Category: weekend reads

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Exercise science grad student at Australian university dismissed after he admitted faking data, says supervisor
• ‘Striking’: Journal editor suspects paper mills behind rash of withdrawn manuscripts
• Publisher retracting 68 articles suspected of being paper mill products
• Why one biologist says it’s not too late to retract the “arsenic life” paper
• The mill and the loss: Journal up to 39 retractions from paper mill articles

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 76.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: Scientist in China cleared of plagiarism and fraud charges; “what my retraction taught me;” researcher sued for >$1.5 million for unpaid legal bills in failed defamation cases

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• “The most horrific time of my career.” What do you do when you realize years of your published work is built on an error?
• “Confrontation is an important element of physics progress:” Paper on black holes retracted
• Springer Nature journal retracts BMI, honesty paper. The first author calls the move “deeply unfair.”
• Journal expresses concern over study of potential treatment for autism
• “There can be no justification for such studies”: Paper on artificial eyes for dogs earns expression of concern

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 75.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: Pollution of COVID-19 research; climate papers lead to reassignment; time to publish less?

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Journal becomes “victim of an organized rogue editor network”
• Researcher linked to author with 52 retractions loses a paper for duplication
• PLOS ONE retracts paper purporting to be about lung ultrasound for COVID-19 but that had suspicious overlap with pre-pandemic article
• JAMA journal retracts its first paper, on exercise and heart disease
• “This retraction is one of the fastest I ever experienced after reporting a paper to a journal editor.”
• Columbia grad student faked data in study of socioeconomics and life experiences, says retraction notice
• Holy cow: “The article as written contains misleading information and omits important details.”

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 74.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: How COVID-19 has changed publications; peer review and women; is ‘manuscript recycling’ OK?

Welcome to the first Weekend Reads of 2021. Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Medical writer loses COVID-19-cancer paper for plagiarism
• Psychology paper retracted after creators of tool allege “serious breach of copyright”
• Psychology journal retracts two articles for being “unethical, scientifically flawed, and based on racist ideas and agenda”
• List of retracted COVID-19 papers grows past 70
• A look back at retraction news in 2020 — and ahead to 2021

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 72.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: The backstory of a Nature retraction; an author salutes her favorite review of 2020; vaping-COVID-19 link questioned

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a year-ed tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Publisher retracts 14 papers by doctor who ran afoul of U.S. FDA for marketing supplements
• Nature Communications retracts much-criticized paper on mentorship
• Texas bone researcher faked data in Nature paper, says federal watchdog, as university rescinds professorships
• After legal threats from Herbalife, Elsevier journal retracts — and then removes — a paper
• ‘I thought I had messed up my experiment’: How a grad student discovered an error that might affect hundreds of papers
• ‘Misconduct on a grand and terrible scale’: Dental scientist up to 26 retractions

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 40.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: $1.5 million payout after failure to disclose conflicts; systematic review retractions; entire class penalized for cheating

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Legal researcher up to 23 retractions for false affiliations, plagiarism
• Unmeet the beetles: “A very disappointing story” as authors yank paper on new insect species
• The top retractions of 2020: Mostly, but not all, COVID-19
• Caught in the act’: Veterinary researcher caught fabricating gene data, resigns from university job
• Journal expresses concern — we think — about papers by Surgisphere founder
• U Maryland virus researcher up to 13 retractions
• ‘I dropped the ball’: Magic bullet falls short of target

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 40.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: Prof sues journal, school after demotion following retraction; researcher fired after questioning why school rejected grant; the authors who like ‘publish or perish’

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Western University materials scientist committed misconduct, according to investigation
• Public health journal “seeking further expert advice” on January paper about COVID-19 PCR testing by high-profile virologist
• Researcher at Tehran medical school loses three papers because “overlap without cross-referencing is not legitimated”
• Researcher, until last week a Miami dean, faked data in grant applications, says federal watchdog
• Authors of meta-analysis on heart disease retract it when they realize a NEJM reference had been retracted
• Elsevier looking into “very serious concerns” after student calls out journal for fleet of Star Trek articles, other issues
• The grad student who found a fatal error that may affect lots of papers

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 39.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: p-hacking the US election; an apparently fake author sinks a stock; sued for using a research tool

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Stem cell researchers lose two more papers, making three
• A year after a federal misconduct finding, a cancer researcher loses a paper
• Journal retracts 70-year-old article on homosexuality for “long discredited beliefs, prejudices, and practices”
• COVID-19 pneumonia paper earns expression of concern — for being similar to a pre-pandemic article
• Bad, Medicine: Journal publishes doubly-brutal retraction notice

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 39.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: Google AI researcher fired after being asked to retract paper; journal accused of stonewalling on paper “used to justify human rights violations;” reflecting on a COVID-19 retraction

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Johns Hopkins student newspaper deletes, then retracts, article on faculty member’s presentation about COVID-19 deaths
• Authors retract Nature paper after realizing some data were “calculated wrongly”
• Subtraction by addition: A journal expresses concern again — but this time, with feeling
• Former Harvard cancer researcher faked a dozen images, say Feds
• Stem cell researcher’s retraction count may near two dozen
• Psychologist’s paper retracted after Dutch national body affirms misconduct findings

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 39.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: Robots come to scientific publishing; questions about a COVID-19 vaccine; funding by lottery

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• Co-authors of paper on COVID-19 and jade amulets blame ‘the online press’ and social media for misinterpretation in retraction letter
• Two and a half years after findings of misconduct, stem cell researchers up to 19 retractions
• Author initiates “a legal process” against a journal and its publisher after a retraction, expressions of concern
• Publisher infected twice with the same anti-vaccine article
• Science retracts paper co-authored by high-profile scientist and former Dutch minister
• Nature Communications looking into paper on mentorship after strong negative reaction

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 39.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: Stem cell trouble?; retractions of articles on a newborn’s death; facial recognition papers draw scrutiny