The week at Retraction Watch featured a look at why a fraudster’s papers continued to earn citations after he went to prison, and criticism of Science by hundreds of researchers. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- Want to publish in Nature? Here’s how to write a title and abstract.
- Want to publish in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology? Make sure to submit a tweetable version of your paper, Holly Else reports. And here’s why some journals are teaming up with Reddit.
- Blogs and Twitter “are now complementing, and in some cases even circumventing some of the limitations of traditional peer review in chemistry,” argues Ashutosh S. Jogalekar.
- Hear from Neil Savage on scientists who tweet (paywalled).
- “I’ve had my professional opinion heavily, heavily pressured. I’ve had my wording changed, my results changed. A lot of my interpretations have been changed.” Anne Casselman reports on “the problem with (self-regulated) environmental assessments.”
- A University of Minnesota researcher “got tired of waiting for the paperwork to arrive,” so he faked it, Jeff Baillon reports.
- “The case against the journal article: The age of publisher authority is going, going, gone — and we’ll be just fine,” says Heidi Lane.
- “Fixing flaws in science must be professionalised,” argue Ben Goldacre and Tracey Brown.
- Two news organizations retracted stories this week: In “the first time we have removed a significant news story for any reason other than factual error or legal settlement,” Gawker retracted “a story about the CFO of Conde Nast texting an escort.” And The Times (UK) removed a story about Nick Cave headlined “Let your children feel fear, Cave urged before son’s death.”
- “We know it is comforting to believe that sexism in science is over, and that the tables have turned and women are now the preferred item on the menu.” But it’s not true, say Joan Williams and Jessi Smith.
- “[E]very day, many studies are published that are so poorly designed, you shouldn’t even wipe your table with them let alone use them to inform personal health or policy decisions,” writes Julia Belluz at Vox.
- What lessons does history hold on publishing replication failures? asks Dorothy Bishop.
- Here’s “how to support a scholar who has come under attack” for expressing views unpopular in some quarters, from Eric Anthony Grollman.
- The AAAS, publishers of Science, have acquired PRE, short for Peer Review Evaluation. (Ivan had been a volunteer PRE advisory board member, but has stepped down for conflict of interest reasons. We will still work with PRE to spread the word about our retraction guidelines.)
- “What happens when a journal makes an error in authorship credit?” asks Kakoli Majumder. “A case study.”
- “Is there really a link between exposure to formaldehyde from working as a funeral home director and dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)?” Kristina Fiore takes apart the evidence.
- “Holding laboratory mice at temperatures lower than those the animals prefer could be altering their physiology and skewing experimental results,” Bob Grant reports.
- A quarter of IRB members vote on protocols despite having a conflict of interest, according to a study reported on by Kerry Grens.
- “If doing ethical research was difficult during the life and times of Semmelweiss it is doubly so now,” writes Amitav Banerjee.
- Want to commit the perfect scientific crime? Neuroskeptic has a guide.
- In the Scholarly Kitchen podcast, Stuart Wills interviews COPE vice-chair Charlotte Haug about retractions and other issues in research transparency.
- Charles Seife is suing the U.S. FDA to get evidence of scientific misconduct released.
- Could U.S. postdocs earn overtime pay? Chris Woolston reports.
- Gaute Wangen explores how to make peer review more robust.
- “The mysterious death of a doctor who peddled autism ‘cures’ to thousands:” Michael Miller explores the story of James Bradstreet.
- Pressure to win grants is being blamed for a “plummeting” success rate at one funding agency, Paul Jump reports.
- Why aren’t there more women in clinical trials? Sarah Jacoby explains.
- Students at the University of Toronto are protesting a once-held course that cited Andrew Wakefield.
- Want to support decision-making by doctors? Time to re-evaluate industry funding of science, says Christopher Robinson.
- The chair of PEERE, “funded by the European Union to explore issues around journal and grant peer review,” explains the project.
- When do citations reflect impact, and when do they reflect something else? asks Karin Wulf.
- Has an engineering journal gone bad? Jeffrey Beall asks.
- “Obscure federally funded studies have returned unexpected and enormous benefits to society,” Tiffany Field writes in response to an op-ed questioning some studies.
- Size is “associated with greater bureaucratization of scientific research projects,” according to a new analysis (paywalled).
- “I love scientists because you’re the only people in the world who exclaim joyfully “Everything we thought we knew is wrong!” tweets CC Finlay during the Pluto extravaganza.
- http://www.academiaobscura.com/academia-survival-of-the-bitterest/
- Rivalry between researchers: A report by Al Jazeera on Retraction Watch and PubPeer (in Arabic).
- Why do scientists fake results? asks Mojca Jez.
- A few scientists in Mexico have been found guilty of plagiarism, Debora Weber-Wulff reports based on two news accounts.
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Apparently, RW never takes a vacation…
The stories at Gawker and The Times were removed. The publishers did not use the word retract, nor they did concede inaccuracies in the stories. Instead, Gawker’s editor wrote that “The point of this story was not in my view sufficient to offset the embarrassment to the subject and his family.”
This kind of apology for coverage that is found to be sub-standard is by no means uncommon in journalism (except perhaps for Gawker). It has a different significance, and different effects, from a retraction, such as the NYT retraction of Jayson Blair’s stories. Scientific journals and newspapers have many different methods, functions and responsibilities. It would be helpful for Retraction Watch’s readers if you distinguished these more clearly.
Has a retraction only occurred if the word is explicitly used?
Doesn’t the actual definition of ‘retraction’ include the withdrawal of a previously made statement?
The reason behind the removal of the story, or even the debate over whether it should have been published initially, is irrelevant. It should not detract from the fact that the paper was supposedly accurate, published, and part of some overarching news record.
How is this situation any different from when a scientific paper is retracted, or outright removed, because the subject matter was considered insensitive?
[On another note -it was also especially hypocritical of Gawker given that they regularly chastise other sites (e.g., Buzzfeed) for quietly removing articles that upset others (i.e., paid sponsors).]