Weekend reads: Peer review, troubled from the start; how to survive as a whistle-blower

The week at Retraction Watch featured news that one in 25 papers in a massive screen includes inappropriate image manipulation, and of the eighth and ninth retractions for a neuroscience team. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

• Think peer review used to be hassle-free? Turns out, it was “troubled from the start,” historian Alex Csiszar writes in Nature.
• “How to survive as a whistle-blower.” In Nature, Michael Doran offers some background on a troubling case that left a grad student in limbo and led to repayment of hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant funding.
• “Think psychology’s replication crisis is bad? Welcome to the one in medicine,” says Dan Engber in Slate.
• Want a favorable peer review? Buy one from Henry Kissinger and Martin Scorsese, peer reviewers for hire. Our latest for STAT.
• Could an advisor’s history of being accused of misconduct hurt his students’ careers? (Adam Ruben, Science)
• Oops: A BioMed Central journal mistakenly asked a scientist to review his own paper.
• What are the unintended consequences of trying to replicate research? Our piece in Slate about how to fix them.
• “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous,” says Ryan Merkley in WIRED.
• By eliminating deadlines, a National Science Foundation pilot program has cut the number of grant proposals in half. (Eric Hand, Science)
• “I like pointing out bullshit. I think it’s both fun and useful.” Co-founder Ivan Oransky is featured with BMJ editor Fiona Godlee and Jeffrey Beall in a CBC documentary called “Cleaning up bad science.” (A text story with highlights is here.)
• “A scientist who commits scientific misconduct should not be above the law,” argues Michael Hadjiargyrou in the Journal of Information Ethics.
• “The reproducibility crisis is good for science,” says Monya Baker in Slate.
• “Publication bias is boring,” says Kevin Drum at Mother Jones. “You should care about it anyway.”
• “What are medical journals for, and how well do they fulfil those functions?” asks Richard Smith at the BMJ.
• How much do publications count when it comes to being hired in Big Pharma? asks Derek Lowe at In The Pipeline.
• The Retraction Torture Test. Sounds painful.
• A task force is calling for more oversight at a National Institutes of Health (NIH) research hospital, Nell Greenfieldboyce reports for NPR.
• A paper on the “Australian paradox” involving sugar has come under fire, Emma Alberici of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports.
• Ideological conflicts of interest worry Ajay Sharma much more than financial ones.
• What happens when an editor is also a peer reviewer? Federico Vaggi and colleagues consider the question at F1000Research.
• What do spoof papers say about the ethics of academic publishing? asks Neuroskeptic.
• S. vice president Joe Biden says that “researchers should be evaluated based on patient outcomes, not publications, and that data should be more readily available once published.” (Dylan Scott, STAT)
• Chris Chambers has “some tips for junior researchers on how to come to grips with being scooped and why you shouldn’t feel so bad.”
• “Dodgy results are fuelling flawed policy decisions and undermining medical advances,” writes Sonia van Gilder Cooke in New Scientist. “They could even make us lose faith in science.” (sub req’d)
• Jeffrey Beall has a lot of questions about peer review at Oncotarget, a journal with a relatively high impact factor.
• For you science communicators out there: Graduate student Brandon Hallmark wants to survey you.
• What should editors do when they receive manuscripts describing clinical trials that aren’t registered? Stephanie Harriman explores the question at the BioMed Central blog.
• Meet the microbiologist who “loves bugs, hates hype — and wants you to send him your cat’s poop,” introduced by Rob Waters in STAT.
• “Power of positive thinking skews mindfulness studies,” writes Anna Nowogrodzki in Nature.
• Lab tech for New Jersey state police allegedly faked results, casting doubts on more than 7800 criminal cases, reports Justin Zaremba for NJ.com.
• Tips and tricks for finding study pitfalls, from Hilda Bastian and Andrew Seaman. (Covering Health)
• Why has the public become less trusting of medical research charities? David Matthews explores new survey data in the Times Higher Education.
• “Do ethicists hinder HIV research?” asks Andrew Seaman at Reuters.
• Here’s how a hypothesis can be neither true nor false, from Ayalur Krishnan at Nautilus.
• Adelaide University is “embroiled in a third academic row,” Katherine Towers reports at The Australian. (sub req’d)
• “Werner Bezwoda and fraudulent cancer research:” Geoffrey Webb recalls a famous case from the earlier part of this century.
• Concern over the Zika virus is complicating the political crusade against research on fetal tissue in the U.S., Paul Basken reports. (Chronicle of Higher Education, sub req’d)

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