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The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- Four papers by Athira CEO earn expressions of concern
- Alzheimer’s diagnosis paper retracted for failure to disclose conflicts of interest, other issues
- Study comparing hydroxychloroquine and antiviral drug for COVID-19 retracted
- “[T]hese shit comments”: Author of a nonsense paper responds on PubPeer
- “Fabulous document”, “very helpful guidance”: Sleuths react to recommendations for handling image integrity issues
- Authors of a case report on COVID-19 in a prisoner say they ‘are unsatisfied with the quality of [their] work’
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 160. And there are now more than 30,000 retractions in our database.
Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):
- “The problem is not the preprint server, the problem is that nobody ever provides any context around it.” Our Ivan Oransky talks to the CBC about a now-withdrawn preprint about COVID-19 vaccines and myocarditis.
- Are citations really worth $100,000 each? Andrew Gelman digs in. This publisher says they’re worth just $6 each.
- “The lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are inherently unreliable.”
- “Telling it how it is: The need for plain language summaries in medical journals.”
- “Below are some other important null results and replications of late.”
- “It is as unscientific to blindly trust scientists as it is to dismiss them.”
- “Why the ‘Who’ of Peer Review is Important.”
- “Kim Eggleton on how using anonymity can create more diverse, equitable, and inclusive peer review.”
- “JNU Prof Files Defamation Suit Against Journalists, Seeks Rs 50 Lakh in Damages.”
- “Claudio Hetz’s mea culpa: ‘I failed in my role as an academic’ but ‘it was proven that there was no fraud, no article has been retracted.'”
- “A radiography student took his own life after being accused of plagiarism, an inquest has heard.”
- “Eggleton explains why some researchers are tempted to inflate their publication records using scams such as buying authorships on papers and peer-review manipulation.”
- Can preregistration “discourage p-hacking, but also result in even more detrimental faked studies?” That’s what this paper argues.
- A doctor says “he was unaware Athira…had used his name in a 2014 grant application for research now under scrutiny.”
- A JAMA Internal Medicine editorial argues that “authors’ conflicts of interest and undisclosed financial associations continue to be a vexing problem for medical journals.” The original study.
- “Our findings suggest that patients have expressed a need for a journal authenticator tool and that this tool may provide value to them.”
- “[I] provide evidence that women are less likely than men to author post-publication comments…”
- A look at “Three Decades of Peer Review Congresses” as the call for abstracts for the ninth such meeting goes out.
- “‘Health equity tourists’: How white scholars are colonizing research on health disparities.”
- “Toward Open Research: A Narrative Review of the Challenges and Opportunities for Open Humanities.”
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I feel like this thread is also worthy of reader attention
https://twitter.com/wtt_taylor/status/1441185350966120450?s=20
Holy crap, I can’t imagine how people got in the position of feeling so strongly about the ancient history of horse domestication.
Well, looks like the author of those tweets is co-author of this paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04018-9
So, I think he’ll be OK.
Shockingly, the article in STAT on “How white scholars are colonizing research on health disparities” was written by a white person.
How on earth can we ever make progress on these important issues if organizations like STAT refuse to racialize every editorial decision and writing assignment?
A lot of this stuff is just white people posturing for other white people. It’s not always about making progress.
I am really surprised how this has become a major concern in the last few years along with the other topic which i don’t wish to mention here. Has this been the case for many years/centuries? If at all, it would be nice if we are able to “edit” the history!
It’s always been there, but I think the dominance of identity politics has really peaked in the past 5 years in the US and other western countries. We used to talk about tolerance and equal opportunity, but now it’s about affirmation or celebration and at least equal outcomes (for identity groups other than white males and asians).
As for editing history, there are both retractions and “inclusive” name change policies for that. I don’t think they’re effective though.
Thanks for the reply. “as for editing history, there are both retractions…..” – yes, if they are recorded, you can retract but if it is practised knowingly, how you can you retract. I am not sure whether you know this or not, even in conferences, we (from the colonies of different colour) are being side-lined most of the time, can we go and fight? Even if we ask questions, they are not taken favourably. You can’t retract this behaviour right?
“the other topic” that cannot be named?
Are you sure Ushe is “white”?
Usha, not Ushe. And yes she seems to be white. It’s time to cancel these white health equity journalism tourists.
https://twitter.com/ushamcfarling
It’s really revealing how different the reactions to Usha’s tweet are, compared to the local newspaper troll-level comments here.
https://twitter.com/ushamcfarling/status/1440989426402803715
Ok, I’ll try again without sarcasm. It’s hypocritical and self-serving for a white journalist to write a story about how important it is to not have white people do research on racial disparities in health outcomes. As her own bio at STAT emphasizes, this is not her area of training as a researcher or her previous area of specialization as a journalist. She has simply colonized this area of journalism. By the internal logic of the people she interviews for STAT, Usha should be leaving this topic for Black journalists to pursue or she should at least be coauthoring these articles with a Black journalist.
” how important it is to not have white people do research on racial disparities in health outcomes.”
This did not appear anywhere in her article. You’re making up your own article based on your prejudices.
Nah.
“The paper [on racial disparities in health outcomes, by a white Stanford researcher] didn’t need a diverse group of authors from different backgrounds, she said [quoting Black trans physician and researcher Dr. Elle Lett]; it needed an author, or better yet, several, from the underrepresented group — Black physicians — under study. ”
https://www.statnews.com/2021/09/23/health-equity-tourists-white-scholars-colonizing-health-disparities-research/
And where in the quotation does it say that white people should not be doing this research?
Just in case you’re not aware, there is no limit on the number of co authors. Adding co authors doesn’t mean you have to remove other co authors.
Well, apologies for the typing error. Thing is, Usha has an Indian mother. It’s been some time since I have seen people from India referred to as “white”, but who knows, maybe I missed something and they have gone back to the all-over-the-place classification of the early 20th century.
Is it just me, or is it somewhat odd to be lectured on how to do peer review by Kim Eggleton, whose employer is responsible for a rather significant number of publications including ‘tortured phrases’? IOP’s record is nothing short of a disaster, and perhaps step one would be a long, hard, introspective look. A search for IOP publications on PubPeer should be enough to make anyone want to stop for a second.
I’m not singling out IOP here – Springer got burned relatively bad, and so has Elsevier. Wiley, to a lesser extent, has also been hit, and I am sure the rest aren’t entirely immune, either. Being a large publisher means this sort of crap just happens. We can’t always decide what happens to us, but we’re in charge of how we respond to it. What Eggleton and IOP owes the scientific community aren’t deep insights on diversity or peer review (much as I agree with her comments wholeheartedly, and completely concur that these are important points!), but a deep investigation of what went wrong, and what lessons could be learned from them. That would by far be the most important contribution, indicating both an awareness of the issue and adding to our knowledge of ways we can curb ‘tortured phrases’-based academic misconduct (I don’t know what the right term for that would be – it’s a weird mix of plagiarism, peer review manipulation and outright fraud).