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The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- Nanoscience researcher loses four papers for image manipulation, forged authors
- Authors earn praise — but a “poorly worded” retraction notice — for flagging their errors
- Why duplicate publications matter: A retraction notice goes above and beyond
- Researchers tried to correct a figure after questions on PubPeer. Then the real trouble started.
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 38.
Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Scholarly Research Integrity.”
- A paper claiming that amulets may prevent COVID-19 will be retracted, says the author. Earlier, he said criticism of his work was racist. More from Jonathan Jarry.
- “How claims of voter fraud were supercharged by bad science.”
- “Redesign open science for Asia, Africa and Latin America,” says Sandersan Onie.”
- “The current peer review system chews up and spits out authors – where reviewers are acting more as gatekeepers for publishers than as advising peers.”
- “Improper publishing incentives in science put under microscope around the world.”
- “What does it mean to say ‘I’m in favor of diversity’ when you haven’t even reckoned with what the state of diversity is in your own institution?”
- What’s the role of petitions in science during the COVID-19 era? asks John Ioannidis.
- “While some academics have called for compensation for assessing other scientists’ work, publishers haven’t warmed to the idea.”
- “What’s the ‘greatest’ scientific fraud of all time?” asks Jeremy Fox.
- “The discredited doctor hailed by the anti-vaccine movement: Riveting biography of Andrew Wakefield is a cautionary lesson in the legacy of hubris.” Read an excerpt here.
- Why are papers from Iran retracted? “Plagiarism, Fake Peer-Review, and Duplication,” says a new study.
- How students in Malaysia made integrity training “fun and relevant.”
- “Academic Publishing in Nepal during the COVID-19 crisis.”
- Cabells, which publishes a database of predatory journals, offers an A to Z of the phenomenon.
- Reopen the investigation into allegations of misconduct by Hans Eysenck, argues a new paper.
- Pop star “Hong Jin Young’s label has released an official statement on allegations she plagiarized master’s thesis.”
- “A small clinical trial of a gene therapy for…a rare genetic condition related to autism — is on hold” for safety concerns.
- “I have withdrawn the Opinion article “France’s dangerous religion of secularism” from the @POLITICOEurope site as it does not meet our editorial standards.”
- “We have decided to retract this article. We cannot attest to the trustworthiness and credibility of the author, and therefore we cannot attest to the veracity of the article.” A retraction plays out in real time at The Atlantic.
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