Last chance to make a tax-deductible contribution for 2021. Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- 2021: A review of the year’s 3,200 retractions
- ‘A clusterf**K’: Authors plagiarize material from NIH and elsewhere, make legal threats — then see their paper retracted
- ‘Highly professional, but the process seems to take a long time’: Is this the best way to correct the record?
- Medical journal retracts letter calling hijab ‘an instrument of oppression’
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 205. There are now more than 32,000 retractions in our database — which now powers retraction alerts in EndNote, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers?
Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):
- Another analysis of the work of a paper mill in Russia. Earlier: The inner workings of the mill.
- “Is AI really helpful in spotting doctored images in manuscripts?”
- A paper published earlier this year in an epidemiology journal about COVID-19 vaccines earns three critical letters. And the authors respond.
- “Why I teach my students about scientific failure.”
- “What the Charles Lieber verdict says about U.S. China Initiative.”
- “Stop talking about ‘statistical significance and practical significance.'”
- A Pakistan “Senate body seeks details of scholars involved in plagiarism.”
- Officials to examine claims that a Pakistani university vice chancellor stole a thesis. The case matches one we reported on in July.
- “Breaking the stigma of retraction.”
- “Text Recycling in Chemistry Research: The Need for Clear and Consistent Guidelines.”
- “Evolution of research on honesty and dishonesty in academic work: a bibliometric analysis of two decades.”
- “It has been a difficult year for scientific integrity.”
- “A special jubilee: 100 fake osteosarcoma articles.”
- “Macquarie University considers investigating suspected research fraud.” A 2017 RW report on two related papers.
- “Veterinarians slaughtered 12 sheep by cutting their throats without stunning them first as part of a training program two top NSW universities ran for years without animal ethics approval.”
- “USC president fumes after quitting amid plagiarism scandal, regrets coming to Columbia.”
- A “Thesis digitisation project will end plagiarism in tertiary institutions” in Nigeria, says the fund paying for the project.
- “NSF Award Mismanagement, Publication Ban Among Costly Actions by Researchers.”
- In Australia, “Suspected fraud cases prompt calls for research integrity watchdog.”
- “Retracted: A COVID strategy backfires at schools.”
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Regarding The Post and Courier‘s story about the resignation of Bob Caslen as president of the University of South Carolina: The plagiarism thing was sufficiently minor (although the faculty member who was most vocal about it is a friend of mine) that it was incredibly obvious when Caslen resigned so quickly that he must have been very unhappy with the job here. So the e-mails in the story come as no particular surprise. He probably felt that he was facing quite a bit of hostility on capus. Although I personally thought Caslen did a fairly good job, and in an especially difficult period, there were plenty of other faculty who were not willing to give him any benefit of the doubt—in light of the inappropriate political interference that led to his hiring.
I guess we’ll never know what the Axios story said, but Global Plasma Solutions has come under criticism from third parties elsewhere: https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus-updates/2021/05/covid-school-air-purifier-lawsuit-gps-toxic/
While I obviously disapprove of the killing of the sheep by cutting the throats without stunning, NSW veterinarians have very little access to firearms, even captive-bolt pistols, to properly and safely euthanize animals. Given this is the case, where they do need to euthanize, they should be aware of how to do it without these basic tools.
Also, NSW allows the absolutely barbaric practice of kosher slaughter, which is universally conducted without prior stunning and without any regard for the suffering of the animals. This is NOT the case for halal slaughter, where relevant authorities like Imam Khamenei have decreed that pre-cut stunning is 100% acceptable. If barbaric practices are routinely being conducted against animals every day, surely it is acceptable for veterarians to learn to do this in a far more humane manner?
So, manually cutting the animal’s throat without stunning is “absolutely barbaric” when done for kosher slaughter, but just about OK when it is done in order to teach vets how to “euthanize”?
And the regular commercial slaughter of e.g. poultry, which are shackled, hung upside down on a production line, moved through electrified water to stun them, then conveyed to a mechanical neck cutter – is that the height of humane refinement then?