Weekend reads: ‘The science crisis’; Peru president plagiarism probe; does a Nature cover help or hurt citations?

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Elsevier retracts papers when it realizes one of the authors hid fact he was guest editor of issue
• UPenn prof retracts three papers for ‘substantive questions’

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 223. There are more than 33,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, 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):

• “Until actual science gets its house in order, hysterical worship of ‘The Science’ will remain exactly what it is today: an implausible posture that only emboldens those who would tear down America’s institutions.”
• Cover articles in Nature “actually result in a relative decrease of citations to their authors.”
• “Peru prosecutors to probe plagiarism claim against president.”
• “Exploitation in the name of biomedical innovation cannot be tolerated.”
• “Pursuing research relevance is important, but the risk is that it becomes a form of deference, co-option and control, says Matthew Flinders.”
• “Biologist accused of sexual harassment quits NYU job quest.”
• “The chief executive of plagiarism checker Ouriginal has defended the company’s buyout by rival Turnitin despite it handing the California technology giant a near-monopoly in the market.”
• “This is a fight between two distinguished academics and the University…over a Pig Model…”
• “‘Tainted kids,’ other odd phrases cropping up in autism studies.”
• “A Model Text Recycling Policy for Publishers.”
• One journal’s “commitment to rigorous, constructive and inclusive peer review.”
• “Rigged competitions and university funds used for private expenses” at University of Reggio Calabria.
• A newsletter’s “first official correction of a scientific journal article.”
• NBC News says “it had found instances of plagiarism in 11 articles.”
• “Downstream retraction of preprinted research in the life and medical sciences.”
• Google “has fired a researcher who questioned a paper it published.”
• “The rise of preprints: How COVID-19 has transformed the way we publish and report.”
• “China’s top research organisation has suspended its use of the country’s largest academic database…”
• A look at 102 retractions from Turkey in the PubMed database. Our database includes three times that many.
• Anna Abalkina “investigates illegal activities in the publishing industry” including hijacked journals.
• “Trolling Is Taking a Toll on Science Journalism.”
• The Trump Administration’s “China crackdown ‘hit US scientists’ research quality’” using citations as a proxy, says a study.

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