Weekend reads: An apology from JAMA; a call to retract COVID-19 ayurveda paper; the treasure that was a hoax

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• “I absolutely stand by the validity of the science” says author of energy field paper now flagged by journal
• What happened when a group of sleuths flagged more than 30 papers with errors?
• “The right decision”: Group retracts Nature Chemical Biology paper after finding a key error
• Legal researcher who claimed false affiliation up to 31 retractions
• University of New Mexico investigation finds manipulated data and images, prompts retractions
• University of Tennessee investigation finds manipulated images in Science paper
• An author loses a fifth paper because it “bears the hallmarks of plagiarism”

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 86.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

• “JAMA apologizes and deletes tweet that questioned racism in medicine.”
• “A Conflict of Interest Mars the Coronil Paper – and It Should Be Retracted.”
• Frontiers removes a paper on ivermectin and COVID-19. It’s not the first time they said a controversial paper was only “provisionally accepted.”
• “Critics slam letter in prestigious journal that downplayed COVID-19 risks to Swedish schoolchildren.”
• “This ‘treasure’ rewrote California history. It was an elaborate hoax.”
• “Researcher broke embargo to leak BMJ paper to Trump administration.”
• “Most citations are rubbish.”
• On “the influence of administrative power in Chinese academia on researchers’ publication activity, their selection of co-authors,” and their topics.
• “For authors seeking guidance on how to reuse their previously published material appropriately, resources are limited — and problematic.”
• “Is peer review the way forward?”
• “Assessment of transparency indicators across the biomedical literature: How open is open?”
• “Most vaccine clinical trials fail to report data on participants’ ethnicity or race.”
• “Women and Global South strikingly underrepresented among top‐publishing ecologists,” according to a new analysis.
• A professor demoted for plagiarism says she has been framed.
• “Ten principles for generating accessible and useable COVID‐19 environmental science and a fit‐for‐purpose evidence base.”
• “The publication ‘pandemic’: Another new normal?”
• ClinicalTrials.gov “has a new feature where if you search for stem cell-related trial listings a cautionary box pops up.”
• “The $450 question: Should journals pay peer reviewers?”
• “How the business of academic journals stifles scientific research and penalises researchers with limited resources.”
• “The Use and Abuse of Science.” Our Ivan Oransky appears on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking podcast.

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