Weekend reads: Revelations about a controversial COVID-19 study; weaponizing uncertainty; a ‘super-spotter’ of duplicated images

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

Sending thoughts to our readers and wishing them the best in this uncertain time.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• The story of what it takes to correct a flawed paper about COVID-19.
• Two retractions as a yeast researcher risks losing her PhD.
• Another loss in court for a cancer researcher.
• A report on a researcher who faked data in seven papers and two grant applications.

How many papers about COVID-19 have been retracted? We’ve been keeping track, as part of our database. Here’s our frequently updated list.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

• “A Stanford whistleblower complaint alleges that the controversial John Ioannidis study failed to disclose important financial ties and ignored scientists’ concerns that their antibody test was inaccurate.”
• “A Study Said Covid Wasn’t That Deadly. The Right Seized It.”
• Some scientists “tend to coalesce around certain kinds of subjects, then the trajectory turns to martyrhood really quickly.”
• Preprints. Everything you needed to know in a cartoon by XKCD.
• “When individuals paying to fund research leading to a therapy are also the first to receive it, there are concerns.”
• “If we’re intellectually honest, we should acknowledge that everything is provisional. People are going to weaponize that.”
• “Science communication in the age of Coronavirus.”
• “What are innovations in peer review and editorial assessment for?” asks a paper.
• “Standard deviation, standard error, whatever!”
• “Ten common statistical errors from all phases of research, and their fixes.”
• “He Was a Science Star. Then He Promoted a Questionable Cure for Covid-19.”
• “Pandemic researchers — recruit your own best critics,” says Daniël Lakens. “To guard against rushed and sloppy science, build pressure testing into your research.”
• “There is no black and white definition of predatory publishing.”
• A “super-spotter of duplicated images” “quit her job to spot errors in research papers.”
• “Manipulated images: hiding in plain sight?”
• “The world’s largest science publishers are teaming up to discuss how to automatically flag altered or duplicated images in research papers.”
• “Authors of systematic reviews should be aware of the uncertainty posed by compromised RCTs to the quality of synthesized evidence, and they should participate in the campaign to fight compromised integrity.”
• “Not even the famed journal ‘Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews’ is immune to accidentally leaving notes in the text“
• “Anyone else find this…odd?”
• “A medical practitioner has been reprimanded and fined after he plagiarised a medical article and falsified an examination results letter.” Here’s the retraction of the article.
• The authors of an influential report on the severity of coronavirus disease have corrected it following our post about the fact that the paper cited a withdrawn preprint.
• In a small survey of scientists in Kenya, “Two-thirds (68.3%) reported ever-involvement in any misconduct.”
• “A former Cleveland Clinic researcher who received more than $3.6 million in National Institutes of Health grants is facing criminal charges for failing to disclose his ties to Chinese universities and his connections to a Chinese government program described as a conduit for theft of U.S. intellectual property.”
• Rice University pays $3.7 million to settle allegations that it defrauded the US National Science Foundation on research grants.
• Have you checked out our database of retractions recently? Here’s the 21,700th retraction we’ve catalogued.

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