This week at Retraction Watch featured the debut of our new editor, and a unicorn. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Where to submit your next paper, NIH proposes “emeritus” award, research dollars wasted
Author: Ivan Oransky
Fraud’s long tail: Measles outbreak shows why it’s important to look downstream of retractions
As Retraction Watch readers know, public health officials are concerned about a U.S. measles outbreak. As The New York Times notes:
The United States has already had more cases of measles in the first month of 2015 than the number that is typically diagnosed in a full year. This follows a year in which the number of cases was several times more than the average since 2000, when the disease was declared eliminated in the United States.
As Retraction Watch readers also know, the discredited autism-vaccines link, fears of which lead some parents to skip their kids’ vaccations, rears its ugly head periodically. Much of the related anti-vaccine movement can be tied to a 1998 study in the Lancet by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues that was eventually retracted in 2010: Continue reading Fraud’s long tail: Measles outbreak shows why it’s important to look downstream of retractions
Meet the new Retraction Watch editor: Alison McCook
Retraction Watch readers, please join us in welcoming Alison McCook to the fold.
We’re thrilled that McCook, an award-winning Philadelphia-based science writer and editor, began as editor today. Continue reading Meet the new Retraction Watch editor: Alison McCook
Retraction Watch “mischaracterized the reason for a retraction:” Harlan Krumholz responds to a post
On Friday, we reported on the retraction and republication of a paper in The Lancet. One of the paper’s authors, Yale’s Harlan Krumholz, took issue with how we characterized the reason for the retraction. We offered him a chance to write a guest post about the situation, which we are pleased to publish below. Please see our editor’s note at the end.
Retraction Watch has grown to play a very important role in promoting responsible conduct of scientific research. Its quest to ‘track retractions as a window into the scientific process’ performs a great service to society. They also have a great responsibility to be accurate in their characterizations of retractions, as all are not alike. I was disappointed that they, in my opinion, mischaracterized the reason for a retraction and republication of one of my papers and did not want to retract their own story (do they have a process to evaluate such concerns?). They said that the retraction occurred because of a major statistical error, when, in my opinion, it was the result of a minor statistical error that affected the results in a very minor way and had no effect on the conclusion. That seems like a more accurate characterization to me. And it makes a difference to the impression of what happened.
Here is the story: Continue reading Retraction Watch “mischaracterized the reason for a retraction:” Harlan Krumholz responds to a post
Weekend reads: Savage peer reviews, cosmology claim bites dust, $50 million diet pill hoax
This week at Retraction Watch featured polar opposites: Two new entries in our “doing the right thing” category, and one in our plagiarism euphemism parade. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Savage peer reviews, cosmology claim bites dust, $50 million diet pill hoax
Exclusive: Former NIH lab head who faked data now working as government patent examiner
The former director of the X-ray crystallography lab at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, who was found by the Office of Research Integrity to have faked findings in three papers, is once again earning a government salary, this time as a patent examiner, Retraction Watch has learned. Continue reading Exclusive: Former NIH lab head who faked data now working as government patent examiner
Weekend reads: Potti trial to begin; fraudster post-doc fired; how to avoid predatory journals
This week at Retraction Watch featured a hotly debated guest post from Leonid Schneider and two ORI findings. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Potti trial to begin; fraudster post-doc fired; how to avoid predatory journals
Former Pitt cancer researcher admits to faking findings
A former researcher at the University of Pittsburgh inflated the number of mice used in his experiments, and faked data in a number of images in a paper reporting the results, according to the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).
Dong Xiao admitting to having
intentionally fabricated data contained in a paper entitled ‘Guggulsterone inhibits prostate cancer growth via inactivation of Akt regulated by ATP citrate signaling,’ specifically Figure 6G,
the ORI reports. The paper was published in in July 2014 in Oncotarget. Here’s Figure 6: Continue reading Former Pitt cancer researcher admits to faking findings
PubPeer Selections: Good behavior earns praise; questions about HIV vaccine research
PubPeer continues to make its mark on the scientific literature. Here’s another installment of PubPeer Selections: Continue reading PubPeer Selections: Good behavior earns praise; questions about HIV vaccine research
What if universities had to agree to refund grants whenever there was a retraction?
We’re pleased to share this guest post from Leonid Schneider, a cell biologist, science journalist and a prolific cartoonist whose work graces our Twitter profile and Facebook page. In it, Schneider argues for a new way to ensure accountability for publicly funded research.
It has become clear that scientific dishonesty is rarely sanctioned. In the worst case scenario, manipulated or fraudulent papers have to be retracted, yet scientists of a certain academic standing can weather retractions without much adverse effect on their careers or institutional budgets. Retraction Watch lists plenty of cases in which the full blame for retracted papers has been accepted by the first author, with the senior principal investigator (PI) continuing as nothing has happened. Cases of justice, like that of the HIV-vaccine fraudster Dong-Pyou Han, who has apparently accepted a plea bargain after losing his job at Iowa State University, which in turn had to forfeit part of a $14.5 million NIH grant to the lab in which he worked, are very rare.
The problem is that Continue reading What if universities had to agree to refund grants whenever there was a retraction?