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The week at Retraction Watch featured, unfortunately, a likely DDOS attack that kept our site dark for much of Tuesday and Wednesday. That means you may have missed this post, about the temporary withdrawal of a paper about a controversial “abortion reversal” method. But the week also featured the retraction of a paper about the Shroud of Turin, a researcher who lost a PhD despite the lack of any misconduct, and a new look at a study of whether spouses were more likely to cheat if their partners earned more than they did. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- “We’re developing chronic compulsive writing syndrome. To keep pace, to be ranked among the best, quantity largely takes precedence over quality.” (Raymond Piccoli, European Scientist)
- After several journals rejected an article by Allyson Mower, “instead of turning it into a blog posting or just putting it in the library’s institutional repository, she created a website where she has posted a summary of the paper and invited readers to request a copy.” (Rick Anderson, The Scholarly Kitchen)
- India has picked six Institutions of Eminence to receive tens of millions in funding. The problem: One of them doesn’t yet exist, reports TV Padma. (Nature Index)
- “Recommendations for memorability include writing narratively; embracing the hourglass shape of empirical articles; beginning articles with a hook; and synthesizing, rather than Mad Libbing, previous literature.” (Morton Ann Gernsbacher, Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science)
- “The review showed that the Fox School of Business misrepresented the number of applicants who took the GMAT test, exaggerated their average undergraduate grade point averages, and understated the amount of debt that students incurred.” (Jonathan Zimmerman, Philadelphia Inquirer)
- “That’s a claim that could ruffle some feathers, but the way in which the researchers conducted this study might be even more controversial.” Neuroskeptic takes a look at a paper based on leaked Ashley Madison data. (Discover)
- A psychology professor has resigned from Dartmouth, following a months-long investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct. (The Dartmouth)
- “China’s drug regulator just pulled a manufacturing permit for the country’s second-largest maker of rabies vaccines over data falsification, marking the latest episode in China’s drug safety scandal.” (Angus Liu, Fierce Pharma)
- “Chinese scientific researchers are to be evaluated on the valuable contributions they make to their field rather than their number of published papers or academic credentials, according to a new policy issued by China’s top officials.” (ECNS.CN)
- “I didn’t know much about scientific misconduct, I didn’t know about how science and engineering can be abused and I learned that lesson the hard way.” Robbie Harris of WVTF talks to Marc Edwards, perhaps known best for his work on the Flint water crisis.
- “Elsevier last week stopped thousands of scientists in Germany from reading its recent journal articles, as a row escalates over the cost of a nationwide open-access agreement.” (Holly Else, Nature)
- Did zoologists in India plagiarize a well-known US textbook on corals? (Kalyan Ray, Deccan Herald)
- An analysis of physics conferences offered by a company whose parent, OMICS International, has been subject to a court injunction for false advertising in the US “reveals sloppiness and deception.” (Andrew Grant, Physics Today)
- Publishers are looking into two papers that seem remarkably similar, after the issue was flagged on Twitter. (Santiago Guerrero)
- A group from Spain has lost two papers in the Journal of Biological Chemistry for image problems. The papers are so old that one of the authors is deceased, and some other authors can’t be found.
- “A leading light in the world of cancer genetics, who was honoured at the outstanding Asian women of achievement awards and given a CBE, has quit her job at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) after facing multiple allegations of bullying dating back 12 years.” (Sally Weale, The Guardian)
- A professor has pleaded guilty to mail fraud involving a funding contract. (John Bear, Daily Camera)
- More than 5,000 researchers in Germany have published in predatory journals, according to a new series. (Svea Eckert and Peter Hornung, NDR) The story is part of an international collaboration. More from India. (Shyamlal Yadav, The Indian Express)
- “The debut work of author Yuko Hojo, a candidate for the acclaimed Akutagawa Prize in Japanese literature, has been caught up in accusations of plagiarism that has sparked vigorous debate between publishers and literary experts.” (Kazuki Ohara, The Mainichi)
- A second Czech minister has resigned over plagiarism in allegations — that’s two within two weeks. Here’s why this story may sound familiar. (Prague Daily Monitor)
- In cryptocurrency literature, “bad white papers are so plentiful that experts have identified recurring red flags, like when a white paper doesn’t cite any prior work.” (Sophia Chen, WIRED)
- A new study suggests that peer review “panels focus on rejecting the applications by searching for weak points, and not on finding the high-risk/high-gain groundbreaking ideas that may be in the proposal. This may easily result in sub-optimal selections, in low predictive validity, and in bias.” (Scientometrics)
- “[T]here are noted advantages of the results-blind review process and the scientific community is open to the initiative in our field. However, our data also suggest that there may be some hesitations about the initiative, particularly with implementing a new review process.” (European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, sub req’d)
- A New Jersey senator set up a fake health news site to attack his challenger. (Lev Facher, STAT)
- A conservative legal group that “seeks to expose science fraud…appears to be imploding.” (John Schwartz, New York Times)
- A researcher admits he doctored images, and commits misconduct. A journal handles all that with a correction.
- Has China wiped out 95% of the online academic ghostwriting business? So says its Ministry of Science and Technology. (ECNS.cn)
- “Philosophise this – psychology research by philosophers is robust and replicates better than other areas of psychology.” (Dan Jones, BPS Research Digest)
- “He wonders, though, why his use of those resources has resulted in expulsion, while nothing has been done to eliminate resources used by students that walk the line between collaboration and academic dishonesty.” An expelled student questions an investigation. (Creighton Suter, The Purdue Exponent)
- When Mattias Björnmalm “went skydiving to test how metal-organic framework crystals form in low-gravity-like conditions, he documented the whole thing on video.” The goal: Improved reproducibility. (Kerri Jansen, C&EN News)
- A scientist was stripped of an award after showing slides of former students in bikinis. (Deidre Olsen, Motherboard)
- #MeToo: Some scientists want sexual harassers “expelled from all of the nation’s top honors for scientists…[and] prevented from being elected to positions of honor.” (Francie Diep, Pacific Standard)
- “Replication and transparency in political science — did we make any progress?” asks Nicole Janz. (Political Science Replication)
- “Rather than resisting the demands placed upon them, academics have primarily complied and in doing so become complicit in their own exploitation.” (LSE Impact Blog)
- “Many famous studies of human behavior cannot be reproduced,” writes Benedict Carey. “Even so, they revealed aspects of our inner lives that feel true.” (New York Times)
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