Weekend reads: A JAMA editor resigns; why correcting the record takes so long; focus on predatory journals

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Journal flags a dozen papers as likely paper mill products a year after sleuths identified them
• Authors retract Nature Majorana paper, apologize for “insufficient scientific rigour”
• Elsevier journals ask Retraction Watch to review COVID-19 papers
• Drug researchers retract two papers, one because “human stem cells were actually mouse stem cells”
• Supplement-selling doctor who ran afoul of FDA and state medical board up to 20 retractions

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 87.

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

• “Edward H. Livingston, MD, has resigned as deputy editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) after he and the journal faced significant backlash over a February podcast that questioned the existence of structural racism.”
• “Why does it take so long to resolve concerns about figures in scientific publications?” And a reaction from Dorothy Bishop: “What else is missing from all of this? Any sense of responsibility to other researchers and the general public.”
• “Indonesia should stop pushing its academics to chase empty indicators.”
• “With getting published seen as a fast track to gaining a professorship, it is no surprise that Malaysia has become a hunting ground for predatory journals.”
• A PhD thesis on predatory journals and “where research ought to be published.”
• “How problematic citing practices distort science.”
• A new editor in chief for PLOS ONE: Emily Chenette.
• “There have been 79 retractions from Nature since its founding in 1869, including eight last year…”
• “The pandemic has turned reviewers from gatekeepers into coaches, says Serge Horbach.”
• North Korea’s top academic institution, Kim Il-sung University, published more than 100 papers in international journals last year, according to a “propaganda outlet.”
• Some tips on dealing with the scientific literature.
• “Responsible Reporting of Suicide During COVID-19: The Role of Academic Publishing.”
• “A new analysis of scientific integrity policies in 32 nations has found widely varying standards and definitions for research misconduct itself…”
• “[R]egistered Reports have clearly led to a much larger proportion of negative results appearing in the literature — and may be one solution to achieve a more credible scientific record.”
• An extensive correction in the New England Journal of Medicine.
• “To Qualify as ‘Scientific,’ Evidence Has to Be Reproducible.”
• “Taiwan fines researcher for allegedly managing projects on Chinese mainland,” but the charges are contested.
• “Systems for assessing scientists’ work must properly account for a lost year of research – especially for female researchers.”
• “Can We Re-engineer Scholarly Journal Publishing?”
• “Why should we expect students (or anyone else) to distinguish between the remarkable concepts and achievements of science and the many crackpot ideas that circulate on social media?”
• A study of wine scores gets the “data thug” treatment.
• A correction in the Wall Street Journal about COVID-19 restrictions that will make you say, “Yay!”

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