Weekend reads: How many scientists commit misconduct?; science ‘moved beyond peer review during the pandemic’; Juul pays for entire journal issue

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• ‘They seem to mean business’: Cardiology journal flags papers cited hundreds of times
• Authors of widely panned study of masks in children respond to critics
• Researchers forfeit $10,000 award when paper’s findings can’t be replicated
• Critique topples Nature paper on belief in gods
• University terminates affiliation with researcher who had paper on COVID-19 vaccines retracted as mask study comes under scrutiny
• Nature corrects a correction on conflicts of interest in fish farming paper
• Publisher won’t retract most papers by chemist editor-in-chief who left university post under a cloud

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 139.

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

• Eight percent of Dutch researchers who responded to a survey admitted to falsification or fabrication.
• “How Science Moved Beyond Peer Review During The Pandemic.”
• A high-profile Nature Chemical Biology paper is retracted.
• Juul paid $51,000 to have an entire issue of a journal “devoted to publishing 11 studies funded by the company.” And more on Juul and publishing, from 2019.
• The “Fake Science Crisis, and [how] AI Is Making It Worse: Journals are retracting more and more papers because they’re not by the authors they claim to be.”
• “Predatory journals undermining PhD by publication route.”
• “What happens when you find your open access PhD thesis for sale on Amazon?”
• “Jourchain: using blockchain to avoid questionable journals.”
• “A racist scientist built a collection of human skulls. Should we still study them?”
• “What an Editor Learned After a Journal Paper Was Deemed Insensitive.”
• “The antivirals that weren’t: drug repurposing for COVID-19 produced misleading results.”
• “Flawed data led to findings of a connection between time spent on devices and mental health problems.”
• “References and Citations: Are we doing it right?”
• “COVID-19 affects men and women differently. So why don’t clinical trials report gender data?”
• “RETRACTED: ‘Special groups’ who may apply for the Covid-19 vaccine circular.”
• “Over the past five years the number of inquiries to the Administrative Office of the OeAWI [Austria’s Commission for Research Integrity] has increased continually and reached a historic high (61 inquiries) in 2020.”
• “AMA announces search committee for new JAMA editor in chief.”
• How much of an impact do retracted studies have on meta-analyses? A new study tries to answer that question.
• “Errors in meta-analysis should be corrected in ‘Critical appraisal for low-carbohydrate diet in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: Review and meta-analyses.'”
• A faculty senate committee at Stanford recommends expanding the university’s legal protections for professors who speak out.
• “Beware performative reproducibility,” warns Stuart Buck. (Disclosure: Our parent non-profit was part of Buck’s portfolio at Arnold Ventures.)
• “Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?” asks Richard Smith.
• “Are academic articles written by men and women in high-impact medical journals cited differently?” Yes, says study in JAMA Network Open.

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