Category: sci eng ethics

Why RFK Jr.’s pick for a vaccine-autism review may be familiar to Retraction Watch readers

David Geier and his father Mark speak to Fox News in 2022.

When it comes to conversations about vaccines and autism, we always have plenty to write about. And the latest news that the Trump administration has tapped David Geier for a study on possible links between immunizations and autism, first reported by the Washington Post, is no exception.

Geier has a long history of promoting the debunked claim of a link between vaccines and autism, STAT and others report. He has published on the topic as recently as 2020. A December 2020 paper lists his affiliation as the Institute of Chronic Illnesses, an organization he founded with his father Mark Geier, court documents say. In 2011, the Maryland State Board of Physicians disciplined Geier for practicing medicine without a license. He’s currently listed in the HHS employee directory as a senior data analyst, the Post reports. 

Geier’s first appearance in Retraction Watch was in 2017, when Science and Engineering Ethics, a Springer Nature title, retracted a paper on how conflicts of interest might influence research on the link between vaccines and autism. That paper has been cited 13 times according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

Continue reading Why RFK Jr.’s pick for a vaccine-autism review may be familiar to Retraction Watch readers

Journal replaces anti-vaccine paper it retracted for missing conflicts, “number of errors”

A journal retracted a paper about how conflicts of interest might be influencing research into the link between vaccines and autism because — wait for it — the authors failed to disclose conflicts of interest.

According to the retraction notice, the editors retracted the paper without the authors’ agreement, because the authors had a host of personal and professional interests in the field they didn’t declare, such as being associated with organizations involved in autism and vaccine safety. What’s more, the article also contained “a number of errors, and mistakes of various types that raise concerns about the validity of the conclusion.”

But now, Science and Engineering Ethics has published a new version of the article that draws similar conclusions to the retracted one, albeit with an updated conflict of interest statement, among other changes. From the abstract of the revised version: Continue reading Journal replaces anti-vaccine paper it retracted for missing conflicts, “number of errors”

Four in 10 biomedical papers out of China are tainted by misconduct, says new survey

Chinese biomedical researchers estimate that 40% of research in their country has been affected in some way by misconduct, according to a new survey.

The authors are quick to caution against putting too much stock in this figure due to the subjective nature of the survey, published in Science and Engineering Ethics. The estimates also spanned a wide range, with a standard deviation of ±24%. But they say that the responses to this question and others on the survey suggest that scientists in the region feel academic misconduct remains a major problem that authorities have failed to adequately address. (Indeed, a recent analysis from Quartz using Retraction Watch data showed that researchers based in China publish more papers retracted for fake peer reviews than all other countries put together.)

The survey was designed by employees at Medjaden, a Hong Kong-based editing company that assists mainland Chinese biomedical researchers publishing in English-language journals. They invited all of their registered users by email to complete two surveys—roughly 10,000 users in 2010 and 15,000 in 2015. Like most online surveys, this one had a low response rate—around 5%, so caveats about sampling bias apply.

Study co-author Hua He, who is also Medjaden’s CEO, said:

Continue reading Four in 10 biomedical papers out of China are tainted by misconduct, says new survey

Sleuthing out scientific fraud, pixel by pixel

lars-koppers
Lars Koppers

When it comes to detecting image manipulation, the more tools you have at your disposal, the better. In a recent issue of Science and Engineering Ethics, Lars Koppers at TU Dortmund University in Germany and his colleagues present a new way to scan images. Specifically, they created an open-source software that compares pixels within or between images, looking for similarities, which can signify portions of an image has been duplicated or deleted. Koppers spoke with us about the program described in “Towards a Systematic Screening Tool for Quality Assurance and Semiautomatic Fraud Detection for Images in the Life Sciences,” and how it can be used by others to sleuth out fraud.

Retraction Watch: Can you briefly describe how your screening system works?

