As they did last year, our friends at The Scientist asked us to contribute our list of top 10 retractions in 2014. Here’s our list, from Anversa to Zaman.
Read more at “The Top 10 Retractions of 2014” at The Scientist.
As they did last year, our friends at The Scientist asked us to contribute our list of top 10 retractions in 2014. Here’s our list, from Anversa to Zaman.
Read more at “The Top 10 Retractions of 2014” at The Scientist.
In the wake of these scandals and in view of expected upcoming more retractions; should promotion and tenure policies change?
What is going to happen to the promotion and tenure of the “scientist” with 16 retractions?
Surprised that Fred Walumbwa did not make it onto the list. I believe that he is up to seven or eight retractions by now with around another 10 papers flagged over on Pubpeer.
For Nr. 6 it says: “So much for science in the public interest: Bowing to commercial pressure, the authors of a paper in the African Journal of Food Sciences on cassava yanked it after a company claimed the article was damaging to its business.”
That might sound rather interesting for the top 10 list: evil big business suppressing scientific findings by truthful poor researchers, fighting in the benefit of public interest.
However, there seems to be no proof that the stated reason for the retraction was true. The information was based solely on the author’s own statement in the retraction notice and has apparently not been verified by anyone else.
Just as a reminder: neither was a specific company name mentioned in the original paper, nor in the retraction notice. So, how could a specific company claim that they lost “business inputs to their competitors”?
Several RW-commentators of that specific post have pointed out that the scientific quality of the paper was questionable. In my opinion, the true reason for the retraction might have been a different one. This story from retraction watch has been widely disseminated over the web. It would have been this blog’s responsibility to verify the case independently.
And the most searched key-word in Japan (on You Tube?) goes to (FF to 00:59)…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-en0GwGabCI