Author: Ivan Oransky

Happy birthday, Retraction Watch: We’re eight today

Hey, we’re eight today!

Every year on August 3, we like to remind readers of everything we have to celebrate on our anniversary — and of what a privilege it is to be able to do this work.

We’ve come a long way since we launched in 2010. For one, we’re one shy of 4,500 posts. And we’re very close to completing work on something we hope we become an indispensable tool in scholarly publishing: Our database of retractions. Entries stretch back decades, and include nearly 18,000 retractions so far.

Now that the database is nearly complete, we’re able to step back, take stock, and think more broadly about scientific misconduct, academic incentives, and scholarly publishing. There are well over a thousand retractions each year, and we couldn’t possibly report on each one of them, so we are relying more and more on the database to inform researchers when a study is no longer reliable. Instead, we’re doing deeper dives, prompting us to file public records requests for reports of misconduct investigations and other materials (and our co-founders to urge universities to do a better job with them).

A lot of that work shows up in other outlets. In the past year, we’ve collaborated with a growing host of journalism organizations, using our joint resources to bring readers stories that go deep and reach larger audiences than we can on the blog. There are our established partnerships with STAT and Science, where we continue to break news and help readers make sense of developments. And this year we also appeared other places, for example: Continue reading Happy birthday, Retraction Watch: We’re eight today

Journal editors still don’t like talking about misconduct. And that’s a problem.

by Chris Richmond, via Flickr

In early 2011, less than six months after we launched Retraction Watch, we came across a retraction from a surgery journal. The notice was scant on details, so co-founder Adam Marcus called the editor to ask why the paper had been retracted.

The answer: “It’s none of your damn business.”

It turns out that’s still the answer from some journal editors. In a recent paper, Mark Bolland, of the University of Auckland, and colleagues — including one journalist — found that when they contacted a dozen journals that had published nearly two dozen clinical trials “about which concerns had been previously raised,” “none of the 10 responses was considered very useful.” (The trials were all co-authored by the late Yoshihiro Sato, who is now up to 42 retractions.)

Unbeknownst to the authors, a Retraction Watch reporter was also contacting the same journals. How did we fare? Continue reading Journal editors still don’t like talking about misconduct. And that’s a problem.

Have retraction notices improved over time?

Evelyne Decullier
Hervé Maisonneuve

Evelyne Decullier & Hervé Maisonneuve have been studying retractions for a long time. They’ve looked at how long retractions take to show up in PubMed, and five years ago they published a paper on the quality of retraction notices — and how well they were disseminated — in 2008. Now, they’ve repeated that analysis for papers retracted in 2016, and in a new paper in BMC Research Notes, conclude that “management of retraction has improved.” We asked them some questions — one of which, about an Elsevier policy, as noted below, led to a re-examination of the conclusions — about their findings:

Retraction Watch (RW): Why do you think it’s important for journals to provide a reason for retraction?

Evelyne Decullier & Hervé Maisonneuve (ED and HM): Correcting the literature is key for ensuring the quality of data and that the scientific method is respected. Readers should at least be able to differentiate retractions for honest errors from retractions for fraud or plagiarism.

Their confidence in the authors’ integrity is linked to the kind of retraction. We insist on the importance of the reader knowing whether the data, and which data, are valid. Continue reading Have retraction notices improved over time?

After years of court battles, former Wayne State researcher barred from federal grants for five years

In a case that has involved eight years of misconduct allegations, two U.S. Federal agencies, a state university, and multiple lawsuits, a former Wayne State researcher has earned a five-year ban on Federal funding.

