Weekend reads: Citation manipulation gone wild; astrology meets research; a classic mistake in a study of free will

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The week at Retraction Watch featured the retraction of a paper that claimed that scientists were suppressing evidence about the risks of cell phones; the retraction of a study by the daughter of an embattled South Korean politician; and 22 retractions for a materials scientist that might be the tip of the iceberg. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

• Elsevier is investigating hundreds of researchers for allegedly manipulating citations.
• Richard Peto “resubmitted the paper with all the subgroups the referee had asked for, but with a sly addition. He also subdivided the results by astrological sign.”
• “For decades, a landmark brain study fed speculation about whether we control our own actions. It seems to have made a classic mistake.”
• “It seems sometimes that we’re moving to a situation where science will be done by bots, leaving the human brain out of the process altogether. This would, to my mind, be a mistake.” Dorothy Bishop responds to the replication crisis.
• “The proportion of women who were first, last, and corresponding authors increased from 5.1%, 8.9%, and 2.5%, respectively, in 1967 to 37.0%, 22.2%, and 25.9% in 2017, respectively.” A look at authorship in anesthesiology research.
• Peer review “is a young person’s game.”
• “GG is a bit frustrated having now asked 10 scientists to review a paper.” Take GG’s poll.
• The vice president of the Karolinska Institutet has resigned amid misconduct allegations.
• “I found that approximately 0.023% of ecology and evolution studies are described by their authors as replications.”
• “Retracting your own paper can lead to a spike in citations.”
• A former Virginia Tech scientist was sentenced to probation for grant fraud.
• “Experts question China’s bid to create world-class journals.”
• “Six tips to achieve a highly cited article.”
• “[T]he science journal Frontiers in Physiology is requiring scientists from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) to correct a recently-published study on a controversial fish farm virus because they did not disclose the research was funded by the salmon farm industry.”
• India’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research “Says It’s Probing Scientific Misconduct Allegations, Drafting New Guidelines.”
• “Why data integrity is important for the success of clinical trials.
• “The ultimate value of science remains hidden and it’s the search – not the sale – that is important. Let’s keep it that way.”
• “Amid increasing attention to scientific research integrity in China, the country has adopted a new set of standards to more clearly define misconduct in publishing journal articles.”
• A profile of a new office of research at Duke, which recently settled a lawsuit alleging research misconduct for $112.5 million.
• “Journals are evolving into information platforms.”
• “Chair of the Spanish Senate…Manuel Cruz Rodríguez is suspected of plagiarism in…his philosophical thesis.”
• “U.S. prosecutors have charged a Chinese professor with fraud for allegedly taking technology from a California company to benefit Huawei,” Reuters reports.
• A look at adoption of preprints in the life sciences.
• “Boris Ivetić, 36, was arrested when protesting to end alleged corruption at the University of Zagreb’s natural sciences faculty, where he is a PhD student.” He has been released.
• “Scientists communicating science while working as scientists can fill the informing and popularizing void, but cannot take on the watchdog role since they cannot be expected to provide a critical independent outsider approach of journalists.”
• “These investigations fail to address several important issues raised in the allegations. In particular,some discrepancies among the main Figures in Paper 2 remain unexplained, and the claimed absence of underestimation of lifetime doses is illogical.” Background on this case, which involves radiation exposure from Fukushima.
• “What is replication?”
• “This is the kind of corruption that occurs when corporations and industry lobbying groups pay academics for expert testimony before Congress.”
• “What’s next for Registered Reports?”
• “Plans to require UK universities to provide ‘mandatory’ training in research ethics have been dropped in response to concerns that the plan was too prescriptive and bureaucratic.”
• “From 2013 to 2018, PLOS ONE’s output fell by 44%. Another megajournal, Scientific Reports, surpassed PLOS ONE in size in 2017 but saw its article count drop by 30% the next year, according to data in publisher Elsevier’s Scopus database.”
• Change the racing officials in this story to university officials, and scopolamine to research fraud: Bad incentives lead to coverups no matter what the endeavor.

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