Weekend reads: Why scientists respond badly to criticism; hidden retractions; journal cancels issue

The week at Retraction Watch featured a researcher whose ideas were stolen at least three times, a victory for Crossfit in its attempt to reveal peer reviewers, and the second delisting of a cancer journal by an index that praised it just months ago. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

• Peer review trains scientists to respond to criticism “while making minimal, ideally zero, changes to our scientific claims,” says Andrew Gelman.
• In one study of retractions, there was no such indication for 40 percent of the papers. (Caitlin Bakker and Amy Riegelman, Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication)
• A journal has canceled a special issue after it discovered the guest editor provided fake credentials. The researcher has also been accused of fraud and scientific misconduct. (Diana Kwon, The Scientist)
• The widespread availability of bibliometric data “prompts researchers to obsess about their scientific productivity and impact.” (Salvatore Chirumbolo and Geir Bjørklund, European Journal of Internal Medicine; sub req’d)
• “A paper showing how to make a smallpox cousin just got published,” reports Kai Kupferschmidt about a new article in PLOS ONE funded by a drug company. “Critics wonder why.” (Science)
• “Though the effect of badges at Biostatistics did not impact code sharing, and was associated with only a moderate effect on data sharing, badges are an interesting step that journals are taking to incentivise and promote reproducible research.” (F1000Research)
• “From evaluating statistics to the need for training, what do early-career researchers think about peer review?” (eLife)
• The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has delayed the date for compliance with the revised Common Rule. Law firm Ropes & Gray explains what that means.
• Malaysia launches a new national Code of Responsible Conduct in Research that “enshrines the principles and practice of responsible research.” (Zakri Abdul Hamid, New Straits Times)
• A pier appears as front page news in South Florida paper Pier Review, accompanying a review of said pier. (Jessica Langer, Twitter)
• A report from the Dutch science academy says researchers need to emphasize replication and reproducibility. (Matt Warren, Science)
• Preprint servers preclude author anonymity in double-blind peer review, which may be annoying to some reviewers. (Andrew Gelman)
• Digital Science’s new software “collapses the product categories of citation database and analytics suite into a single new product category.” (Roger C. Schonfeld, The Scholarly Kitchen)
• Marina Picciotto on rejection by the editors themselves at the Journal of Neuroscience, which she says delivers “rapid decisions for manuscripts that are not likely to succeed in peer review.”
• The rise and fall of a researcher who claimed he had found the next CRISPR/Cas9. (Wang Yingying, Sixth Tone)
• “Pakistani journals lack the professionalism and expertise to support a thriving knowledge economy,” write Abdur Rehman Cheema and Mehvish Riaz. (Times Higher Education)
• “Unfair and misleading:” The World Bank “repeatedly changed the methodology” of its rankings of business competitiveness. (Josh Zumbrun and Ian Talley, The Wall Street Journal)
• PLOS CEO Alison Mudditt makes “the case for the megajournal.“ (The Scholarly Kitchen)
• “Congress Is Demanding Answers About Why Federal Grants Are Given To Harassers In Science,” reports Azeen Ghorayshi. (BuzzFeed)
• “More efforts are needed to improve the consistency and transparency of journal practices toward article retractions,” conclude the authors of a new study that made use of Retraction Watch coverage. (Journal of Multidisciplinary Healthcare)
• “For the first time, China has overtaken the United States in terms of the total number of science publications,” reports Jeff Tollefson. (Nature)

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