Category: RW announcements

Last week, we announced a new partnership with PRE (Peer Review Evaluation) “to improve access to information about retraction policies.” The first step, we and PRE said, was that Retraction Watch would create guidelines for retraction notices, to which PRE’s flagship product, PRE-val, would link.

Well, it turns out that great minds think alike, or along similar lines, anyway. Today we learned that next week, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) will be discussing a standard retraction form proposed by friend of Retraction Watch Hervé Maisonneuve, who has published several papers on retractions.  According to a writeup: Continue reading What should an ideal retraction notice look like? We (and COPE) want your input

We’re very pleased to announce that we’ve partnered with PRE (Peer Review Evaluation) to improve access to information about retraction policies.

In the coming months, we’ll be publishing guidelines for what we think should be included in retraction notices, and on how those notices should be publicized. As a release describing the new partnership notes: Continue reading A new partner for Retraction Watch: PRE (Peer Review Evaluation)

The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is taking a look at innovation and scientific research, and issues of reproducibility have made it onto its radar.

Here’s the description of the project from the Federal Register: Continue reading White House takes notice of reproducibility in science, and wants your opinion

The suicide earlier this week of Yoshiki Sasai, one of the scientists who worked on the now-discredited STAP stem cell work, was a startling and sobering reminder to the research community and the public that misconduct can take a heavy human toll – even on people like Sasai, whom by all accounts only had the misfortune of working with a dishonest colleague.

The tension surrounding this case and others was well-captured by University of California, Berkeley biologist Michael Eisen, who himself lost his father, also a scientist, to suicide in 1987 in a case that he said had haunting parallels to Sasai’s:

Obviously, fraud is a terrible thing. Nothing provides as deep an existential threat to the scientific enterprise than making up data. But as bad as it is, there is something deeply ugly about the way the scientific community responds to misconduct. We need to deal swiftly with fraud when it is identified. But time after time I have watched the way not only the accused, but everyone around them, is treated with such sanctimonious disdain it is frankly not surprising that some of them respond in tragic ways.

Some of the commenters on Eisen’s post, as well as here on Retraction Watch, have had questions like this: Continue reading On vigorous scientific debates, witch hunts, and the tragedy of suicide

 

A lovely birthday gift from reader Leonid Schneider, who also contributes cartoons to Lab Times, where we have a column.

Bonus: The world’s first art critic.

 

Yesterday was our fourth birthday. We published our first post, “Why write a blog about retractions?” on August 3, 2010, and the anniversary seems as good a time as any to review where we’ve been.

Here were some highlights of the past twelve months: Continue reading Happy fourth anniversary, Retraction Watch

In March, we asked Retraction Watch readers for some financial support. A number of you contributed and continue to, for which we’re very grateful.

One of the things we wanted to do with those funds was hire other writers, specifically an intern. So we’re pleased to introduce the first-ever Retraction Watch intern, Cat Ferguson.

Ferguson, whose first post will go live later today and who will join us in earnest next week, just graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Science Communication Program. She has already written for the New Yorker online, and for New Scientist, among other outlets.

Here’s what she had to say about writing that New Yorker piece: Continue reading Meet the first-ever Retraction Watch intern. And: Thanks, readers

Retraction Watch readers: We need help.

As many of our loyal tipsters know, the list of retractions and related stories that we can’t get to just keeps getting longer. And as we grow, we want to groom a stable of paid freelance — and perhaps one day full-time — Retraction Watch contributors.

So with that in mind — and knowing that it can be difficult for early-career journalists to gain experience in accountability journalism — we’ve decided the an internship is the first investment we’ll make with funds our generous supporters have sent us.

Continue reading Retraction Watch is hiring an intern: Here’s how to apply