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.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- Publisher retracting more than 30 articles from paper mills
- COVID-19 wastewater tracking paper ends up in the sewer
- Publisher offers cash for citations
- Pro-tip: Before submitting your manuscript, delete the plagiarism detection report text
- Former Tufts grad student settles lawsuit alleging retaliation for whistleblowing
- In which we ask: What exactly did peer review accomplish here?
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 154.
Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):
- A deep dive into a problematic study of ivermectin.
- Trying to bring an allegation to a journal? “‘Prepare for frustration,” our Ivan Oransky tells The Scientist.
- Sentenced to prison for undisclosed foreign ties, now his papers will be scrutinized.
- “There have been 154 retracted COVID studies. The damage may already be done.”
- “Like all science, the field of psychology is vulnerable to fabrication, falsification, and poor research practices, but psychologists are leading the charge for change.”
- “Chinese scientists are silenced on social media as they criticize top infectious disease expert Zhang Wenhong, saying he plagiarized his PhD thesis.”
- “Autism study earns ‘expression of concern’ over unavailable data.”
- “In an alleged case of plagiarism in Nagpur University, a teacher from Dharampeth Science College lodged a complaint claiming that a PhD thesis of her student was sent for registration of a patent by senior professors…”
- “Following citation-based incentives, self-citations per paper increased by 9.5%.”
- Sweden’s national research integrity board looked at 46 cases since early 2020.
- “Two longtime Duke faculty members are behind an anticipated $2 million in art sales that raise questions…“
- “How to Publish at Pandemic Speed.” Includes a proposal for “scheduled reviews.”
- What works best for research integrity training?
- “Hijacked journals ‘siphon millions of dollars’ from research.”
- “Tracking Attacks on Scholars’ Speech,” the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education draws on the Retraction Watch Database.
- “I want to share the worst experience I had in academia.”
- “Women in science face authorship disputes more often than men,” says a new study.
- “Drowning in the literature? These smart software tools can help.”
- A university docks a researcher’s pay for plagiarism and harassment.
- “Which criteria are used in the investigations of alleged cases of research misconduct?”
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I was going to make a donation but when I saw that the deep dive on ivermectin is from Buzzfeed, my CC disappeared.
How much were you going to donate? Maybe someone who believes in judging RW based on the work they do, rather than the name of a website they linked to, will make up the difference.
Maybe the point is that a different organization did the deep dive. If X did the work, the donation should go to X, not RW for just linking to it.
I don’t think Buzzfeed needs the donation though. They’re a successful corporate news outlet.
Of course, but the question remains: why donate to RW who just copy-pasted a URL?
The buzzfeed piece is written with an axe to grind.
Let me make it clear: the prior probability for any small molecule intervention actually working for a condition like covid is nearly 0. Though definitive RCTs are still coming (Oxford’s PRINCIPLE), I would happily bet lots of money against Ivermectin. Bret Weinstein’s positions are generally carefully stated, but his credibility with me dropped precipitously when his tone on Ivermectin did not reflect the abysmally low prior probability that such an intervention would work.
But look at the writing in the piece, it is at least as problematic of Bret’s own claims:
“The fervor has grown ever since. “A near-perfect COVID prophylactic,” tweeted Bret Weinstein, a biologist who is best known for resigning from Evergreen State College in 2017 after he criticized an anti-racism education event. He has declared that the medication renders vaccines irrelevant. “If ivermectin, a drug out of patent, is safe and effective for treating and, more importantly, preventing COVID,” he told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson this summer, “then there shouldn’t be vaccines that we’re administering.”
It tries to smear him as a racist, misrepresents the events at Evergreen (well documented on youtube). His claim was about what was implied from a specific study, he really ought to be more honestly skeptical, but his claim about what was implied was certainly true. He has retracted the claim as of one of his more recent podcasts:
https://youtu.be/PqjbvBa3XIQ?t=1820
His claim to Carlson, a conditional statement, is also plainly true.
I really do doubt in Weinstein’s sincerity, he has a scientific background that really should give him better better predictive powers fo predicting garbage studies and ideas.
It’s a flawed article, but it does highlight an unannounced correction.
As soon as you linked to BuzzFeed I realized I was probably reading a hit piece against Ivermectin written by Democrat political activists. Not because I’m an Ivermectin expert; but because BuzzFeed is Democrat propaganda. For all I know the piece is accurate. But I know Buzzfeed won’t be publishing any research which casts doubt on the official Party line:
– Take the vax.
– There are no cheap drugs which are effective against COVID-19.
– Listen to the establishment experts at: FDA, CDC, AMA, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big News, academia.
My personal take on Ivermectin is: in a world where there’re no cheap medicines available, I’ll take advice from doctors treating sick patients. If some of these doctors use Ivermectin, then I’ll believe the doctors. I’ll disregard what the establish say; unless they can present me with evidence of fraud (by the doctors). Which, by and large, then can’t. I’ll ignore what CDC, FDA, and AMA tell me when it’s based on ‘expert opinion’ and it contradicts what a practicing doctor says.
The claims made for Ivermectin are:
– it is only effective in the first few days (3 to 4) of the disease,
– it’s an ionophore for zinc
– it’s the zinc which stops viral replication.
Therefore: any evidence against Ivermectin should show the combination Ivermectin plus zinc does not work. That makes Ivermectin ONLY studies irrelevant. Since EVERY doctor using Ivermectin to treat COVID-19 is using it in combination with zinc.
Disagree with me?
– Find me doctors using Ivermectin alone and have them post their evidence here at RW!
– Refute every single paper making pro-Ivermectin claims; not just one, two, or ten.
Many doctors treating COVID in the field, believe most of anti-Ivermectin advice comes from agents (knowingly, or as ‘useful idiots’) for Big Pharma, who only want them to use expensive drugs still under patent. This is what happens when agencies give out politically driven advice on masks, lockdowns, treatment, vaccines, medicines, … After a while: no one trusts the ‘advice’.