copy-editing services are inadequate and unethical,” argues Brian Bloch in Times Higher Education.
- “How we formed a ‘journal club’ for equity in science.”
- A chapter from a new book on concerns “that myths or half-truths can spread rapidly through the scientific literature.”
- “How much damage do retracted papers do to science before they’re retracted, and to whom?” Jeremy Fox takes a look on Dynamic Ecology.
- Take a listen: Our Ivan Oransky appears on the Data Skeptic podcast.
- “Reprimand for ‘p-hacking’ is ‘important moment’ for science.” More details here.
- A journal reverses it decision to reject a paper by a researcher who used “Israel” in the address of her university despite it being in a settlement.
- “Frauds in scientific research and how to possibly overcome them.” A look at retractions in the wake of COVID-19.
- What happens when bots and other bad actors end up as participants in clinical trials?
- “Efficient Scientific Self-Correction in Times of Crisis.”
- “Pressure to publish forces Chinese to rethink childbearing.”
- “Crowd authoring, the gaming of the system, predatory publishing, unethical and racist research, and the ever-absent reviewer are all examples of what goes on behind the scenes in academic publishing.”
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Yes pay us for peer review – but since its a professional duty, pay us in tangible lab support. That would be less ethically fraught, and for me at least, would be far more motivating – its a shortage of lab funds, not personal funds, that keeps me awake at 3AM.
Would Richard Horton have been so quick to publish a study in the Lancet decrying the safety of HCQ had it been President Obama taking it? I think not.
Accusations of hypocrisy that are based on someone’s hypothetical behaviour in an alternative universe are not very convincing.
“Accusations of hypocrisy that are based on someone’s hypothetical behaviour in an alternative universe are not very convincing.”
Well. They are not very convincing of the truth of the accusations of hypocrisy. They are often at least somewhat convincing of various hypotheses about the actual behavior, in this universe, of the unconvincing accuser!