Eve Armstrong had an important question: How would things have turned out if she had summoned the nerve to ask a certain Barry Cottonfield to her high school’s junior prom in 1997? Continue reading “Publications of questionable scientific value:” A scientist models a potential prom date
The week at Retraction Watch featured the strange story of a reappearing retracted study, and the retraction of a study showing a link between watching violent cartoons and verbal skills. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: What’s the real rate of misconduct?; research parasites win awards; preprints’ watershed moment
Jana Rieger is a researcher in Edmonton, Alberta. And now, she’s also a novelist. Her new book, “A Course in Deception,” draws on her experiences in science, and weaves a tale of how greed and pressures to publish can lead to even worse outcomes than the sort we write about at Retraction Watch. We interviewed Rieger about the novel.
Retraction Watch (RW): You tell the book from the point of a view of a fictional first-person narrator, a sleep researcher in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. You, too, are a researcher in Edmonton. Is there any Jana Rieger in Mackenzie Smith? Continue reading “A Course In Deception:” Scientist’s novel takes on research misconduct
The week at Retraction Watch featured the case of a peer review nightmare, and a story about harassment by a would-be scientific critic. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: The risks of spotlighting reproducibility; harassment = scientific misconduct?; trouble with funnel plots
The week at Retraction Watch featured a lawsuit threat following criticism of a popular education program, and the new editor of PLOS ONE’s explanation of why submissions are down. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Investigations need sunlight; should we name fraudster names?; how to kill predatory journals
The week at Retraction Watch featured three new ways companies are trying to scam authors, and a look at why one journal is publishing a running tally of their retractions. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: A publisher sends the wrong message on data sharing; jail for scientific fraud; pigs fly
The week at Retraction Watch featured more fallout from a citation-boosting episode, and a look at when animal research becomes unnecessary and cruel. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: How to speed up peer review; the whipsaw of science news headlines; data-sharing stance sparks resignation request
The fallout from an investigation into alleged citation-boosting at several journals that we first reported on two weeks ago has widened, leading to the resignation of the executive editor of one of the journals, and an investigation at a university in The Netherlands.
On February 13, the European Geosciences Union (EGU) announced that an editor at two of its journals had resigned following an investigation by the EGU and its publishing arm, Copernicus, into citation-boosting. They declined to name the editor in question. Last week, we reported that the editor in chief of a Wiley journal, Land Degradation & Development, has temporarily stepped down while the journal investigated similar concerns about why the journal’s impact factor had jumped dramatically recently.
Others — many cleared in the EGU’s investigation — have been swept up in the ongoing story. Here’s what has happened in the last two weeks: Continue reading Citation-boosting episode leads to editors’ resignations, university investigation
Expressions of concern, as regular Retraction Watch readers will know, are rare but important signals in the scientific record. Neither retractions nor corrections, they alert readers that there may be an issue with a paper, but that the full story is not yet clear. But what ultimately happens to papers flagged by these editorial notices? How often are they eventually retracted or corrected, and how often do expressions of concern linger indefinitely? Hilda Bastian and two colleagues from the U.S. National Library of Medicine, which runs PubMed, recently set out to try to answer those questions. We talked to her about the project by email.
Retraction Watch (RW): The National Library of Medicine recently decided to index expressions of concern, which it hadn’t before. Why the change? Continue reading Stuck in limbo: What happens to papers flagged by journals as potentially problematic?
The week at Retraction Watch featured a frank admission of error by a Nobel Prize winner, and a look at five “diseases” plaguing science. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: They committed misconduct, then earned $100 million in grants; collateral publishing damage