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The week at Retraction Watch featured more than a dozen corrections at Sloan Kettering, three retractions from the principal investigator of a multi-million dollar Federal grant; and a rift at an international medical association over plagiarism. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- A researcher says she was fired “for challenging a powerful principal investigator on the authorship of a paper apparently accepted for publication in Nature.” (Meredith Wadman, Science)
- A paper in Scientific Reports about homeopathy has earned an editor’s note. (Georgia Guglielmi, Nature)
- A former New York University and Yale neuroscientist is sentenced to playing piano — for embezzling research funds. (Larry Neumeister, AP via STAT) Background here.
- “According to a recent report, more than 30 faculty members of a well-reputed and highly-funded university at International Islamic University, have been allegedly involved in plagiarism.” (Umair Pervez Khan, Daily Times, Pakistan)
- Plagiarism has turned epidemic nowadays and even renowned institutions, including the University of Dhaka, where PhD students were found involved in plagiarism recently, was struggling to rid themselves of the malady, said former caretaker government adviser Akbar Ali Khan.” (New Age Bangladesh)
- “Are studies that replicate cited more?’ asks Ruben Arslan.
- “Inconsistent and inappropriate interpretations of p-values and statistical significance appear to be the norm in the highest courts in the US judicial system,” conclude Adrian Barnett and Steven Goodman. (OSF preprint)
- Scientists surveyed “presented an image of good science as nuanced and thereby as difficult to manage through abstracted, principle-based codes” and “repeatedly pointed to systemic issues both as triggering misconduct and as ethical problems in and of themselves.” (Sarah Davies, Science and Engineering Ethics; sub req’d)
- “Replication is not only possible and desirable in the sciences, but also in the humanities,” argue Rik Peels and Lex Bouter. (LSE Impact Blog)
- Scientists think questionable research practices (QRPs) are “more appropriate and defensible when paired with a justifiable motive relative to when paired with a clearly unethical motive, particularly for QRPs that are more ambiguous in their ethicality.”(Science and Engineering Ethics; sub req’d)
- “Academia’s exacting standards on attribution are spot on. It is their inconsistent implementation that is the problem.” (David Sanders, Times Higher Education)
- “How do researchers use and change images to make their results look more consistent or convincing?” (Thorsten Beck, Elsevier Connect)
- “In the future, we will not publish Letters in which authors argue that an individual accused or found guilty of harassment is likely innocent because others have interacted with that person without incident; this argument is logically flawed.” (Jeremy Berg, Science)
- “The annual revenues generated from English-language STM journal publishing are estimated at about $10 billion in 2017, within a broader STM information publishing market worth some $25.7 billion.” A new edition of The STM Report is out.
- “Why is AAAS undercutting its own mission by also spreading inaccurate and incomplete information that, in many cases,grossly misrepresents science to the public?” (Kevin Lomangino, Health News Review)
- France’s CNRS clears previously sanctioned Olivier Voinnet of misconduct. (Declan Butler, Nature)
- “My initial reaction to this case was to deny there was any kind of problem [in the Wansink case]. This would be late ‘16.” A “data thug” explains himself.
- “The investigation identified a disagreement between the original authors regarding the data reported in the article. The investigation concluded that the data used in the article has been changed and the reported result is not valid, and that the corresponding author has removed all original co-authors in final version of this article.” (Journal of Environmental Management)
- “If you have money, you can get your homework done, your projects completed, and your thesis written.” A report from Turkey. (Maaz İbrahimoğlu, Ahval)
- “Drug companies make big contributions to analysis in the trials they fund but can fail to report their contributions.” (Matthew Warren, Nature)
- In L’Express, more revelations in the case of Anne Peyroche, the former interim director of France’s Centre National de la Recerche Scientifique (CNRS), who is accused of scientific misconduct. (Anne Jouan)
- “Is Impact Factor Suppression Biased Against Small Fields?” Phil Davis follows up on a case we covered earlier this year.