Continue reading Sleuthing out scientific fraud, pixel by pixel

Is it possible (or ethical) to have six first authors on a scientific paper?

sci-eng-ethcIn many fields, first authors on scientific papers represent the person who’s performed the bulk of the research. Sometimes, that determination can be difficult to make, so we’ve seen many papers that list multiple first authors, noting that each contributed equally to the work. But is it possible — or ethical — to claim six authors all deserve top billing on a paper?

In a recent letter in Science and Engineering Ethics, Govindasamy Agoramoorthy — at Sengamala Thayaar Educational Trust Women’s College in India and Tajen University in Taiwan — flags a 2014 paper in The Plant Journal that lists six first authors, noting all “contributed equally to this work.”

As Agoramoorthy notes in “Multiple First Authors as Equal Contributors: Is It Ethical?“:  Continue reading Is it possible (or ethical) to have six first authors on a scientific paper?

Is an increase in retractions good news? Maybe, suggests new study

SEEIn Latin America, retractions for plagiarism and other issues have increased markedly — which may be a positive sign that editors and authors are paying closer attention to publishing ethics, according to a small study published in Science and Engineering Ethics.

The authors examined two major Latin American/Caribbean databases, which mostly include journals from Brazil, and have been indexing articles for more than 15 years. They found only 31 retractions, all of which appeared in 2008 or later. (Roughly half of the retractions were from journals indexed in the Thomas Reuters’  Journal of Citations Report®  (JCR).)

This was a notable result, the authors write: Continue reading Is an increase in retractions good news? Maybe, suggests new study

A publication loophole? Authors can make changes editors won’t always see

SEEA few unusual acknowledgements added by authors after finalizing the manuscripts have highlighted a common element in science publishing – right before going to press, authors can make minor changes to manuscripts that editors won’t necessarily review before publication.

We were reminded of this when reading two opinion papers published in August by Science and Engineering Ethics.

For one, “Honor Killing: Where Pride Defeats Reason,” the acknowledgements read: Continue reading A publication loophole? Authors can make changes editors won’t always see

Does irony have a place in science?

sciengethicsTake us at our word when we tell you this isn’t some exercise in meta-irony or meta-criticism or any other meta-bullshit, but a pair of researchers at Drexel University in Philadelphia have published a paper calling for an end to irony in science.

First, some background: In 2001, an Israeli researcher named Leonard Leibovici wrote a letter to the famously lighthearted Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal describing a randomized controlled trial in which intercessory prayer at a distance — in other words, people praying for other, sick people — was found to improve the health of patients with bloodstream infections. All the more remarkable was that this prayer was “retroactive,” as in, it purportedly occurred years after those sick patients had either left the hospital or died. Continue reading Does irony have a place in science?

Publishing gadfly demands journal editor’s resignation, then has “fairly incomprehensible” paper rejected

sci eng ethicsA scientific publishing gadfly who was banned earlier this year from an Elsevier journal for “personal attacks and threats” has had a paper rejected by a Springer journal after he called for the editor’s resignation because of alleged incompetence.

As detailed in a comment left at Retraction Watch, Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva submitted a manuscript titled “One Conjunction, a World of Ethical Difference: How Elsevier, the ICMJE and Neurology Define Authorship” to Science and Engineering Ethics on November 11, 2012. As of last week, despite a number of messages sent to editors of the journal, he had not had a decision on the manuscript.

As a result, on July 14 of this year, Teixeira da Silva sent this letter to journal editor Raymond Spier and to Stephanie Bird, an editorial board member assigned to the manuscript: Continue reading Publishing gadfly demands journal editor’s resignation, then has “fairly incomprehensible” paper rejected

Ethics training paper retracted because data couldn’t be shared

sci eng ethicsA group of authors at the University of Oklahoma have retracted a 2013 paper on ethics training after the university found that the data they used couldn’t be shared publicly.

Here’s the notice for “Improving Case-Based Ethics Training: How Modeling Behaviors and Forecasting Influence Effectiveness:” Continue reading Ethics training paper retracted because data couldn’t be shared