The week at Retraction Watch featured news of a fine for a doctor who took part in a controversial fake trial, and a likely unprecedented call for retraction by the U.S. FDA commissioner. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: World’s most prolific peer reviewer; replication backlash carries on; controversial PACE study re-analyzed
Author: Ivan Oransky
Weekend reads: How to create tabloid science headlines; sugar industry buys research; the citation black market
The week at Retraction Watch featured a look at whether we have an epidemic of flawed meta-analyses, and the story of a strange case involving climate research and pseudonyms. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: How to create tabloid science headlines; sugar industry buys research; the citation black market
Patients Like Me privacy breach complaint sinks paper
A journal has removed a paper after realizing it contained a verbatim quote from a patient that could reveal the patient’s identity. Reposting as our subscription software appears to be acting up again. Read the whole post here.
Ioannidis: We have “massive production of unnecessary, misleading, and conflicted systematic reviews and meta-analyses”
Reposting this as our email alerts seem to be down again. Read full post here.
A significant cardiology retraction; second retraction from Case Western biologist; and more you may have missed
A number of readers contacted us last week to let us know that their email alerts had stopped arriving. We’ve now fixed that problem, which had to do with a software update. With apologies for the technical glitch, here’s a roundup (from a Friday post, which wasn’t delivered by email) of posts for which emails didn’t go out, in case you missed them: Continue reading A significant cardiology retraction; second retraction from Case Western biologist; and more you may have missed
Weekend reads: Macchiarini guilty of misconduct; controversial PACE data to be released; gender bias at conferences
This week at Retraction Watch featured the return of a notorious fraudster, and plagiarism of plagiarism. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Macchiarini guilty of misconduct; controversial PACE data to be released; gender bias at conferences
Scientists investigated for misconduct lose appeal in suit against Harvard. Lawyers explain what it means.
Retraction Watch readers may recall the case of Piero Anversa and Annarosa Leri, both formerly of Harvard and the Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston. The pair — which has had their work subjected to a retraction, expression of concern, and correction — sued their former employers in 2014 for costing them job offers after the institutions notified journals, triggering notices. A judge dismissed the case a year ago, saying that Anversa and Leri had to try other administrative remedies before bringing suit.
But Anversa and Leri appealed, and last week, a court denied that appeal. (See the judge’s decision — which begins by quoting Ecclesiastes and includes the delicious word “gallimaufry” — here.) We spoke by email to two attorneys — Richard Goldstein, who represented the scientist in Bois v. HHS, the first case to overturn a funding ban by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), and Paul Thaler, who has represented scientists involved in misconduct proceedings for more than 25 years — about the case, and what it could mean for similar lawsuits.
Retraction Watch: The decision seems to stop Anversa and Leri from continuing their suit against Harvard and the Brigham, but also acknowledges some of the scientists’ concerns as legitimate. How would you summarize the findings and their implications? Continue reading Scientists investigated for misconduct lose appeal in suit against Harvard. Lawyers explain what it means.
He’s back: Data faker Diederik Stapel will support research at vocational university
Diederik Stapel, the social psychology researcher who has had 58 papers retracted after admitting that he made up the data, has a new job: helping other researchers.
Stapel, according to BN DeStem (via Google Translate), Continue reading He’s back: Data faker Diederik Stapel will support research at vocational university
Weekend reads: Elsevier’s “stupid patent of the month;” how Republicans and Democrats retract; hospital apologizes for published case report
The week at Retraction Watch featured a shooting by a researcher fired for misconduct, and the creation of fake computer-generated peer reviews. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Elsevier’s “stupid patent of the month;” how Republicans and Democrats retract; hospital apologizes for published case report
We’ve seen computer-generated fake papers get published. Now we have computer-generated fake peer reviews.
Retraction Watch readers may recall that in 2014, publisher Springer and IEEE were forced to retract more than 120 conference proceedings because the papers were all fakes, written by the devilishly clever SCIgen program and somehow published after peer review. So perhaps it was inevitable that fake computer-generated peer reviews were next.
In a chapter called “Your Paper has been Accepted, Rejected, or Whatever: Automatic Generation of Scientific Paper Reviews,” a group of researchers at the University of Trieste “investigate the feasibility of a tool capable of generating fake reviews for a given scientific paper automatically.” And 30% of the time, people couldn’t tell the difference. “While a tool of this kind cannot possibly deceive any rigorous editorial procedure,” the authors conclude, “it could nevertheless find a role in several questionable scenarios and magnify the scale of scholarly frauds.”
We spoke to one of the chapter’s authors, Eric Medvet, by email.
Retraction Watch: In the paper, you test the feasibility of computer-generated fake peer reviews. Why? Continue reading We’ve seen computer-generated fake papers get published. Now we have computer-generated fake peer reviews.