Weekend reads: Death penalty for prof who killed whistleblower; psychiatry dept. shakeup after suicide in clinical trial; how scientific communication became highly profitable

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Retraction Watch turned 13 on Thursday. The week also featured:

• Former postdoc who admitted to faking data pleads guilty to attempted forgery
• Happy 13th birthday, Retraction Watch: Another eventful year
• An editor resigned in protest. Now, Wiley is firing him four months earlier than he planned to leave.
• President of Japanese university resigns after findings of ‘self-plagiarism’
• Exclusive: How a dean went about correcting the scientific record even when at least one journal said he didn’t need to 

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to nearly 350. There are now 42,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in Edifix, EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains 200 titles. 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):

• “In February 2006, a professor of Rajshahi University was killed after he detected plagiarism and piracy in 10 of the 11 research papers submitted by his junior colleague as part of his promotion application.” 17 years later, the colleague was hanged.
• “Exclusive: Shake-up at top psychiatric institute following suicide in clinical trial.”
• “This is the story of how a publisher and a citation index turned the science communication system into a highly profitable global industry.”
• “Open access is inevitable – only the ‘how’ remains up for discussion.”
• “A doctoral student from Carmarthen will become the first person in Cardiff University’s 140-year history to complete a PhD in Chemistry entirely through the medium of Welsh when he graduates today.”
• “We thank the authors for so generously upholding public availability of data.”
• “It is clear the data was manipulated inappropriately and supplemented by synthesized or fabricated data.” On the Dan Ariely case.
• “Cochrane UK in Oxford to close at the end of March 2024.”
• “A spectacular superconductor claim is making news. Here’s why experts are doubtful.”
• “’It’s actually, frankly, surprising that more people don’t fudge data,’” Oransky said.”
• “Academic detective Bai Le: Japanese academia is indifferent to fraud.”
• “California threatens to sue Stanford researchers who got state data to study education.”
• “Then he attributed the multi-year work of the Retraction Watch organization to a woman who is not part of that organization at all – the Norwegian vaccine researcher Gunnveig Grødeland.”
• “Thirteen percent of [research integrity] advisors had not received any training, and some advisors only discovered they were an advisor after our approach.”
• “How scientists work to correct the record when there is an error in a paper.” Or don’t.
• “Bangkok academy deals with serious research publication misconduct.”
• “How a renowned fertility doctor profits from an unproven supplement.”
• “’Public attention is correlated with action,’” Oransky told The Fix when asked why it is important for individuals to speak up when they witness research fraud.”
• “Retracted publications in infectious diseases and clinical microbiology literature: an analysis using the Retraction Watch Database.”
• “Whistleblowing legislation and reporting on research misconduct: A case for mutual learning.”
• “Radical cures for author self-citation gaming.”
• The day after a Cell paper is published, the corresponding author thanks a PubPeer commenter for noting an error that he says will be corrected.
• There are now five people with at least 100 retractions each. Welcome to the Retraction Watch Leaderboard Century Club, Ali Nazari.
• “The trinity of good research: Distinguishing between research integrity, ethics, and governance.”
• “Amid Indian Nationalism, Pseudoscience Seeps Into Academia.”
• “The Research Scandal at Stanford Is More Common Than You Think.”
• “Science Corrects Itself, Right? A Scandal at Stanford Says It Doesn’t.” An op-ed by our co-founders in Scientific American.
• “Uganda lacks co-ordinated efforts to address the problem of research misconduct both at the national and institutional levels.”
• “Whistleblower recalls price paid for revealing Hwang Woo-suk’s scientific misconduct.”
• “Nick Brown, a belated vocation against scientific’“bullshit.'”
• “‘Open science’ advocates warn of widespread academic fraud.”
• “Nobel laureate, Hopkins researcher retracts additional articles, bringing total to six in two years.”
• “Study cited by Texas judge in abortion-pill case under investigation.”
• “Scholar Accused of Research Fraud Sues Harvard and Data Sleuths, Alleging a ‘Smear Campaign.’”
• “A conflict of interest behind the warning on Apellis’ eye drug? The optics are not good.”
• “ProMED, an early warning system on disease outbreaks, appears near collapse.”
• “Almost one in 10 Wits health academics ‘witness misconduct.’”
• A group of authors earns a retraction purely because of a publisher’s incompetence.

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