Weekend reads: Vaccine-myocarditis preprint withdrawn; are citations worth $100,000 each?; the lesson of ivermectin

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 160. And there are now more than 30,000 retractions in our database.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

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19 thoughts on “Weekend reads: Vaccine-myocarditis preprint withdrawn; are citations worth $100,000 each?; the lesson of ivermectin”

    1. Holy crap, I can’t imagine how people got in the position of feeling so strongly about the ancient history of horse domestication.

  1. Shockingly, the article in STAT on “How white scholars are colonizing research on health disparities” was written by a white person.

    How on earth can we ever make progress on these important issues if organizations like STAT refuse to racialize every editorial decision and writing assignment?

      1. I am really surprised how this has become a major concern in the last few years along with the other topic which i don’t wish to mention here. Has this been the case for many years/centuries? If at all, it would be nice if we are able to “edit” the history!

        1. It’s always been there, but I think the dominance of identity politics has really peaked in the past 5 years in the US and other western countries. We used to talk about tolerance and equal opportunity, but now it’s about affirmation or celebration and at least equal outcomes (for identity groups other than white males and asians).

          As for editing history, there are both retractions and “inclusive” name change policies for that. I don’t think they’re effective though.

          1. Thanks for the reply. “as for editing history, there are both retractions…..” – yes, if they are recorded, you can retract but if it is practised knowingly, how you can you retract. I am not sure whether you know this or not, even in conferences, we (from the colonies of different colour) are being side-lined most of the time, can we go and fight? Even if we ask questions, they are not taken favourably. You can’t retract this behaviour right?

          1. Ok, I’ll try again without sarcasm. It’s hypocritical and self-serving for a white journalist to write a story about how important it is to not have white people do research on racial disparities in health outcomes. As her own bio at STAT emphasizes, this is not her area of training as a researcher or her previous area of specialization as a journalist. She has simply colonized this area of journalism. By the internal logic of the people she interviews for STAT, Usha should be leaving this topic for Black journalists to pursue or she should at least be coauthoring these articles with a Black journalist.

          2. ” how important it is to not have white people do research on racial disparities in health outcomes.”

            This did not appear anywhere in her article. You’re making up your own article based on your prejudices.

          3. Nah.

            “The paper [on racial disparities in health outcomes, by a white Stanford researcher] didn’t need a diverse group of authors from different backgrounds, she said [quoting Black trans physician and researcher Dr. Elle Lett]; it needed an author, or better yet, several, from the underrepresented group — Black physicians — under study. ”

            https://www.statnews.com/2021/09/23/health-equity-tourists-white-scholars-colonizing-health-disparities-research/

          4. Just in case you’re not aware, there is no limit on the number of co authors. Adding co authors doesn’t mean you have to remove other co authors.

        1. Well, apologies for the typing error. Thing is, Usha has an Indian mother. It’s been some time since I have seen people from India referred to as “white”, but who knows, maybe I missed something and they have gone back to the all-over-the-place classification of the early 20th century.

  2. Is it just me, or is it somewhat odd to be lectured on how to do peer review by Kim Eggleton, whose employer is responsible for a rather significant number of publications including ‘tortured phrases’? IOP’s record is nothing short of a disaster, and perhaps step one would be a long, hard, introspective look. A search for IOP publications on PubPeer should be enough to make anyone want to stop for a second.

    I’m not singling out IOP here – Springer got burned relatively bad, and so has Elsevier. Wiley, to a lesser extent, has also been hit, and I am sure the rest aren’t entirely immune, either. Being a large publisher means this sort of crap just happens. We can’t always decide what happens to us, but we’re in charge of how we respond to it. What Eggleton and IOP owes the scientific community aren’t deep insights on diversity or peer review (much as I agree with her comments wholeheartedly, and completely concur that these are important points!), but a deep investigation of what went wrong, and what lessons could be learned from them. That would by far be the most important contribution, indicating both an awareness of the issue and adding to our knowledge of ways we can curb ‘tortured phrases’-based academic misconduct (I don’t know what the right term for that would be – it’s a weird mix of plagiarism, peer review manipulation and outright fraud).

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