Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- An editor on why he ignores anonymous whistleblowers – and why authors are free to publish ‘bullshit and fiction’
- In four years, a psychosocial counselor co-authored seven papers on disparate medical topics. How?
- When an independent replication isn’t really independent
- Veterinary researcher banned from journal after fourth forthcoming retraction
- Former NCI postdoc faked data, says federal watchdog
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 257. There are more than 35,000 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):
- “There is a long history and documentation showing that withdraws and retractions of scientific manuscripts may be the most relevant form of silently reporting scientific misconduct, and now I was part of it.”
- “Hydroxychloroquine in Australia: a cautionary tale for journalists and scientists.”
- “I trained a bunch of AIs to generate chemistry paper ToCs with relevant titles and abstracts!”
- “Machine-learning tools can correct grammar and advise on the style and tone of presentations — but they must be used with caution.”
- “Canadian clinical trials substantially lacked adherence to study registration and reporting best practices.”
- “How a postgrad plagiarised at least 60 papers in huge publishing scam.” Digital Science follows up on a story we covered last month.
- “Do more-highly cited journals have higher-quality peer review?”
- “Will Judicial Polarization Lead to More Strategic ‘Unpublished’ Opinions?” Is this the judicial version of preprints?
- “The entire ‘Reason’ text must be identical to that in the XML version (Box 6).” An unhelpful retraction notice from Elsevier that has now been corrected.
- “The Daily Tar Heel recently unpublished an opinion piece written about University students studying abroad in Israel.”
- “Unprecedented! Incredible! Scientific grant applications are getting heavier on hype.”
- “PETA Publicizes Reports to OLAW, USDA Inspections, Targets NIH Intramural Program.”
- “Writing Constructive Peer Review Reports.”
- “Occurrence of Research Misconduct and Institutional Capacity to Prevent and Manage Research Misconduct-Perspectives from Kenyan Research Regulators.”
- “Identifying and managing problematic trials: a Research Integrity Assessment (RIA) tool for randomized controlled trials in evidence synthesis.”
- The new editor in chief of Anatomical Sciences Education is Jason Organ. Of course.
- A reviewer gives a backhanded compliment unintentionally.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].