The week at Retraction Watch featured a look at retractions in China, and an expression of concern for a paper co-authored by a controversial journalist in Australia. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- “But in contrast to physics, where preprints took off without much fanfare or controversy, the leap into preprints is stirring strong passions in the hyper-competitive world of the life sciences.” (Jocelyn Kaiser, Science)
- “New interest in preprint servers in clinical medicine increases the likelihood of premature dissemination and public consumption of clinical research findings prior to rigorous evaluation and peer review.” (Howard Bauchner, JAMA)
- A retraction, and corrections, of math papers enter the political arena, as an Illinois state senator who trained as a mathematician seeks the nomination for governor. (Tina Sfondeles, Chicago Sun-Times)
- A neurologist finds caffeine has a slight benefit for people with Parkinson’s and calls for more research. His own further research proved him wrong. (Andrew Masterson, Cosmos)
- ResearchGate’s score metric, partly based on an individual’s contributions to the site’s discussion boards, can falsely inflate a researcher’s scientific reputation, according to an analysis. (Ivy Shih, Nature) We highlighted the paper when it was published.
- “The size of a lab may affect the quantity and types of paper a postdoc publishes.” (Chris Woolston, Nature)
- The University of Ljubljana in Slovenia halts an investigation into a professor’s work, citing lack of evidence, despite three cases of falsification on record. (Karmen Erjavec, Dnevnik, in Slovenian) We covered one of the professor’s retractions here.
- A former professor at Montana State University sues the institution for wrongful termination and damaging his reputationby abusing hiring contracts. (Gail Schontzler, Bozeman Daily Chronicle) And see our coverage of his initial plans to sue here.
- A Virginia Tech professor is arrested and charged with defrauding the U.S. government out of more than $1 million in grant funding. (Robby Korth, The Roanoke Times)
- “There have been recent proposals to change the p-value threshold, but instead we recommend abandoning the null hypothesis significance testing paradigm entirely, leaving p-values as just one of many pieces of information with no privileged role in scientific publication and decision making.” (Blakeley McShane et al) And Valentin Amrhein and Sander Greenland sound similar notes in Nature Human Behavior.
- The U.S. government report finds evidence for a fear of retaliation among whistleblowers in federal research institutions. (Joe Davidson, Washington Post)
- As prominent food researcher Brian Wansink comes under continued scrutiny for his research, emails reveal how he tried to spin those allegations as another potential correction looms. (Stephanie M. Lee, Buzzfeed News) See all of Wansink’s retractions and corrections here.
- A new model demonstrates how artificial intelligence might be able to help journal editors in making decisions, as some publishers start to explore AI options. (PLOS One)
- A survey reveals Canadian researchers are publishing in fraudulent journals, sometimes willingly, because their publications are subsidized by the Canadian government. (Marie-Claude Malboeuf, La Presse, in French)
- Transparency in peer review isn’t just removing the frustration of having work rejected with no explanation. It addresses academia’s hierarchy, too. (Alanna Orpen, F1000 blog)
- Wikipedia seems to be shaping the language in papers, as phrases in recently published Wikipedia articles appear more frequently in scientific papers. (Mark Zastrow, Nature)
- A systematic review reveals that misconduct is still a significant concern in developing countries. (Linda Nordling, ResearchResearch)
- Are there risks to increased transparency in scholarly publishing? asks Nature.
- A lot of surveys suggest that researchers would prefer that peer reviewers not know who wrote a manuscript. A massive survey by Nature suggests otherwise. (Martin Enserink, Science)
- The last truly portable peer review service closes up shop, which for Phil Davis could signal the death of the model. (The Scholarly Kitchen)
- A new study suggests predatory journals undermine scientific credibility by providing an opportunity for primarily young and inexperienced researchers to cite shoddy research. (Scientometrics)
- “Of the 465 journals reviewed, 28 (6.0%) explicitly stated that they accept replications, 394 (84.7%) did not state their position on replications, 40 (8.6%) implicitly discouraged replications by emphasizing on the novelty of the manuscripts, and 3 (0.6%) explicitly stated that they reject replications.” (Frontiers in Human Neuroscience)
- Meet the trailblazers paving the way for open access. (Vincent Tunru, Medium)
- Following sharp criticism from Jane Goodall, the U.S. FDA has “has suspended experiments on the effects of nicotine in squirrel monkeys.” (Laurie McGinley, The Washington Post)
- Maybe funding incentives for publishing papers don’t have a negative effect on quality, according to a new analysis. (Dyani Lewis, Nature Index)
- Get rid of author lists in papers, says Devang Mehta, who has an idea for what should replace them. (Medium)
- Dozens of professors in Italy are being investigated for corruption, with seven placed under house arrest, reports Catherine Edwards. (Local.it)
- Cases for retraction: Lucy Bailey compares two. (The Lancet Infectious Diseases)
- Do we need a self-citation index? The debate continues. (Justin Flatt, Alessandro Blasimme, Effy Vayena, Elephant in the Lab)
- An unusual retraction from the Botanical Society of South Africa.
- A new paper is an example of “a new academic fashion of over-analyzing email exchanges and using them to affirm food industry conspiracy theories,” says Katherine Rich. (Food Navigator)
- “Do climate scientists avoid publishing results that go against the consensus on man-made climate change, in favour of results that confirm it?” No, say a group of researchers. (ScienceNordic)
- Five academics at Dhaka University are being investigated for plagiarism. (Fahim Reza Shovon, Dhaka Tribune)
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With regard the statement “New interest in preprint servers in clinical medicine increases the likelihood of premature dissemination and public consumption of clinical research findings prior to rigorous evaluation and peer review.”:
It is not clear to me that peer review and rigorous evaluation are that strongly coupled in most papers in clinical medicine.
With regard to the single blind versus double blind issue. I think a lot of this depends on who you are. I would expect that authors with established reputations or those affiliated with top universities would benefit from reviewers knowing their identities. If given the choice, I expect they choose to single blind. However those who have not yet established a reputation and work in obscure universities would benefit from double blind refereeing. If given the choice, I would expect them to choose double blind. However, in either case, the editor knows who the author is anyway. Hence I think this explains the finding that only 8% of those choosing double blind get their papers reviewed versus 23% of single blinded papers.
In the linked article about Daniel Biss running for governor, his campaign claims
“Daniel has had dozens of academic papers reviewed by his peers and published. In a few cases, further research has found that the case posited in the original article didn’t stand up, and he revised his findings.”
MathSciNet is showing 20 “publications” for him. These include 1 retraction and 3 errata admitting that the main claimed results are wrong, without providing any fixes. In other words, this leaves 12 papers. The two papers in the American Math Monthly are obviously expository. Several other papers are very short. This basically leaves a few noteworthy papers, all joint with now established mathematicians. One of the papers with an erratum, MR2031856, is his PhD thesis, as a quick check of MIT theses confirms. This seems hardly a record to be proud of.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/are-gov-hopeful-bisss-claims-of-math-prowess-pi-in-the-sky/
“Wikipedia seems to be shaping the language in papers, as phrases in recently published Wikipedia articles appear more frequently in scientific papers. (Mark Zastrow, Nature)”
Two possible explanations: (1) there are only so many different ways you can state a factual statement about a specific event or object, so it is not surprising that different authors use the same or similar words to describe a specific event or object. (2) authors for whom English is a second language may over-rely on Wikipedia as a guide on how to write articles in English.