Category: RW announcements

Embezzlement, 15 retractions, and a whistleblower could add up to trouble for Duke

scienceRetraction Watch readers may recall the case of Erin Potts-Kant, who pled guilty to embezzling funds from a lab, and now has 15 retractions, and Michael Foster, both formerly of Duke. You may also remember that we’ve featured discussions of the False Claims Act, which some attorneys are trying to use to expose wrongdoing — and earn large settlements for whistleblowers in the process.

It turns out those two threads are intertwined, as we learned only last month when a federal court case against Potts-Kant, Foster, and Duke was unsealed last month. (False Claims Act cases are frequently sealed when initially filed, with big penalties for anyone — including the attorneys — who talk about them, which is why we didn’t know of this link before.) In today’s Science, as part of our new partnership, we tell the story in a lot more detail, and describe the potential ramifications for Duke and other universities.

The whistleblower in the Duke case is named Continue reading Embezzlement, 15 retractions, and a whistleblower could add up to trouble for Duke

Happy sixth anniversary, Retraction Watch! Here’s to a new partnership with Science

RW logoAugust 3rd has rolled around again, which means it’s time to celebrate another Retraction Watch anniversary — this time, our sixth.

It’s been an exciting year. Some highlights: Continue reading Happy sixth anniversary, Retraction Watch! Here’s to a new partnership with Science

Join our team: Retraction Watch needs a part-time editor

RW logoWe’re so inundated with story ideas and projects, we need some extra help! Specifically, we’re looking for a part-time editor who can be available during specific hours when we need an extra pair of hands.

During that time, you would review tips and write up breaking stories if they arise, as well as edit guest posts and other stories we couldn’t get to during the day. We’re specifically looking for someone who can be available for a fixed block of time, for a total of 12 hours per week.

The specific hours are Continue reading Join our team: Retraction Watch needs a part-time editor

Meet our newest team member: Dalmeet Singh Chawla

dalmeetJoin us in welcoming new staff writer Dalmeet Singh Chawla.

Dalmeet was inspired by talks at the 2014 Association of British Science Writers meeting (including by our own Ivan Oransky) to build a niche for himself as a writer – lucky for us, he chose science publishing. His focus has been on stories about innovations in scholarly publishing, but also covered peer review, authorship and publisher policies along the way.

As Dalmeet told us: Continue reading Meet our newest team member: Dalmeet Singh Chawla

Some posts you may have missed: Impressive amounts of plagiarism; PhD revocation; a poll, and more

RW logoDear Retraction Watch readers: Those of you signed up for our emails for every post may have wondered why we haven’t sent you any emails since Saturday. Well, it wasn’t because we didn’t want to. We had a technical glitch, which we’ve now fixed. Apologies for that, and here are links to the posts that appeared this week. We’re posting them in case you missed them. Thanks for reading! Continue reading Some posts you may have missed: Impressive amounts of plagiarism; PhD revocation; a poll, and more

Retractions rise to nearly 700 in fiscal year 2015 (and psst, this is our 3,000th post)

pubmedThis is our 3,000th post, dear reader, and to celebrate we’re presenting you with a wealth of retraction data from fiscal year 2015, courtesy of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

The biggest take-home: The number of retracted articles jumped from 500 in Fiscal Year 2014 to 684 in Fiscal Year 2015 — an increase of 37%. But in the same time period, the number of citations indexed for MEDLINE — about 806,000 — has only increased by 5%.

To illustrate, we’ve presented the increase in a handy graphic:

Continue reading Retractions rise to nearly 700 in fiscal year 2015 (and psst, this is our 3,000th post)

Survey: Retraction Watch readers, tell us about yourself

Since you know about us, we’d like to know more about you, readers. So we’ve created the Retraction Watch User Survey. We’d love it if you could take a few minutes to fill out these 15 questions, which will let us know a little bit about yourself, how you use Retraction Watch, and any changes or additions you’d like to see.

Your responses will inform some planning work we are currently doing around the future of Retraction Watch. (Don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere. We just want to make the site better and more useful to you, and to make sure we can sustain and grow it while continuing to make it freely available.) Please know that all data gathered for this survey will be used for internal purposes only, and will remain de-identified and confidential.  Continue reading Survey: Retraction Watch readers, tell us about yourself

Want to help us report? Here’s a sneak peek at what we’re working on

RWThere are hundreds of retractions per year, and a constant stream of new developments in publishing and fraud — all of which keeps our small staff very busy.

As a result, we can’t immediately post on every new retraction that we or our readers discover. So we’ve created a new page to show you some of what’s on our current to-do list, to give you a “sneak peek” at what’s to come. If you have any tips for us about a retraction, expression of concern, or correction you see on our “help us” page — or know of any other retractions by the same authors — please let us know in a comment.

For example, here are some of the retractions on that page now: Continue reading Want to help us report? Here’s a sneak peek at what we’re working on

Want to keep up with Retraction Watch but get fewer emails? Try our new daily newsletter

RW logoWe’ve heard from a number of readers that our current volume of posts — three per day most weekdays, and sometimes four — makes an email per post a lot to wade through. We listened, and now you have another option.

For readers who like their retraction news in a digestible form, starting tomorrow morning, we will begin offering the option of a daily newsletter. Here’s a sample. Click here to subscribe.

Every morning, you’ll get links to everything we’ve covered in the last 24 hours, along with a few stories from around the web, much as you might find in Weekend Reads. Continue reading Want to keep up with Retraction Watch but get fewer emails? Try our new daily newsletter