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The U.S. National Institutes of Health is closing PubMed Commons, the feature that enabled readers to post comments on abstracts indexed in PubMed.

NIH announced it will be discontinuing the service — which allowed only signed comments from authors with papers indexed in PubMed, among other restrictions — after more than four years, due to a lack of interest.

According to the statement, the last day to post a comment will be February 15:

Continue reading PubMed shuts down its comments feature, PubMed Commons

The week at Retraction Watch featured “a concerning – largely unrecognised – threat to patient safety,” the loss of a grant following findings of misconduct in a controversial study, and a request that authors remove a reference for libel concerns. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: A manuscript marriage proposal; a biotech company screw-up; “systematic failure” in run-up to vaccine trial

Here at Retraction Watch, we constantly receive emails from readers who are frustrated with a particular journal — perhaps it has ignored obvious problems in a published paper, performed only a cursory peer review, or takes months (or years) to take action on a problematic article. Many whistleblowers bring their concerns to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which provides guidelines for best practices in publishing. But sometimes, those same whistleblowers complain to us that there aren’t adequate punishments for journals that ignore allegations or maintain improper practices — and COPE, though an important standard-bearer for the industry, lacks teeth. Did you know COPE can revoke a journal’s membership if it doesn’t uphold the organization’s ethical standards? This has always been possible, and a recently released COPE statement about its sanctions policy has tried to clarify its position. We spoke with COPE co-chairs Geri Pearson and Chris Graf about this and other recently announced changes.

Retraction Watch: Why did you change “Code of Conduct” to “Core Practices?”

Continue reading It’s official: When journals behave badly, there could be some punishment

It makes sense that scientists would adopt a sort of “buyer beware” attitude towards fraud — if researchers choose to collaborate with someone who’s been found guilty of some type of misconduct, their reputation among their peers might take a hit. But what about people who work with someone who is later convicted of misconduct — do they pay a price, as well? Yes, according to a preprint published recently by Katrin Hussinger and Maikel Pellens at the Centre for European Economic Research. We spoke with Hussinger and Pellens about how the “reputational damage” of misconduct can spread to prior collaborators.

RW: It’s not a surprise to think that people who collaborate with a known fraudster might see some impact, but were you surprised to see that people who worked with a “fraudster” in the past were potentially affected?

Continue reading Work with someone who later commits misconduct? You may pay the price

A former graduate student falsified or fabricated data in a manuscript submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, according to the Office of Research Integrity at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In a finding released Dec. 8, ORI said that Matthew Endo, a former graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly” caused false data to be recorded, and “falsified and/or fabricated data and related images” by altering, reusing, or relabeling them.

Endo has agreed to a settlement, effective Nov. 16, which requires him to work under supervision for three years on projects supported by the U.S. Public Health Service, among other conditions.

The manuscript entitled “Amphotericin primarily kills human cells by binding and extracting cholesterol” was submitted to PNAS, but withdrawn prior to peer review.

Specifically, ORI found that Endo used tactics to make results look better than they actually were, such as altering a laboratory test result to make a drug preparation “appear more pure than in the actual results of experimentation,” and lying about the number of times he’d run an experiment.  As an example: Continue reading ORI: Ex-grad student “falsified and/or fabricated” data in PNAS submission

When a paper is challenged on PubPeer, is a journal paying attention? A new feature recently unveiled by the site makes it easier to find out. The Journal Dashboards allow journals to see what people are saying about the papers they published, and allows readers to know which journals are particularly responsive to community feedback. We spoke with co-founder Brandon Stell to get more information.

Retraction Watch: Can you briefly describe the Journal dashboards and how they work?

The dashboards are a collection of features that we created to make it easier for journal editors to track and react to comments on their journal.  The dashboards allow journals to create teams whose members receive immediate alerts to new PubPeer comments.  They will also be able to access other information such as statistics of commenting trends across the journal.  Specialized searches will also be available. At the moment the dashboards are available to journal editors only but we hope to offer a similar service for institutions in the near future.

RW: What prompted PubPeer to create the Journal dashboards?

Continue reading New feature aims to draw journals into post-publication comments on PubPeer

Ever since Cornell food researcher Brian Wansink wrote a blog post one year ago praising a graduate student’s productivity, things have gone downhill for him. Although he initially lauded the student for submitting five papers within six months of arriving at the lab, the four papers about pizza have all since been modified in some way after the research community began scrutinizing his work; two have been outright retracted. On Friday, Frontiers of Psychology retracted the fifth paper, about the shopping behavior of military veterans, with a notice stating a journal probe found “no empirical support for the conclusions of the article.” The retraction — covered by BuzzFeed — was likely not a surprise to Nick Brown, PhD student at the University of Groningen, who had expressed concerns about the paper in March.

Retraction Watch: You note that this newly retracted article was co-authored by the graduate student Wansink initially blogged about, but wasn’t as heavily scrutinized as the four papers about pizza consumption she also co-authored. Why do you think this paper wasn’t as closely examined?

Continue reading “(Hundreds of hours of) work vindicated:” Critic of food researcher reacts to new retraction

After more than 30 years working with scholarly journals, Irene Hames has some thoughts on how to improve peer review. She even wrote a book about it. As the first recipient of the Publons Sentinel Award, Hames spoke to us about the most pressing issues she believes are facing the peer review system — and what should be done about them.

Retraction Watch: At a recent event held as part of this year’s Peer Review Week, you suggested that journals publish their reviews, along with the final paper. Why?

Irene Hames: I don’t think that saying something is ‘peer reviewed’ can any longer be considered a badge of quality or rigour. The quality of peer review varies enormously, ranging from excellent through poor/inadequate to non-existent. But if reviewers’ reports were routinely published alongside articles – ideally with the authors’ responses and editorial decision correspondence – this would provide not only information on the standards of peer review and editorial handling, but also insight into why the decision to publish has been made, the strengths and weaknesses of the work, whether readers should bear reservations in mind, and so on. As I’ve said before, I can’t understand why this can’t become the norm. I haven’t heard any reasons why it shouldn’t, and I’d love the Retraction Watch audience to make suggestions in the comments here. I’m not advocating that the reviewers’ names should appear – I think that’s a decision that should be left to journals and their communities.

Continue reading Make reviews public, says peer review expert

A former postdoc at Emory and Georgetown Universities falsified data in manuscripts and a grant application to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, according to the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Mahandranauth Chetram committed misconduct while at Georgetown, the ORI said in a finding released today Continue reading Former Emory, Georgetown postdoc falsified cancer research data: ORI

The week at Retraction Watch featured a the story of how a nonexistent paper earned 400 ciations, a lawsuit filed against a journal for publishing criticism, and the retraction and replacement of a paper by a group of anti-vaccine advocates. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Ethical issues could cost university millions in funding; Stolen bone raises questions; Ingelfinger rides again