Weekend reads: ‘The obesity wars and the education of a researcher’; zombie research; hijacked journals

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Pulp fiction: Japanese university revokes two dentistry PhDs in case involving two dozen retractions
• Most of problematic articles flagged in Japanese university’s investigation remain uncorrected or unretracted nearly a year later
• An exercise in frustration: A researcher is impersonated
• ‘We apologize again for the inadvertent mistakes during the assembly of data due to our carelessness’
• Meta: An expression of concern quotes Retraction Watch

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 131.

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

• How one researcher’s work became the “target of an aggressive campaign that included insults, errors, misinformation, social media posts, behind-the-scenes gossip and maneuvers, and complaints to her employer.”
• Zombie research: “Together, the 20,000 papers in the [Retraction Watch Database] were cited in 95,000 articles after their retractions.”
• How to detect hijacked journals. For background on this issue, see posts by researcher Anna Abalkina.
• “Claim that Chinese team hid early SARS-CoV-2 sequences to stymie origin hunt sparks furor.”
• The Lancet adds conflict of interest information for Peter Daszak, who is embroiled in the “lab leak” debate.
• “Side-gigging as an editor taught me why academics are despised.” 
• “‘Ridiculous case’: Juror criticizes DOJ for charging scientist with hiding ties to China.”
• From publication to retraction in eight days.
• “How two graduate students uncovered a critical error in autism screening guidelines.”
• “How a sharp-eyed scientist became biology’s image detective.” A profile of Elisabeth Bik in The New Yorker.
• “Naomi Wolf attempted to block the publication of her error-strewn doctoral thesis for a further year after submitting it to the University of Oxford’s digital archive more than five years late.”
• OHSU settled a grant fraud case with the US government in 2018 for $1.3 million, Rise for Animals reports. The settlement is available here.
• “An external analysis of 15 years of stories [in Nature] finds men quoted more than twice as often as women.”
• “What if there were a way to automatically scan a manuscript for statistical errors while writing your manuscript?”
• “Open access at no cost? Just ditch academic journals.”
• “Review papers and the creative destruction of the research literature.”
• “There are currently 14,647 journals listed on Cabells’ Predatory Reports database.”
• “National Academy of Sciences ejects biologist Francisco Ayala in the wake of sexual harassment findings.”
• The results of an analysis “suggest ‘authorship inflation’ in letters published in scientific journals.”
• “Could the Surgisphere Lancet and NEJM Retractions Debacle Happen Again?” Yes.
• “Quality shines when scientists use publishing tactic known as registered reports, study finds.”
• “Questions have been raised with regard to missing or incomplete data, taxonomic identification of samples and the relationship between data published in this paper and another paper.” Another expression of concern for Denon Start.
• “Administrative Court annuls University’s ruling that Sinisa Mali plagiarized his doctoral thesis.”
• “We argue that, to an overwhelmingly degree, these research practices shape the reward and quality assurance system of science.”
• A public health official in Canada was rebuked for “failing to turn over to a Commons committee documents related to the the firing of two scientists.”
• A University of Kentucky researcher resigned before a vote to strip him of tenure.
• A book review about transgender issues is retracted from a skeptics’ site.
• “We find that a 30.8% of medical journal Editors-in-chief do not view the inclusion of patient partners as authors on manuscripts as appropriate.”
• “Last year I resigned in protest as an editor for a MDPI journal.” Diana Six explains her decision.
• Joyson, a U.S. company, says it has “found 1,000 cases of data falsification in seatbelt tests at two plants it acquired from former airbag maker Takata Corp.”
• “Washington State University to review claims of research misconduct” by a biotech CEO.
• “The Invisible Clothing of Peer Review.”
• “How does noise generated by researcher decisions undermine the credibility of science?”
• “Editor’s note: Unattributed material in guest columns.”
• “University of Arizona criticized over animal welfare violations, research misconduct.”
• In Japan, “a director-general gave instructions to falsify documents related to a questionable sale of state-owned land.”
• Scientific American removes an opinion piece on “Health Care Workers Call for Support of Palestinians” because it “fell outside the scope of Scientific American.”

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