The week at Retraction Watch featured a look at why a fraudster’s papers continued to earn citations after he went to prison, and criticism of Science by hundreds of researchers. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: How to publish in Nature; social media circumvents peer review; impatience leads to fakery
Author: Ivan Oransky
Weekend reads: California universities battle in court for research dollars; fake conferences; fake impact factors
This week at Retraction Watch featured a look at the nuances of replication efforts, aka “the replication paradox,” as well as yet another story of fake peer reviews, this time at Hindawi. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: California universities battle in court for research dollars; fake conferences; fake impact factors
30+ papers flagged because editors may have “subverted the peer review process” with fake accounts
In what has become a familiar story, another publisher has found more than 30 papers that appear to have been accepted and published based on fake peer reviews.
Hindawi, publisher of more than 400 journals, is having 32 papers re-reviewed after an investigation
…identified three Editors who appear to have subverted the peer review process by creating fraudulent reviewer accounts and using these accounts to submit favorable review reports.
The publisher launched its investigation following BioMed Central’s November announcement that they had found at least 50 papers accepted because of fake reviews. That announcement came days after we published a feature in Nature on the phenomenon. BMC eventually retracted 43 articles.
As Hindawi notes in a statement posted to its site today: Continue reading 30+ papers flagged because editors may have “subverted the peer review process” with fake accounts
Recursive recursiveness: Retracted Lewandowsky et al conspiracy ideation study republished
A paper on “the role of conspiracist ideation in climate denial” whose puzzling publication (and retraction) history formed the basis of a series of Retraction Watch posts in 2013 and 2014 is back, as part of a new article in a different journal.
Retraction Watch readers may recall a paper published in 2013 in Frontiers in Psychology. That paper, “Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation,” was an attempt by Stephan Lewandowsky and colleagues to describe the reactions to another controversial Psychological Science paper Lewandowsky had co-authored, “NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science.”
The reason we started writing about the Frontiers paper was that it was removed from the journal’s site in March of 2013, for unclear reasons, before being formally retracted a year later with a reference to an investigation that “did not identify any issues with the academic and ethical aspects of the study” but found that “the legal context is insufficiently clear.” Continue reading Recursive recursiveness: Retracted Lewandowsky et al conspiracy ideation study republished
“The Replication Paradox:” Sans other fixes, replication may cause more harm than good, says new paper
In a paper that might be filed under “careful what you wish for,” a group of psychology researchers is warning that the push to replicate more research — the focus of a lot of attention recently — won’t do enough to improve the scientific literature. And in fact, it could actually worsen some problems — namely, the bias towards positive findings.
Here’s more from “The replication paradox: Combining studies can decrease accuracy of effect size estimates,” by Michèle B. Nuijten, Marcel A. L. M. van Assen, Coosje L. S. Veldkamp, and Jelte M. Wicherts, all of Tilburg University: Continue reading “The Replication Paradox:” Sans other fixes, replication may cause more harm than good, says new paper
Weekend reads: Is failing to share data misconduct?; worst journal ever; Elsevier boycott
The big news this week at Retraction Watch was the release of more than two dozen retractions for accounting researcher James Hunton, and the sentencing of Dong-Pyou Han for scientific fraud (see more below). Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Is failing to share data misconduct?; worst journal ever; Elsevier boycott
Weekend reads: LaCour loses job offer; new Science data guidelines; Macchiarini grant funding frozen
This week at Retraction Watch saw us report on thousands of retractions from IEEE, which will have a serious effect on retraction record-keeping, a bizarre case of author impersonation, and a look at dentistry in outer space. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: LaCour loses job offer; new Science data guidelines; Macchiarini grant funding frozen
PubPeer Selections: correction for Cell paper on stem cells; why omit controls; peer review report surfaces
Weekend reads: Duplication rampant in cancer research?; meet the data detective; journals behaving badly
This week saw us profiled in The New York Times and de Volkskrant, and the introduction of our new staff writer. We also launched The Retraction Watch Leaderboard. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Duplication rampant in cancer research?; meet the data detective; journals behaving badly
Meet the new Retraction Watch staff writer, Shannon Palus
Retraction Watch readers, please join us in welcoming Shannon Palus to our team.
Palus, who has written for Discover, Slate, The Atlantic, and a host of other publications, joined us last week. She has a B.Sc. in physics, with a minor in anthropology, from McGill, where she worked at The McGill Daily. Since graduating, she’s worked as an intern at Idaho National Lab and as a fact-checker for publications including Popular Science.
It was Palus’s eye as a fact-checker, along with her passion for truth-seeking and digging, that convinced us she was perfect for Retraction Watch. She writes: Continue reading Meet the new Retraction Watch staff writer, Shannon Palus