Ivan Oransky

Weekend reads: A deep dive into a problematic study of ivermectin; how journals respond to allegations; prison and now scrutiny

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Publisher retracting more than 30 articles from paper mills
COVID-19 wastewater tracking paper ends up in the sewer
Publisher offers cash for citations
Pro-tip: Before submitting your manuscript, delete the plagiarism detection report text
Former Tufts grad student settles lawsuit alleging retaliation for whistleblowing
In which we ask: What exactly did peer review accomplish here?

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 154.

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

Pro-tip: Before submitting your manuscript, delete the plagiarism detection report text

It’s happened to all of us: You’re putting the final touches on your manuscript and run plagiarism detection software against it. Somehow, part of the software’s report ends up in your abstract — and neither you nor the peer reviewers nor the publishing team notices.

Well, it’s happened to one group of researchers, anyway.

Here’s one such passage, which appears right in “Identification of Selective Forwarding Attacks in Remote locator Network utilizing Adaptive Trust Framework,” a 2019 paper that was part of the IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering:

Weekend reads: It’s not all publish or perish?; plagiarism hunters; controls on ‘gain of function’ research weaken

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Readers puzzle over marketing journal’s failures to retract
Doing the right thing: Co-authors of researcher who covered up data fakery retract paper
Journal retracts more articles for being “unethical, scientifically flawed, and based on racist ideas and agenda”
Second time’s the charm: The author who requested a retraction twice
Biotech’s data supporting Alzheimer’s trials under scrutiny
Guest editor says journal will retract dozens of inappropriate papers after his email was hacked

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 151.

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

Guest editor says journal will retract dozens of inappropriate papers after his email was hacked

What do aerobics and dance training have to do with geology?

If that sounds like an odd question, take a look at more than 70 articles in a special collection of the Arabian Journal of Geosciences, published by Springer Nature, with titles such as:

Weekend reads: Fraud in a study of dishonesty; scrutiny of an open access publisher; HHMI prof fired for sexual harassment

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

WHO COVID-19 library contains hundreds of papers from hijacked journals
Will the real hottest month on record please stand up?
Biotech co-founder faked data in NIH-funded research, says federal watchdog
The decade-long saga capped by a $215,000 settlement with the US government
Authors crop estimate that was off by a factor of 60 — or $3 trillion
Meet the alleged brain surgeon who squats on domains, punks journals and listed Wolf Blitzer as a co-author

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 149.

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

Biotech co-founder faked data in NIH-funded research, says federal watchdog

A former researcher at the Mount Desert Island Laboratory in Maine who co-founded a lab spinoff faked data in research supported by federal funding, according to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.

The researcher, Viravuth Yin, “engaged in research misconduct by knowingly, intentionally, and/or recklessly falsifying and/or fabricating data,” the ORI said in an announcement about the case. The work was published and submitted from 2015 to 2019, and Yin was principal investigator on one of the grants named by the ORI, worth more than $900,000.

Weekend reads: ‘An Anti-Tobacco Hero’s Complicated Legacy’; plagiarism at Snopes; is publishing in predatory journals misconduct?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Researcher in Japan suspended, demoted for plagiarism
Critics face legal threats as journal takes more than three years to act
Ivermectin meta-analysis to be retracted, revised, say authors
Authors blame a “ghoul” for retraction of paper claiming vaccines lead to health and behavioral issues
Authors — except one — retract 2014 Nature paper on genetics
Authors admit they “published the paper without completely studying their work.”
Attorney asks Retraction Watch to remove post because client has lost out on opportunities
False claims allegations cost Mass General, former Harvard researcher more than $1 million

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 149.

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

Ivermectin meta-analysis to be retracted, revised, say authors

Less than a month after the withdrawal of a widely touted preprint claiming that ivermectin could treat COVID-19, the authors of a meta-analysis that relied heavily on the preprint say they will retract their paper.

According to an expression of concern posted yesterday and announced by Paul Sax, the editor of the journal that published the paper: