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The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- Paper used to support claims that ivermectin reduces COVID-19 hospitalizations is withdrawn by preprint server
- University president in Japan self-plagiarized and will forfeit some pay
- French ocean institute goes public about authors who forged their researchers’ names
- Vice chancellor in Pakistan sues researcher whose work he plagiarized – and says he was the victim
- Paper overestimated risk of COVID-19 to endangered apes
- ‘Amateur bullshit’ is the price to pay for democratizing scholarly publishing, says editor
- University recommends seven more retractions for psychology researcher
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 209. There are now more than 32,000 retractions in our database — which now powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, 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):
- “Death threats, ghost researchers and sock puppets: Inside the weird, wild world of dodgy academic research.”
- In Russia, “About one in 20 recent academic papers is a duplicate,” says a study in the Journal of Informetrics.
- “DNA barcoding brought botanist Steven Newmaster scientific fame and entrepreneurial success. Was it all based on fraud?”
- “Here are these journals that universally require—and this is a good thing—significant transparency and significant disclosure from their authors…but are not in any way transparent themselves.”
- “Most seriously, the review uncovered cases of misuse of the data, which ultimately resulted in the retraction of three papers—two with misreported data and one that fabricated data.”
- Tohoku University has found that a researcher committed misconduct, and recommended retraction of a paper. They did not name the researcher.
- “Does a gender-neutral name associate with the research impact of a scientist?”
- “Plagiarism And Bogus Degrees: The Rampant Cheating In Romanian Schools.”
- “A large number of [systematic reviews] SRs and [clinical practice guidelines] CPGs included already retracted [randomized controlled trials] RCTs without caution and never corrected themselves.”
- “Because of its growing reach and influence, Retraction Watch’s investigations and revelations have helped to address the issue of ‘unhelpful retraction notices’.”
- “Why citizen review might beat peer review at identifying pursuitworthy scientific research.”
- “A significant proportion of Journals of Pediatric Dentistry did not provide adequate instructions to authors regarding ethical issues.”
- “Spotlight on research integrity: international insights on strengthening research culture in the forensic sciences and beyond.”
- “Literature recommendation systems need to update the changing status of the recommended articles in a timely manner…”
- “Death of academic journal greatly exaggerated, says ERC president” Maria Leptin.
- “The Rise of Science-Based Investigative Journalism.”
- How often are COVID-19 preprints published in peer-reviewed journals?
- “Do negative citations reduce the impact of cited papers?” asks a new study.
- “Now, researchers are notified at the point of discovery when an article has been retracted, plus given additional details about why, regardless of whether retraction is indicated by the index or publisher!”
- “Academic Journal Claims it Fingerprints PDFs for ‘Ransomware,’ Not Surveillance.”
- “What is Peer Review for, anyways?”
- “Fake Histories, Calls by Staff Impersonating Subjects.” And: “DOJ Increases Focus on Clinical Trial Fraud.”
- “Preprints ‘largely unchanged’ by peer review, even during Covid,” say two studies.
- “How Reliable Are Articles in Peer-Review Medical Journals?”
- A long-term postdoc at Oxford was ‘pushed out’ after an argument over authorship, a tribunal was told.
- “Luxembourg PM gives up degree after plagiarism claims.”
- “Sloppy writing is not a sign of sloppy science,” says Adrian Furnham.
- “Australia needs an Office for Research Integrity to catch up with the rest of the world.”
- “Brian, a New Typo of Research.”
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