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The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- Exclusive: How a researcher faked data and gaslit a labmate for years
- COVID-19 spike protein paper earns an expression of concern
- Frontiers retracts a dozen papers, many more expected
- Authors to correct PNAS ‘nudge’ paper that cites now-retracted article in the same journal
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 206. There are now more than 32,000 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 — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers?
Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):
- A White House official “is facing criticism for her role in a research paper retracted last year.”
- “‘Bosom peril’ is not ‘breast cancer’: How weird computer-generated phrases help researchers find scientific publishing fraud.”
- “An article full of nonsense with a scientist’s name above it.”
- “They’re doing the right thing. The question is how quickly will they do it?” A widely shared COVID-19 vaccine preprint is being revised.
- “CRO owner pleads guilty to obstructing FDA investigation into falsified clinical trial data.”
- “Covid origin conspiracies and other bogus research predatory scientific journals peddle.”
- “Diagnostic test accuracy studies with positive findings were not preferentially accepted by the evaluated radiology conferences or journals.”
- “Rigour and reproducibility in Canadian research: call for a coordinated approach.”
- “Why Discovering ‘Nothing’ in Science Can Be So Incredibly Important.”
- “Misconduct in research administration: What is it? How widespread is it? And what should we do about it?”
- “Gauhati University Professor Charged With Plagiarism, Sent On Compulsory Leave.”
- “ArXiv.org Reaches a Milestone and a Reckoning: Runaway success and underfunding have led to growing pains for the preprint server.”
- A look at “Dialogical teaching of research integrity,” including “storytelling, rotatory role playing, and the fishbowl debate.”
- “[T]he official launch of the Institute for Replication (I4R), an institute working to improve the credibility of science…”
- “Should Research be Trusted? Transparency, Accuracy and Accountability in the Publication Process.” Our Ivan Oransky in conversation later this month.
- “How can we make sure that medical trials reported in the scientific literature are real?”
- “Ruth Shalit Barrett sues Atlantic for $1 million over retraction of viral article, allegations of inaccuracies.” Scientists do this too.
- “How to reclaim ownership of scholarly publishing.”
- “As the number of papers in a field increases, researchers find it harder to recognize innovative work.” “It’s all too much.”
- “Preprints: Their Evolving Role in Science Communication.”
- “ICMR’s Nivedita Gupta accused of ‘image manipulation, plagiarism’ in 2 papers, denies charge.”
- “Scandalous Suppression at a Law Review.” And a defense of Emory Law Review.
- “Guidance on research integrity provided by European discipline-specific learned societies: A scoping review.”
- Minority serving-institution-based “scientists indicated not being invited and a general lack of time…as barriers” to participating in grant review.
- Did you know? If you use LibKey Nomad (free!), you’ll be alerted to any scholarly articles linked on Wikipedia that have been retracted, thanks to our partnership with Third Iron.
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“Misconduct in research administration“ – $47 to read this article, and a request to the corresponding author yielded a message that he would not be checking his messages for the foreseeable future. Haven’t see that before for a newly published article. Too bad. Most researchers I know have a running battle with their administrators not to skim too much overhead off, not to divert funding, …. Often situations are not black or white, but some are.
Re: “An article full of nonsense with a scientist’s name above it.”
The article linked to this title is in some language other than English. Not that every article in the world should be in English, but this website is in English so I assumed all the articles in it would be written in English or at least transcribed to English. Rather a let down.
You should ask for a refund.
I found a translated version on: https://www.ruetir.com/2022/01/14/an-article-full-of-nonsense-with-a-scientists-name-above-it/
The translation seems to have been done by machine and contains some mangled phrases, but gets the message across.
I can’t help wondering how well a properly constructed simulated data set would pass the checks described in the Carlisle paper. I expect most cheats fail because they don’t have access to someone with a statistics PhD. Sometimes the problem is that a study looks too good. I saw a survey where the response rate was 96%. Maybe they threatened the non-responders.
JL, I use Chrome and when I click on content written in other languages, I am able to read it in English with just one additional click of my mouse. See the following from https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/173424?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop
Translate webpages in Chrome
When you come across a page written in a language you don’t understand, you can use Chrome to translate the page.
On your computer, open Chrome.
Go to a webpage written in another language.
At the top, click Translate.
Chrome will translate the webpage this one time.
Not working? Try refreshing the webpage. If it’s still not working, right-click anywhere on the page. Then, click Translate to [Language].
Re: “ICMR’s Nivedita Gupta accused of ‘image manipulation, plagiarism’ in 2 papers, denies charge.”
The problem in India is a complete lack of accountability. India has become synonymous with dubious and unethical research practices. It forms the geographic base for a large number of predatory publishers. However, there is no accountability in the government academic system. Dr. Gupta has nothing to fear, no matter who cries foul. She can continue blatant unscientific practices and her job will still be safe. She may even get promotions and awards if she can keep her superiors happy.