It’s not unusual for us to hear allegations that journals have caved to corporate demands that they retract papers. And companies have certainly objected to the publication of results that painted their products in an unflattering light.
Continue reading Stunner: Researchers retract paper because company complains it’s hurting profits
Another busy week at Retraction Watch, with Ivan speaking in Coventry, UK. Here’s what was happening elsewhere on the web: Continue reading Weekend reads: A call for retraction of therapy-breast cancer study; credit (and pay) for peer reviewers
Last month, we wrote about the launch of a new site, Stand Up 2 Science Bullies, whose co-founders said that they had been
covertly and cyber bullied by one scientist for nine years.
One of the questions we often get — but are careful to answer with some version of “we don’t know because we don’t have a denominator” — is how retraction rates vary by scientific field and country. We’ve noticed that the reasons for retraction seem to vary among countries, but didn’t really have the data. A new paper in the Journal of the Medical Library Association by Kathleen Amos takes a good step toward figuring the country part out.
Amos looked at PubMed-indexed retractions from 2008 to 2012. Here’s what she found: Continue reading Which countries have the most retractions, for which reasons?
A recent paper proposing a way to “print any drug instantly” has been withdrawn by the author, following bewildered reactions from the blogosphere.
The paper made the rounds at various chemistry-focused blogs last month. Derek Lowe of In The Pipeline picked up on it too, calling the article
one of the oddest papers to appear in Drug Discovery Today, which is saying something.
Apparently, the author — or someone claiming to be the author, using the initials YC — wasn’t crazy about the criticism. He left this comment on In The Pipeline and elsewhere: Continue reading Paper claiming a way to “print any drug instantly” gets unprinted
Former U.S. vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin is no stranger to retractions, or perhaps “walk backs,” as politicians usually call them. There was her apology for comments about Pope Francis, a clarification about comments thought to be directed at Rush Limbaugh, and a walk back on her behalf from her running mate, Sen. John McCain.
Now, a paper in the academic literature that refers to her has been retracted. Here’s the notice from Political Research Quarterly: Continue reading A retraction involving Sarah Palin
In December, the journal Child Development posted an Expression of Concern about a study because of “possible inaccuracies in its data.” A few months later, however, that changed. Here’s what now appears where the Expression of Concern did: Continue reading Unusual: Journal withdraws Expression of Concern about child development paper
Shigeaki Kato, who resigned from the University of Tokyo in 2012 after being found to have inappropriately manipulated dozens of images, has two more retractions, both in Molecular Cell.
Here’s the notice for 2002’s “Nuclear Receptor Function Requires a TFTC-Type Histone Acetyl Transferase Complex:” Continue reading Shigeaki Kato up to 25 retractions
Another busy week at Retraction Watch. Here’s what was happening elsewhere on the web: Continue reading Weekend reads: Shocking suicide statistics, scientists say they’re over-regulated, the real @FakeElsevier
The title of this post is the title of a new commentary in Administrative Science Quarterly by Gerald Davis of the University of Michigan. Its abstract:
Continue reading “Why Do We Still Have Journals?”