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“The Chrysalis Effect: How Ugly Initial Results Metamorphosize Into Beautiful Articles”

jomThe headline of this post is the title of a fascinating new paper in the Journal of Management suggesting that if the road to publication is paved with good intentions, it may also be paved with bad scientific practice.

Ernest Hugh O’Boyle and colleagues tracked 142 management and applied psychology PhD theses to publication, and looked for various questionable research practices — they abbreviate those “QRPs” — such as deleting or adding data after hypothesis tests, selectively adding or deleting variables, and adding or deleting hypotheses themselves.

Their findings?

Continue reading “The Chrysalis Effect: How Ugly Initial Results Metamorphosize Into Beautiful Articles”

March Madness? Harvard profs take shots at controversial studies, request retractions

harvardIn the wake of Harvard’s gritty performance in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament — they were eliminated Saturday — a pair of faculty members at the Ivy League institution are calling foul on two controversial journal articles that have already been corrected.

Walter Willett, an oft-quoted Harvard nutrition expert, is calling for the retraction of an eyebrow-raising article earlier this month challenging the relative health benefits of fats from fish and vegetables over those in meat and butter.

The article, which appeared in the Annals of Internal Medicine, quickly came under fire and the researchers — from the University of Cambridge — ended up making several corrections. Despite the changes, the authors have stood by their work, according to a piece this week in Science.

But that hasn’t stopped Willett from urging a retraction. Per Science:

Continue reading March Madness? Harvard profs take shots at controversial studies, request retractions

Psychiatric Times reinstates retracted essay on “satanic ritual abuse”

psych timesLast month, we brought readers the story of a retraction in December from Psychiatric Times, of an essay by Richard Noll that included this passage:

Despite the discomfort it brings, we owe it to the current generation of clinicians to remember that an elite minority within the American psychiatric profession played a small but ultimately decisive role in the cultural validation, and then reduction, of the Satanism moral panic between 1988 and 1994. Indeed, what can we all learn from American psychiatry’s involvement in the moral panic?

That essay was republished on March 19, along with an editor’s note:

Continue reading Psychiatric Times reinstates retracted essay on “satanic ritual abuse”

Entomologist surprised to find name on now-retracted paper alleging fossils oppose Darwin’s theory of evolution

jblsThe Journal of Biology and Life Science, published by the Macrothink Institute, has retracted a paper that claimed “fossil does not provides [sic] the convincing and direct evidences for evolution,” for reasons that they left to us to figure out.

The entire notice for “Fossils Evidences (Paleontology) Opposite to Darwin’s Theory,” allegedly written by Md. Abdul Ahad, of Hajee Mohamed Danesh Science and Technology University in Bangladesh, and Charles D. Michener, of the University of Kansas, reads:

The editorial board announced that this article has been retracted on February 25, 2014. If you have any further question, please contact us at: [email protected]

Oh, the irony: Paper on “Ethics and Integrity of the Publishing Process” retracted for duplication

manage org reviewIn a case whose irony is not lost on those involved, an article about publishing ethics has been retracted because one of the authors re-used material he’d written for an earlier piece. But the authors and the journal’s editors have turned the episode into a learning opportunity.

Here’s the notice for “Ethics and Integrity of the Publishing Process: Myths, Facts, and a Roadmap,” published in 2011 by Marshall Schminke and Maureen L. Ambrose: Continue reading Oh, the irony: Paper on “Ethics and Integrity of the Publishing Process” retracted for duplication

Weekend reads: Impact factor mania, male scientists citing themselves, insecure careers in academia

booksAnother busy week at Retraction Watch, which we kicked off by asking for your support. Have you contributed yet? Here’s what was happening elsewhere on the web:
Continue reading Weekend reads: Impact factor mania, male scientists citing themselves, insecure careers in academia

Sexism charge hits proteomics journal — and you’ll see why

j proteomicsWe guess that if you are the fox in charge of the chicken coop, you might be tempted to try to get away with the kind of thing we describe in this post. But here’s an example of why such a  cozy relationship can lead to, well, nutty developments.

Coconuts, that is.

The Journal of Proteomics will be taking down two blatantly sexist images illustrating papers by Italian researcher, Pier Giorgio Righetti – who also happens to be the one of several executive editors of the journal in question. Lab and Field and Tree of Life have the story, which, for obvious reasons, has the Twittersphere twitillated.

Righetti’s article, “Harry Belafonte and the secret proteome of coconut milk,” used the following picture as a “graphical abstract:” Continue reading Sexism charge hits proteomics journal — and you’ll see why

“I am deeply saddened and disturbed:” Co-author of retracted Nature paper reveals how problems came to light

Ben Scheres
Ben Scheres

On Wednesday, we reported on a Nature retraction of a paper whose corresponding author had also had a Cell paper retracted, and had been found to have committed a “violation of academic integrity” by Utrecht University. Today, we present the back story of how those retractions came to be, from another co-author of both papers, Ben Scheres, of Wageningen University: Continue reading “I am deeply saddened and disturbed:” Co-author of retracted Nature paper reveals how problems came to light

Controversial paper linking conspiracy ideation to climate change skepticism formally retracted

frontiersA year after being clumsily removed from the web following complaints, a controversial paper about “the possible role of conspiracist ideation in the rejection of science” is being retracted.

The paper, “Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation,” was authored by Stephan Lewandowsky, John Cook, Klaus Oberauer, and Michael Marriott, and published in Frontiers in Psychology: Personality Science and Individual Differences.

Continue reading Controversial paper linking conspiracy ideation to climate change skepticism formally retracted

Want to make sure your paper gets published? Just do your own peer review like this researcher did

env managementWe’ve reported on some pretty impressive cases of researchers doing their own peer review, one of which led to 28 retractions. We have another.

Yongdeng Lei, of the School of Geography and Remote Sensing Science at Beijing Normal University, pulled the wool over the eyes of two Springer journals. Here’s the notice from Environmental Management for “Typhoon Disasters and Adaptive Governance in Guangdong, China:” Continue reading Want to make sure your paper gets published? Just do your own peer review like this researcher did