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The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- Nanotech paper retracted for duplicated images
- Group’s second paper on potential treatments for COVID-19 is retracted
- University of Glasgow ‘in discussions to retract’ seven papers, confirming Retraction Watch reporting
- Highly cited cancer immunologist “seriously breached” research conduct code: Australia institute
- Journal mulls expression of concern for Cassava Sciences paper
- Author who squats on domains to fake affiliations and added Wolf Blitzer as a co-author up to a dozen retractions
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 192. There are now more than 31,000 retractions in our database — which now powers retraction alerts in EndNote, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately?
Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):
- A Q&A with the corresponding author of a study of nepotism in journals. (We peer-reviewed the study.)
- “A leading UK law journal has been accused of failing to guard against bias by not introducing anonymous review practices, amid concerns that Oxbridge-linked authors are ‘grossly over-represented’ in the publication.”
- “Question the ‘lab leak’ theory. But don’t call it a conspiracy.” Our Ivan Oransky in Knowable.
- “Misconduct in Bioscience Research: a 40-year perspective” from a former Harvard Med School dean.
- The UK Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee is holding an inquiry on reproducibility and research integrity, and 88 organizations have submitted written evidence. Our Ivan Oransky is presenting oral evidence to the inquiry on December 1.
- “Publishers can do more to address peer review fatigue.”
- “We need more patient and public reviews on research papers—and the resources to do so,” argue Dana Lewis and Emma Doble in The BMJ.
- “Third, even eminent scientists make mistakes, and one of the great things about the ethos of science is that it cares about the truth, not the reputation of those pursuing it.”
- “Peer review for academic jobs and grants continues to be shaped by metrics, especially if your reviewer is highly ranked.”
- “Pfizer sues former employee for alleged trade secret theft.”
- “Outcry as men win outsize share of Australian medical-research funding.”
- “The Plagiarism Scandal That Ended Nella Larsen’s Career.”
- “Are New Zealand’s universities doing enough to define the limits of academic freedom?” An essay following the retraction of a paper claiming to link COVID-19 vaccines to miscarriages.
- “My first thought when seeing an entire journal devoted to a fake science was annoyance, but that initial reaction is really missing the point.”
- “Monkey-brain study with link to China’s military roils top European university.”
- “The dangers of undercooked science and a hungry public.”
- Luxembourg Prime Minister “Bettel says he did not ‘cheat’ in plagiarism row.”
- “Didier Raoult’s teams denounce their boss’s falsifications of hydroxychloroquine.”
- Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission “says it will strengthen its monitoring role to ensure fair research in country.”
- “Want research integrity? Stop the blame game.”
- “Superb Supervision: A pilot study on training supervisors to convey responsible research practices…”
- “Reducing tensions and expediting manuscript submission via an authorship agreement for early-career researchers: A pilot study.”
- “Publisher Transparency among Communications and Library and Information Science Journals: Analysis and Recommendations.”
- “WNYC Retracts Four Articles on Its News Site, Gothamist.”
- “The Boca Raton Tribune owners have been made aware of a new website that has been populating our news and passing it off as their own. The website in question is named Boca Raton Gazette, which is simply copying and pasting all of our stories.”
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