U.S. Administrative Law Judge Keith W. Sickendick found that Christian Kreipke Continue reading After years of court battles, former Wayne State researcher barred from federal grants for five years

How institutions gaslight whistleblowers — and what can be done

We’ve covered a number of stories about scientific whistleblowers here at Retraction Watch, so readers will likely be familiar with what often happens to them: Their motives are questioned, they are ostracized or pushed out of labs, or even accused of misconduct themselves. But there’s more to it, says Kathy Ahern in a recent paper in the Journal of Perinatal and Neonatal Nursing. Ahern writes that “although whistle-blowers suffer reprisals, they are traumatized by the emotional manipulation many employers routinely use to discredit and punish employees who report misconduct.” Another way to put it is that “whistleblower gaslighting” — evoking the 1944 film of the same name — “creates a situation where the whistle-blower doubts her perceptions, competence, and mental state.” We asked Ahern some questions about the phenomenon.

How is gaslighting typically used against whistleblowers? What are some examples of what perpetrators (including institutions) do? Continue reading How institutions gaslight whistleblowers — and what can be done

Weekend reads: Medical device maker demands a retraction; an admission from a predatory publisher; a journal digs in and won’t retract

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 the story of two scientific sleuths who were right — but paid a price; a retraction from Nature; and the closure of a journal following an editorial mutiny. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Medical device maker demands a retraction; an admission from a predatory publisher; a journal digs in and won’t retract

Months after an editorial mutiny, publisher decides to shutter public health journal

Less than a year after the entire editorial board of a public health journal resigned in protest of moves by publisher Taylor & Francis, the publisher has decided to call it quits for the journal, Retraction Watch has learned.

In November, the editorial board resigned en masse because its members were unhappy with how the publisher had chosen a new editor, Andrew Maier, who had ties to industry. Maier is chair of the fellows program at Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA), which they described as a “corporate consulting firm” in a letter to Taylor & Francis. What’s more, now-former members protested the unexplained withdrawal — after publication — of a paper by the previous editor, David Egilman about how companies use research to “manufacture doubt about the health hazards of products.”

Recently, the journal has been contacting authors who submitted manuscripts to tell them that Continue reading Months after an editorial mutiny, publisher decides to shutter public health journal

Nobel Prize winners correct the literature, too

Paul Nurse

If you’re ever cringing at the thought of having to correct a paper, here’s a story that may help you work through that pain.

Paul Nurse shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 2001. While holding posts at Oxford University, the Rockefeller Institute and elsewhere, and now as director of the Francis Crick Institute, he has continued doing research. And earlier this month, he corrected a 2017 paper in the Journal of Cell Science, “Screening and purification of natural products from actinomycetes that affect the cell shape of fission yeast.”

Here’s the correction notice: Continue reading Nobel Prize winners correct the literature, too

Former VA postdoc committed misconduct, banned from agency research for four years

A former postdoc at the U.S. VA Health Care System in Albuquerque, N.M., committed misconduct in three papers, the agency announced today.

Alba Chavez-Dozal, who studied the basic science underpinnings of infectious diseases, had three papers retracted between 2015 and 2016. In findings dated July 18, 2018, but released today, the VA said that Chavez-Dozal, “a post-doctoral research fellow who formerly held a VA without compensation appointment, engaged in research misconduct by intentionally and/or knowingly:” Continue reading Former VA postdoc committed misconduct, banned from agency research for four years

“[T]he data and findings…are unreliable:” Authors explain how a refutation came to be published in the same journal as the original

A rotifer, via Wikimedia

A group of tiny, all-female animals called bdelloid rotifers has long fascinated scientists. Among other questions, of course, is: Why haven’t they gone extinct, if they can’t mix up their genes? In 2016, a group of authors published a paper in Current Biology claiming to show that rotifers could swap DNA the way bacteria do. But a paper published earlier this month in the same journal found “clear evidence that the data and findings of [that study] are unreliable.” It’s unusual for a journal to publish a full paper clearly refuting another — and Current Biology left the original paper as is, without even a link to the new one. The authors of the new paper — Chris Wilson, Reuben Nowell, and Tim Barraclough, all of Imperial College London — explain how all of this came to pass, and why the authors of the original paper deserve praise.

RW: You and others refer to asexual rotifers as an “evolutionary scandal.” Can you explain? Continue reading “[T]he data and findings…are unreliable:” Authors explain how a refutation came to be published in the same journal as the original