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The week at Retraction Watch featured the story of a bad trip for some drug researchers; a suspension for an earthquake researcher; and our ninth birthday. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- A group of scientists is questioning the findings of an article linked to a drug development partnership worth up to $183 million.
- “Some of the scientists said that the prospect of financing blinded them to the seriousness of [Jeffrey Epstein’s] sexual transgressions…”
- A “scientific Ponzi scheme” combines “disencentivized fraudulent behavior in a way that would be, all-things-considered, profitable for the scientist in terms of career advancement.” A look at the work of Brian Wansink.
- “Countries with no retractions means either no one is doing research, or no one is watching.” A look at retractions in the Arab world. (Al-Fanar Media)
- A clinic “lowered the age at which it offers children puberty blockers,partly based on a study now being investigated.” (BBC)
- “For academics, what matters more: journal prestige or readership?” Katie Langin looks at a new study that examines the question.
- “Fudged research results erode people’s trust in experts,” argues Gavin Moodie. (The Conversation)
- “Here are some of the ways in which, it is claimed, the academic and expressive freedoms of those who don’t toe the gender line are limited: retractions of, or calls to retract, their scholarship…”
- “Canadian researchers are reacting with puzzlement to the news that a ‘policy breach’ has caused the nation’s only high-containment disease laboratory to bar a prominent Chinese Canadian virologist, her biologist husband, and a number of students from the facility.”
- “Academics should have their university colleagues review their papers before submitting them to journals,” says a Nobelist.
- “[A] coding error was made such that a vegan participant was mistakenly coded as a portion-controlled participant for certain analyses. The authors thank John A. Dawson and David B. Allison for alerting them to this error.”
- “Should Psychology Journals Adopt Specialized Statistical Review?”
- “Why we shouldn’t take peer review as the ‘gold standard.’“
- A professor and two students at Kashmir University are accused of plagiarizing the work of others from various countries.
- “Components necessary for reproducibility are lacking in orthopaedic surgery journals.”
- “A richly funded CRISPR alternative has a reproducibility problem.”
- “A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Inspector General audit has given a 2017 agency study critical of glider truck emissions a clean bill of health.” The story also involves a study under investigation at Tennessee Technological University.
- The replication crisis “has exposed the fact, which has been the shameful secret of statistics for decades now, that the same fallacy is at the heart of modern scientific practice.”
- “I suggest that there is an important reason that reviews of grants and papers is anonymous, and should remain so.”
- “The scientific community must be made fully aware of the harm that publishing in predatory journals poses and understand how to avoid it,” say three groups of medical writers.
- A journal’s new editorial board is all female.
- “The sense of urgency attached to the topic of misconduct sometimes appears to push scientists to explore new venues for solutions rather than to optimize preexisting opportunities.”
- “Nutrition advice for babies and toddlers has been fraught with errors,” writes Donavyn Coffey in Popular Science. “That’s about to change.”
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“Academics should have their university colleagues review their papers before submitting them to journals,” says a Nobelist.
You need a Nobelist to state the obvious? Is this not bog standard normal procedure? Obviously not.
Having members of the same department review their colleagues’ manuscripts might work in large, diverse departments and/or in those with healthy climates of collegiality. But, given the increasing specialization/compartmentalization of research topics and, in particular, the hypercompetitively toxic environment of some departments, I have to wonder about the practicality of this proposal.
What a sad observation on our centres of higher learning.
One does not need a specialist to review most papers other than for specific sections. A good scientist can review and discover errors of logic and assumptions, incorrect citations etc outside of their immediate field of speciality.
The flawed reasoning behind the flawed essay titled
“The Flawed Reasoning Behind the Replication Crisis
It’s time to change the way uncertainty is quantified.”
By Aubrey Clayton
I will point out to Aubrey Clayton that the Duke team that included Anil Potti used Bayesian analysis techniques, yielding multiple retracted papers, a tragically flawed clinical trial, and a trail of irreproducible results and lawsuits.
Switching statistical paradigms will not stop charlatans from gaming the system and will not solve the replication crisis.