This week at Retraction Watch featured retractions by a high-profile cancer researcher, and a loss in court for PubPeer. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- P-hacking “is widespread throughout science,” says a new study. A press release is headlined “Scientists unknowingly tweak experiments.”
- Wow: “I request that you withdraw from handling our manuscript and transfer it to a male editor.”
- Neil Saunders finds out just how many retracted articles PubMed includes.
- “We are especially troubled by the response of University leaders to the case;” writes a legislator auditor introducing a report on a suicide in a clinical trial at the University of Minnesota, “they have made misleading statements about previous reviews and been consistently unwilling to discuss or even acknowledge that serious ethical issues and conflicts are involved.”
- “Why you can’t always believe what you read in scientific journals:” Julia Belluz interviews PubPeer.
- ‘”The column clearly needed much more vetting:” New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan on a piece about the alleged risks of wearable technology that is now subject to an addendum.
- Not peer-reviewed: A retraction from US Weekly involving the Jenners. And a killer correction from the AP.
- Eric Hall has four reasons to feel good about the future of peer review.
- Could a “contributor role taxonomy” help researchers figure out who did what in a study?
- What does tomorrow’s medical journal article look like? asks Richard Hurley.
- “Are we at a tipping point for open data?” asks Phill Jones at The Scholarly Kitchen.
- How should scientists ride out rejection of their manuscripts?
- “Is science broken? Let’s ask Karl Popper,” says Neuroskeptic.
- “How accurate are published papers?” asks an undergrad.
- If the U.S. SEC is now requiring “sinners to own up,” could fraudster scientists be far behind?
- The Food Babe’s approach to corrections and retractions doesn’t seem consistent with Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines.
- “If your journal knew that one of the authors of a submitted paper had previously been found to have committed serious research misconduct, would you agree to review the paper?” Weigh in at COPE.
- “[A] lack of mobility, in particular inbreeding, increases low-impact publications, while international mobility decreases it.” (paywalled study)
- What if news organizations color-coded facts based on how well-verified they were?
- Ariel Fernandez, who has featured frequently on Retraction Watch, has published a new paper.
- The so-called “exercise hormone” came under intense scrutiny this week, but scientists have been skeptical for some time.
- Faced with false findings, the NIH is trying to reform (subscription required).
- “Predatory Publishing: What Authors Need To Know,” courtesy of he INANE Predatory Publishing Practices Collaborative. And who publishes in these journals? a group of library scientists wants to know.
- Lessons in self-correction, courtesy Jonathan Capehart, writing about the shooting of Michael Brown: “[W]e must never allow ourselves to march under the banner of a false narrative on behalf of someone who would otherwise offend our sense of right and wrong. And when we discover that we have, we must acknowledge it, admit our error and keep on marching.”
- The BBC’s presentation of the mocked-up experiment…was apparently a journalistic fabrication, created by the documentary’s editors after the fact, and was never asserted by the researchers themselves, much less demonstrated experimentally.”
- “I have notebooks upon notebooks that I was not allowed to take of failed experiences,” a bitter former graduate student writes. “I spent 5 years stumbling through what would not work, so that others could build off of what I did learn.”
- What if Shakespeare had to go through peer review?
- Learn more about Publons, which is giving peer reviewers credit for their efforts.
- A “Canadian” open-access journal that doesn’t look very Canadian, courtesy of Jeffrey Beall.
- Parents in India are climbing walls to help their children cheat.
Peer review should be replaced by a rotating limited term contract independent private investigator interrogation group—-no PhDs, MDs—criminologists and science journalists—yes.
One of the two papers on predatory publishing is being questioned at PubPeer.
Xia et al. in press:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.23265/abstract
https://pubpeer.com/publications/F59CE7BF0C57B904CC9F4C2E0B3887
Beall and colleagues link the predatory publishers to alternative metrics:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201500011/abstract
about sexism in science: this ridiculous e-mail by some (insert your own descriptive noun here) from who know where is actually not very helpful. I don’t believe any serious scientist, never mind how much he hates women, will out himself like this towards a journal. The issue of sexism in science is about something else: incompatibility of research and family life, pregnancy as career suicide, glass ceiling for junior women scientists (which still exists http://goo.gl/NkYgv9 ) and so on. Outrage about stupid statements is like kicking in open doors, so we all can feel good about ourselves. The real problems of sexism in science are much more serious and integrated deeply into the system, thus much more difficult to correct
Remember the Pimm case and the discussion on it? http://goo.gl/hXy87A
Yes, a citation is certainly needed for that alleged email. I don’t buy it.
to correct my previous comment!
about sexism in science: all this indignation about this ridiculous e-mail by some (insert your own descriptive noun here) from who know where is actually not very helpful. I don’t believe any serious scientist, never mind how much he hates women, will out himself like this towards a journal. The issue of sexism in science is about something else: incompatibility of research and family life, pregnancy as career suicide, glass ceiling for junior women scientists (which still exists http://goo.gl/NkYgv9 ) and so on. Outrage about stupid statements is like kicking in open doors, so we all can feel good about ourselves. The real problems of sexism in science are much more serious and integrated deeply into the system, thus much more difficult to correct
Remember the Pimm case and the discussion on it? http://goo.gl/hXy87A
The study claiming to show that P-hacking “is widespread throughout science” actually, at best, shows that P-hacking is widespread throughout the the topics covered by PubMed. PubMed is not representative of all of science, so the conclusion is unwarranted.
Curiously, the first author gets this right in the press coverage, where she says “throughout the life sciences”. First time I can recall that the press coverage of a paper was more accurate about the conclusions of a paper than the paper itself.
For the request-for-male-reviewer image:
It appeared in Pharyngula a week or so ago.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/03/10/somebody-just-takes-academic-sexism-for-granted/
It emerges in the comment thread that the recipient of the e-mail was Nature reviewer Dr Barbara Marte (back in 2005). The redacted author was evidently a researcher into prostate cancer, who was convinced that a female reviewer could only have rejected the paper because prostate cancer did not affect her directly, and not because it was badly-written or unsubstantial.