Ivan Oransky

Weekend reads: Retractions by Nobel Prize winners; privatizing peer review; fake mouse brains

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 50,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 250 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List — or our list of nearly 100 papers with evidence they were written by ChatGPT?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Weekend reads: Top NIH neuroscientist out amid suspicion; the issue with special issues; an ingredient derailed experiments

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Weekend reads: Harm reduction for peer review; finding reviewers; fake journals

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Weekend reads: Lawsuits filed and dismissed; ‘the rise of the science sleuths;’ research assessment culture

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Weekend reads: A plethora of misdeeds; big slowdown at several publishers; hydroxychloroquine paper retraction draws scrutiny

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

‘The PubPeer conundrum:’ One view of how universities can grapple with a ‘waterfall of data integrity concerns’

As Retraction Watch readers no doubt know, PubPeer has played a key role in a growing number of cases of misconduct, allowing sleuths to publicly shine light in shadowy corners and prompting action by many universities. (Disclosure: Our Ivan Oransky is a volunteer member of the PubPeer Foundation’s board of directors.) But that has also meant that universities can feel overwhelmed by a deluge of PubPeer comments.

In a new article, three attorneys from Ropes & Gray in Boston who advise universities on such cases, along with Barbara Bierer, a researcher and former research integrity officer at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, also in Boston, examine “the origins of PubPeer and its central role in the modern era of online-based scouring of scientific publications for potential problems and outlines the challenges that institutions must manage in addressing issues identified on PubPeer.” Attorneys Mark Barnes, Minal Caron and Carolyn Lye, and the Brigham’s Barbara Bierer, also recommend ways federal regulations could change to make the investigation process more efficient. We asked them to answer some questions about the article.

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