- A new survey finds that “researchers frequently make inappropriate requests of their biostatistical consultants regarding the analysis and reporting of their data.” (Annals of Internal Medicine)
- “Scientists receive too little peer-review training. Here’s one method for effectively peer-reviewing papers, says Mathew Stiller-Reeve.” (Nature)
- “Unlike Moore’s films, Paywall is not funny, and the surfeit of talking heads makes it dull.” A review by Richard Smith. (The Lancet)
- Using “blacklists, whitelists, and black sheep” to describe predatory journals “does not merely reflect a racist culture, but also serves to legitimize and perpetuate it.” (Houghton & Houghton, JMLA)
- “The Tyranny of the Top Five:” According to a new study, “Reliance on the [top five journals in economics] to screen talent incentivizes careerism over creativity.” (James J. Heckman, Sidharth Moktan, SSRN, sub req’d)
- “The labeling for the willingness to sacrifice and unmitigated communion items was mistakenly reversed during the construction of the longitudinal dataset” but “the central conclusions of the research are unchanged.” (Journal of Marriage and Family)
- Two researchers from the Indian School of Mines have just had another paper retracted. That makes 15.
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I feel bad for the Rutger’s researcher in Meredith Waldman’s article. To me, the issue of whether she did enough of the actual work to be a co-first author (or whether she was deliberately excluded from the opportunity to actively participate in work she helped initiate) is not the key takeaway. Rather, it’s that she was going to be terminated if she didn’t get promoted to Assistant Professor in the next year (which basically requires that CNS first author paper). Per the article:
“She was promoted in 2016 to instructor—a short-term faculty position below assistant professor that doesn’t necessarily involve teaching. Rutgers guidelines stipulate that instructors who are not promoted to assistant professor within 3 years ultimately lose their jobs.”
At the end of the day, fighting for that first author position wasn’t really much of a choice. It was her only chance. And it was a longshot. She obviously got railroaded out. But that only accelerated the inevitable. With this on her academic record, at 56 years of age and minimal experience or transferable skills that would help her obtain employment in a different field, she is in a tough spot. Hopefully, she’ll be able to find a decent lab tech job somewhere.
The firing of the Rutgers researcher seems very fishy. Missing a meeting with a PI you have worked with for 7 years? In most labs that I know of, collegiality – dare I say, humanity – would prevail. The meeting would be rescheduled, the PI would check with you to make sure everything is OK. The manner of the firing and the “reasons” given do not seem credible. Treating employees as disposable reagents is despicable, but appears endemic in conditions where one is beholden to the whims and fancies of one PI – like a sharecropper to the landlord.
Indeed. As recommended in many ethical guidelines, it seems that in certain labs you should always negotiate the authorship order in advance. Apparently with some PIs, you’d better have it also written down in case of later disagreements. Another point: this case also shows how skewed the publication processes are in some fields; one publication determines your career.
In L’Express, more revelations in the case of Anne Peyroche, the former interim director of France’s Centre National de la Recerche Scientifique (CNRS), who is accused of scientific misconduct. (Anne Jouan)
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/report–former-cnrs-president-guilty-of-fraud-64932
I have an important point to make.
The article cited above: “A paper in Scientific Reports about homeopathy has earned an editor’s note. (Georgia Guglielmi, Nature). ”
Cannot be considered about homeopathy stricto sensu since the article mentions: “The procedure prescribed in the monograph of Indian Homeopathic pharmacopoeia was followed for the preparation of RT extract and its ultra-dilutions except the characteristic successions used in preparation of homeopathic dilutions. Dried and coarse powder of RT leaves was pulverized. Exactly weighed (10 gm) powder was mixed with 100 mL of ethanol (70%) and kept in the glass jar for cold maceration up to 7 days with occasional shaking during each day36,54.” In this case there was not a preparation to consider this article about homeopathy even though the original source of prime material was from an homeopatic pharmacy. If it’s not prepared according to homeopatic methods: correct dilution and Succussion that is not an article about homeopathy but about a ultra-diluted preparation.