Weekend reads: ‘Foul play’ among protective scholars; how to increase rigor; science and a ‘culture of misinformation’

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• A stolen manuscript, part two: The plagiarist begs for forgiveness as another group plagiarizes the same work
• A paper claimed to describe ‘the first potent and specific anti-COVID-19 drug.’ Now it’s retracted.
• Medical school dean up to five retractions
• Chemistry group at Hokkaido up to three retractions
• Researcher attacks journal for retracting his paper on COVID-19 drug

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 236. There are more than 34,000 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):

• “Over-possessive scholars may resort to foul play to protect their research domains, say postdocs.”
• “If there is a single point at which a little bit of leverage applied today could yield the largest impact on improving rigor and science, it would be at the level of journal editors.”
• “How Science Fuels a Culture of Misinformation.”
• “[O]nly 30 preprints were associated with downstream retractions. This represents 0.03% of all preprints with linked journal articles on these servers.”
• Another retraction for a psychology researcher who studies aggressive behavior. Joe Hilgard, who flagged the issues in 2019, explains.
• “Finally, the results also act as a reminder that all science is provisional—not just preprints—and that many journalists seem to recognize and communicate this to their audiences.”
• “This app helps researchers explore ethical dilemmas.”
• “Identifying and managing problematic trials: a Research Integrity Assessment (RIA) tool for randomized controlled trials in evidence synthesis.”
• “Over the years leading up to his termination, interviews and University documents show that he faced accusations of failure to perform employment responsibilities, hostile behavior toward colleagues, and plagiarism.”
• “Another Stinker at the Journal of Finance.”
• A call for more retractions by prolific fraudster Joachim Boldt. And the editors respond.
• Two Penn students have papers retracted.
• “Research integrity training ‘a box-ticking exercise.'”
• “Perceptions of publication pressure among Hungarian researchers: Differences across career stage, gender, and scientific field.”
• “Publishing in potentially predatory journals: Do universities adopt university leaders’ dishonest behavior?”
• “When are scientists allowed to be funny?”
• “Japan launches preprint server — but will scientists use it?”
• “What does Elsevier know about you, and how?”
• A professor sues a student for defamation after misconduct claims.
• “Funding: end ‘publish or perish’ for postdocs.”
• “It was difficult to prove that the researchers’ conduct was intentional, but their understanding of publication ethics has been deemed insufficient.”
• “China plans sweeping makeover of academic journals to raise the profile and influence of domestic scientific research.”
• “Many researchers were not compliant with their published data sharing statement: mixed-methods study.”
• “This cross-sectional study suggests that data sharing practices are rare in surgical journals…”
• “Furthermore, a database with open, dynamically updated, and automatic alerting characteristics built by multi-agents, for example, the Retraction Watch, should be placed on the agenda.”
• “Fill in the Blank Leads to More Citations.”
• How often research on humans happens without ethics approval.
• “Liverpool MP calls for retraction of Champions League final ‘smears.’”
• “Bay Area woman paid to write county history book reportedly plagiarized from Wikipedia, SF news outlets.”

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