Weekend reads: It’s not all publish or perish?; plagiarism hunters; controls on ‘gain of function’ research weaken

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Readers puzzle over marketing journal’s failures to retract
• Doing the right thing: Co-authors of researcher who covered up data fakery retract paper
• Journal retracts more articles for being “unethical, scientifically flawed, and based on racist ideas and agenda”
• Second time’s the charm: The author who requested a retraction twice
• Biotech’s data supporting Alzheimer’s trials under scrutiny
• Guest editor says journal will retract dozens of inappropriate papers after his email was hacked

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 151.

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

• “Interviews with academic leaders almost uniformly referred to critically important factors that were considered to be more important in the hiring process than funding or publishing in high-profile journals.”
• “Politicians vying to succeed Angela Merkel…face a new threat as the election draws nearer: scrutiny by plagiarism hunters.”
• “Controls on ‘gain of function’ experiments with supercharged pathogens have been undercut despite concerns about lab leaks.”
• “The replication crisis fueled the open-science movement, which doesn’t mean that plenty of lousy science doesn’t still slip past peer review — just read Retraction Watch if you want evidence of that — but it does mean that studies that once would have generated applause now don’t pass muster.”
• “While an all-round manuscript check could make the lives of researchers easier, once they have finalised their paper, the question remains: Is the science accurate?”
• “Excel autocorrect errors still plague genetic research, raising concerns over scientific rigour.”
• “Leading light of research replicability Daniel Lakens says ‘uncomfortable questions’ and tough choices are required to restore trust in science.”
• “What role should non-academics have in evaluating the potential impact of new research projects?”
• “Best Practices and Innovative Approaches to Peer Review in Africa.”
• “What should you do when you get a result that seems wrong, but you can’t find any problems in the underlying data or calculations?”
• “Researchers around the world have been pressured by government agencies to delay, alter, or not publish the findings of trials that investigate public health interventions, a small study has reported.”
• “WHO Covid database has many ‘dodgy journals’, 70 papers are by Indians.”
• “Scientists Correct Study That Limited Some Female Runners.” And a take from Roger Pielke, Jr.
• “Penn Medicine apologizes for” dermatologist Albert Kligman, a “notorious doctor who conducted experiments on Holmesburg Prison inmates.”
• “Pandemic upends norms around peer-reviewed studies.”
• “‘China’s Dr Fauci’, Zhang Wenhong, cleared of thesis plagiarism accusations.”
• “Analysis suggests highly cited [COVID-19] papers could double [impact factors] JIFs of some general medical journals.”
• “Scientific fraud vs. art forgery (or, why are so many scientific frauds so easy to detect?)”
• “The U.S. Is Getting a Crash Course in Scientific Uncertainty.”
• “Australian Research Council under pressure after funding rule angers academic community.”
• “What to do if you’re asked to remove a citation to a preprint.” A guide from ASAPbio.
• “Poll results: here’s what (some) ecologists think about retracting old and superseded papers.”
• “Also, the temporal evolution of the team size reveals that teams smaller in size have more retractions.”
• “I meant to say the spring of 2022,” Fauci told CNN. “I misspoke. My bad.”

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