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The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- Giant rat penis redux: AI-generated diagram, errors lead to retraction
- Elsevier investigating geology journal after allegations of pal review
- Exclusive: Prof plagiarized postdoc’s work in now-retracted paper, university found
- ‘A proper editor would be horrified’: Why did a pediatric journal publish articles on the elderly?
- Authors up past 60 retractions amid ongoing investigation
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 50,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 250 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List — or our list of nearly 100 papers with evidence they were written by ChatGPT?
Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):
- “What is it like to attend a predatory conference?”
- “Zombie theories: why so many false ideas stick around.”
- “Ask Athena: How Do We Handle Difficult Authors?”
- “In the UK, retraction rates are at under 0.05% of published papers, and UK retractions have remained in proportion to the increase in the number of publications since around 2013.”
- “Peer review in journals is in crisis, and its current situation and sustainability are increasingly concerning for academics and scientific communities.”
- “[T]he underlying causes, and potential solutions for IRB approval falsification in medical research.”
- “Why you should perform a premortem on your research.”
- “Unraveling retraction dynamics in COVID-19 research: Patterns, reasons, and implications.” Our earlier (uncited) work on the subject.
- “The Impact of Preprints on the Citations of Journal Articles Related to COVID-19.”
- “Executives Depart Cassava, Maker of Disputed Alzheimer’s Drug.” Our previous Cassava coverage.
- Researchers propose “six-step approach to assess the integrity of studies.”
- “FDA investigators have not spoken with patients and others alleging misconduct in MDMA trials.”
- “IRBs fail to assess trials’ scientific merit, putting participants at risk.”
- “The History of Peer Review Is More Interesting Than You Think.”
- Researchers propose a framework to identify and address the harms of “spin” in research.
- “I’ve built a career without a big golden grant. Here’s how.”
- “Are We Heading Toward ‘Demonetization’ of Scientific Journals?”
- “China’s science ministry names and shames 10” for funding proposal misconduct.
- “Hijacked journals are still a threat — here’s what publishers can do about them.”
- After a public health journal retracted a paper over issues Floe Foxon and colleagues say were addressed in peer review, they’ve republished an updated version in another journal. Links to our previous coverage.
- “Do imposter participants compromise online qualitative research?”
- “Women are systematically under-cited in neuroscience. New tools can change that.”
- University cancels course taught by professor who manipulated peer review — and then dismisses him from his university chairman position.
- Researcher withdraws from council and dismissed as deputy director of school after having article removed.
- “Woefully Insufficient Publisher Policies on Author AI Use Put Research Integrity at Risk.”
- “Academic authors ‘shocked’ after Taylor & Francis sells access to their research to Microsoft AI.”
- Study findings “argue against the use of free AI detectors to detect fake scientific images.”
- “Tackling research misconduct”: A response to the recent report by the UK Research Integrity Office.
- “Could Authors Be Saying ‘Goodbye’ to the Accept / Reject Decision?”
- Understanding the context of “Academic Integrity in Academic Publishing” using three examples.
- Alex Holcombe talks about “the value of studies that make observations but don’t manipulate anything.”
- “So you got a null result. Will anyone publish it?”
- A retraction about a story about U.S. vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance.
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The Nature article covers a pretty horrible sounding predatory conference. An earlier article on the same subject covered a more interesting one where one of the senior scientist speakers inexplicably showed up, then ran off before he could be questioned.
It’s interesting that researchers object to AI being trained on data from research papers.
I accept that AI can and probably is being trained on data, code and text that I have published because it’s open access under CC BY or similar licenses. In fact, many funders and institutions are requiring the use of CC BY (under the ironically named Rights Retention Strategy, for example). At least T&F probably got some cash from Microsoft. Thanks to 30 years of OA activism, my OA works will be used with no compensation to me or my university.
Linking an article that suggests using software to add citations for equity… harms the reputation of this blog. Authors should cite works they have read and found relevant or influential to their study.
Imagine not finding a paper to be relevant, and then being publicly accused of judging it based on the author’s gender. This generation is psychotic.
Orwellian. I’m an editor attacked for merely asking for, receiving, then publishing the climate denier side of the science of climate change for an issue called the politics of climate change.
Junior faculty should mostly ignore the article by Brandon Brown. When I started my TT position in the US, I was told that I could get tenure at my R1 university if I just had modest funding (no need for a big NIH grant) and contributed strong service and teaching to the school. I did exactly that – got a few small-to-medium sized (100k to 300k) grants, sat on the biggest committees in my college, led curriculum initiatives, got strong teaching evals, etc. I was then denied tenure the first time I applied.
Luckily, I got a large grant shortly thereafter, when I decided to throw out all the advice I’ve been given and just focused on funding for a year. But I spent a solid 6 months being pissed off that I had been misled by professors and two department chairs at my university who said things like Brandon wrote in that article. Bear in mind that they mostly came up through the system in a different era. All that really matters to administrators in the current era is money.
Don’t be misled. Get grants.
Changing the goal post is a classic way to bar someone’s tenure. They have grants? Tell them they need citations. They have citations? Tell them they need to improve their “service”. They have excellent societal impact? Tell them they need to mentor undergrads. The list goes on.