Weekend reads: Retracted COVID-19 papers keep being cited; “‘difficult’ name penalty”; economist accused of plagiarism

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• The Lancet more than doubles its impact factor, eclipsing NEJM for the first time ever
• Author demands a refund after his paper is retracted for plagiarism
• Seven months after an author request, journal retracts
• February: ‘we don’t agree there is an issue here.’ June: Retracted.

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 245. There are more than 34,000 retractions in our database — which 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):

• “The Citation of Retracted COVID-19 Papers is Common and Rarely Critical.”
• “Study finds having hard-to-pronounce names—from the perspective of native English speakers—results in poorer job placements for economics Ph.D.s.”
• “The first 70 pages of [economist] Daniel Lacalle’s thesis are copied from other authors.” Lacalle has threatened to sue over the allegations.
• “Our results show that postdocs and assistant professors perceived integrity climate more negatively than PhD students and full professors in every survey scale.”
• “A proposal for data-sharing that discourages p-hacking.”
• “But what kind of reader fact-checks great novels against the publication dates in medical journals?”
• “When should U.S. research be stamped ‘top secret’? NSF asks for a new look at the issue.”
• “Less than half of transformative journals are on course to make their transition to open-access publishing under the Plan S agreement…”
• “The Delhi High Court (HC) ordered a committee at…IIT Delhi to conclude its probe into the allegation of plagiarism…”
• Seoul National University “research team busted for blatant plagiarism.” Read more here at PubPeer, and at Twitter.
• “‘Zombie papers’ just won’t die. Retracted papers by notorious fraudster still cited years later.”
• “Beijing probes security at academic journal database” CNKI. So why now?
• “An unethical trial and the politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil.” Prevent Senior.
• “Psychology needs to get tired of winning.”
• “About 4% of the considered manuscripts are rejected for severe cell line problems, and most are subsequently published in other journals.”
• “How Romania’s Prime Minister was ‘Cleared’ of Plagiarism.”
• “The impact of double-blind peer review on gender bias in scientific publishing: a systematic review.”
• “Ghana: Retraction and Apology to Prof Dodoo.”
• “The AP has deleted a tweet about Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest.”

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].