Weekend reads: UCSF apologizes for prison research; top judge in Mexico accused of plagiarism; peer review under scrutiny

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• That paper with the ‘T’ error bars was just retracted
• Retraction Watch grows again, thanks to a $250,000 grant from the WoodNext Foundation
• The top 10 retraction stories of 2022
• Contamination leads to swift retraction for Science paper on the origins of Omicron in Africa
• Contempt judgment in penile implant spat leads to retraction
• Article on sexual orientation and psych disorders retracted – without the author’s knowledge, he says

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 280. There are more than 37,000 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):

• “UCSF Issues Report, Apologizes for Unethical 1960-70’s Prison Research.”
• “Yasmín Esquivel, candidate to preside over the Supreme Court of Mexico, plagiarized her undergraduate thesis.”
• “[A] total of 57% (63/111) of respondents admitted to previously abandoning a manuscript after receiving what they perceived to be unfair peer reviews.”
• “‘Bias and lack of training making peer review less diverse’”.
• “‘Questionable’ research practices proliferate under precarity.”
• “Jumping over the paywall: Strategies and motivations for scholarly piracy and other alternatives.”
• “Effect of medical researchers’ creative performance on scientific misconduct: a moral psychology perspective.”
• “Researchers push preprint reviews to improve scientific communications.”
• Fukui University found that a researcher there engaged in peer review fakery and should retract papers. We reported on one earlier this year.
• “To snooze, schmooze, peruse, booze, or learn new views: a rejected Christmas Issue research study.”
• “India axes publication goal for PhDs to tackle predatory journals.”
• “Towards a new paradigm for ‘journal quality’ criteria: a scoping review.”
• “Community voices concerns over American Chemical Society magazine.”
• No need for a specific law against fraud, says Italian senator scientist.
• “It has been brought to our attention that the authors of the article… cannot agree on who should be listed as an author of the article.”

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