Diederik Stapel, the social psychology researcher who has had 58 papers retracted after admitting that he made up the data, has a new job: helping other researchers.
Stapel, according to BN DeStem (via Google Translate), Continue reading He’s back: Data faker Diederik Stapel will support research at vocational university
The week at Retraction Watch featured a shooting by a researcher fired for misconduct, and the creation of fake computer-generated peer reviews. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Elsevier’s “stupid patent of the month;” how Republicans and Democrats retract; hospital apologizes for published case report
Retraction Watch readers may recall that in 2014, publisher Springer and IEEE were forced to retract more than 120 conference proceedings because the papers were all fakes, written by the devilishly clever SCIgen program and somehow published after peer review. So perhaps it was inevitable that fake computer-generated peer reviews were next.
In a chapter called “Your Paper has been Accepted, Rejected, or Whatever: Automatic Generation of Scientific Paper Reviews,” a group of researchers at the University of Trieste “investigate the feasibility of a tool capable of generating fake reviews for a given scientific paper automatically.” And 30% of the time, people couldn’t tell the difference. “While a tool of this kind cannot possibly deceive any rigorous editorial procedure,” the authors conclude, “it could nevertheless find a role in several questionable scenarios and magnify the scale of scholarly frauds.”
We spoke to one of the chapter’s authors, Eric Medvet, by email.
Retraction Watch: In the paper, you test the feasibility of computer-generated fake peer reviews. Why? Continue reading We’ve seen computer-generated fake papers get published. Now we have computer-generated fake peer reviews.
Retraction Watch readers may recall the case of Erin Potts-Kant, who pled guilty to embezzling funds from a lab, and now has 15 retractions, and Michael Foster, both formerly of Duke. You may also remember that we’ve featured discussions of the False Claims Act, which some attorneys are trying to use to expose wrongdoing — and earn large settlements for whistleblowers in the process.
It turns out those two threads are intertwined, as we learned only last month when a federal court case against Potts-Kant, Foster, and Duke was unsealed last month. (False Claims Act cases are frequently sealed when initially filed, with big penalties for anyone — including the attorneys — who talk about them, which is why we didn’t know of this link before.) In today’s Science, as part of our new partnership, we tell the story in a lot more detail, and describe the potential ramifications for Duke and other universities.
The whistleblower in the Duke case is named Continue reading Embezzlement, 15 retractions, and a whistleblower could add up to trouble for Duke
Nearly 50 years ago, researchers in Uppsala, Sweden used cells from a patient to establish a brain tumor cell line that has become widely used. But a new study suggests that the most common source of that cell line used by scientists today may not be derived from that original patient’s tumor, raising questions about the results obtained in hundreds of studies.
In a new paper out today in Science Translational Medicine, Bengt Westermark, of Uppsala University, and colleagues describe what they found when they performed a forensic DNA analysis comparing the widely used version of the cell line to the original. The findings are consistent with those of other analyses in which cell lines turn out not to be what researchers thought, a problem we’ve focused some attention on.
Here’s an email interview with Westermark about the findings and their implications: Continue reading Widely used brain tumor cell line may not be what researchers thought it was
A former assistant professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York fired a shotgun yesterday at two men– including the school’s dean, who had fired him six years ago.
The New York Times reports that Hengjun Chao was taken into custody on charges of attempted murder, after his shots hit Mount Sinai dean Dennis Charney and another man outside of a suburban New York deli. Both men were treated at a local hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.
Chao was fired from Mount Sinai in 2010 after an investigating committee found that he Continue reading Former professor shoots dean who fired him for misconduct
The week at Retraction Watch featured health care fraud charges for a researcher who committed scientific fraud, and a first-ever government agency lawsuit against a scientific publisher for deceit. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: ORI staff revolt?; Excel creates big typos in papers; how to reward reviewers
A nutrition researcher with multiple retractions who unsuccessfully sued the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for libel has been charged with defrauding a state health insurance plan.
The Toronto Star reports that a warrant has been issued for the arrest of Ranjit Kumar Chandra for billing the Ontario Health Insurance Plan for “services that were either not provided or billed inappropriately.” The charges do not appear to be related to his research: Chandra worked once a week as an allergist for the past four years, the Star reports, and the alleged fraud was at least $5,000. Continue reading Nutrition researcher Chandra, who lost libel suit, charged with health care fraud
The week at Retraction Watch featured a new member of our leaderboard and a discussion of what would happen if peer reviewers didn’t look at results. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Scientific society vote rigging; why publish in predatory journals; academic apartheid?
The week at Retraction Watch featured an inscrutable retraction notice, and a raft of new retractions for a cancer researcher who once threatened to sue us. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Manuscript submission headaches; Trophy Generation goes to grad school; is science fucked?