After reading too many papers that either are not reproducible or contain statistical errors (or both), the American Statistical Association (ASA) has been roused to action. Today the group released six principles for the use and interpretation of p values. P-values are used to search for differences between groups or treatments, to evaluate relationships between variables of interest, and for many other purposes. But the ASA says they are widely misused. Here are the six principles from the ASA statement: Continue reading We’re using a common statistical test all wrong. Statisticians want to fix that.
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PLOS ONE retracting paper that cites “the Creator”
PLOS ONE has retracted a paper published one month ago after readers began criticizing it for mentioning “the Creator.”
The article “Biomechanical Characteristics of Hand Coordination in Grasping Activities of Daily Living” now includes a reader comment from PLOS Staff, noting: Continue reading PLOS ONE retracting paper that cites “the Creator”
More than half of top-tier economics papers are replicable, study finds
Approximately six out of 10 economics studies published in the field’s most reputable journals — American Economic Review and the Quarterly Journal of Economics — are replicable, according to a study published today in Science.
The authors repeated the results of 18 papers published between 2011 and 2014 and found 11 — approximately 61% — lived up to their claims. But the study found the replicated effect to be on average only 66% of that reported in the earlier studies, which suggests that authors of the original papers may have exaggerated the trends they reported.
Colin Camerer, a behavioral economist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who co-authored the study, “Evaluating replicability of laboratory experiments in economics,” told us: Continue reading More than half of top-tier economics papers are replicable, study finds
Author with seven retractions makes Thomson Reuters list of top scientists — plus another twist
A cancer researcher who recently retired from MD Anderson Cancer Center — and also recently lost seven papers from one journal following a multi-year investigation — is one of the world’s top scientists, according to a new ranking.
In Thomson Reuters Web of Science’s 2015 list of The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds, Bharat Aggarwal’s name tops the section for Pharmacology and Toxicology (see p. 89). In all fairness, the list is presented in alphabetical order, and seven of Aggarwal’s papers have each been cited at least 1,000 times. But in addition to his recent seven retractions, he has has six corrections, two unexplained withdrawals, and two Expressions of Concern.
We contacted Thomson Reuters Web of Science to inquire, and a spokesperson told us: Continue reading Author with seven retractions makes Thomson Reuters list of top scientists — plus another twist
Hands are the “proper design by the Creator,” PLOS ONE paper suggests
A paper about the biomechanics of human hands published last month in PLOS ONE is raising some questions on Twitter, after readers stumbled upon some curious language in the abstract:
The explicit functional link indicates that the biomechanical characteristic of tendinous connective architecture between muscles and articulations is the proper design by the Creator to perform a multitude of daily tasks in a comfortable way.
Yeah, that’s right — “the Creator.” You don’t see such language all that often in academic papers.
Not surprisingly, it’s prompted some harsh reactions from readers: Continue reading Hands are the “proper design by the Creator,” PLOS ONE paper suggests
EMBO awardee under investigation loses grant
Sonia Melo, the recipient of an early career award from the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) who fell under investigation after one of her papers was retracted, has now lost the grant.
On the EMBO release announcing the nine awardees of the 2015 Installation Grants, there now appears an asterisk beside Melo’s name. At the bottom of the page, this message appears: Continue reading EMBO awardee under investigation loses grant
Molecular self-assembly paper fell apart
Authors are retracting a 2014 paper about how liquid-crystalline materials self-organize in low temperature conditions after realizing they had measured the temperatures incorrectly.
The error affected three figures and a table in “Milestone in the NTB phase investigation and beyond: direct insight into molecular self-assembly.” The paper, published in Soft Matter, has been cited three times, according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science.
The retraction note, published in August, offers more detail as to exactly what went wrong:
Death camp dog satire retracted when German journal wasn’t in on joke
Totalitarianism and Democracy has removed a paper claiming that German Shepherds belonging to guards at the Berlin Wall descended from dogs used at concentration camps, after learning that the paper was a work of satire, The Guardian reports.
The paper, and its author, are the creation of the anonymous group “Christiane Schulte and friends.”
This isn’t the first hoax we’ve seen in publishing: Don’t forget journalist John Bohannon, who submitted hundreds of fake papers to open access journals, and more recently conjured up a study that showed chocolate helps you lose weight. (And, of course, a paper in a Romanian magazine that listed porn star Ron Jeremy and Michael Jackson among its references.) Like many other hoaxers, the group say in a statement their purpose was to shine light on problems in academic publishing.
The latest victim: a Dresden-based journal, The Guardian explains:
Continue reading Death camp dog satire retracted when German journal wasn’t in on joke
High-profile critic slams Nature letters about dinosaur growth following corrections
Authors of a pair of letters in Nature that concluded dinosaurs reached their full size surprisingly quickly are standing by their conclusions, despite challenges from a high-profile critic.
In the letters, researchers led by first author Gregory M. Erickson, a paleobiologist at The Florida State University, concluded that massive dinos grew fast — for example, a 5.5 ton T-Rex could reach skeletal maturity in just two decades. However, when Nathan Myhrvold tried to reanalyze the data, he couldn’t replicate the results. The authors have issued corrections to address the small mistakes unearthed by Myhrvold’s analysis, but argue he couldn’t replicate their results because they hadn’t fully explained their methodology.
After Myhrvold attempted to replicate the findings of maximum size and growth rate for several papers, he found issues in many, including the two Nature letters, according to a press release on Myhrvold’s website: Continue reading High-profile critic slams Nature letters about dinosaur growth following corrections
Surgery studies lacked ethics committee approval
Surgery Today has pulled a pair of papers that share many authors because the studies they describe were not approved by an institutional ethics committee.
One describes a case in which the researchers removed a mass from a 64-year-old woman’s small intestine; the other describes how the authors removed a growth from a patient’s pancreas. They conclude that the surgery techniques used — like a laparoscopic pancreaticoduodenectomy, a take on the “Whipple Procedure” — can be “feasible, safe, and effective” in certain patients.
The papers share several authors, including a first author, Akihiro Cho, whose affiliation on the papers is Chiba Cancer Center Hospital in Japan. They also share a retraction note, which explains how the journal learned of the issue:
Continue reading Surgery studies lacked ethics committee approval