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.

Sending thoughts to our readers and wishing them the best in this uncertain time.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• An “expression of concern” — or something very much like it — for a highly influential paper about hydroxychloroquine and COVID-19.
• The eighth retraction for a researcher who sued his university for discrimination.
• The 15th retraction for an author who engaged in fake peer review.
• Some authors unhappy after their retraction count grows to five.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: Should expertise in COVID-19 modeling justify a reprieve for grant fraud?; bypassing publishing; “a torrent of ‘bad science?’”

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.

Sending thoughts to our readers and wishing them the best in this uncertain time.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• A retraction by a formerly high-profile researcher for “inadvertently misidentified” images;
• the tale of the zombie papers;
• recognition for a sleuth.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: COVID-19 and peer review; blaming a spell-checker for plagiarism; the fastest retracting country

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.

Sending thoughts to our readers and wishing them the best in this uncertain time.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• A researcher who felt “shocked” and “physically ill” — but still corrected the record.
• A retraction mystery in which none of the authors of a paper knew anything about it.
• The retraction of a paper in Nature after years of scrutiny.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: Why coronavirus papers need a warning label; scientists correct the record

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.

Sending thoughts to our readers and wishing them the best in this uncertain time.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• JAMA sounding the alarm about coronavirus data;
• the retraction of a paper claiming a link between statins and lowered glaucoma risk;
• a journal frustrated by a university’s inaction.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: Coronavirus meets scientific publishing; publish or perish loses in court; retractions in cancer research

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:

• a three-part series on what happened when some researchers tried to correct the sports science literature;
• a story of how flawed science involving panthers led to policy decisions;
• a journal that declined to retract a retraction.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: Museum director sues after suspension; Nobelist ’embroiled in research scandal;’ spider biologist lawyers up after retractions

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:

• a letter about coronavirus retracted from a Lancet journal because it turned out not to be a first-person account, as claimed
• the retraction of a letter about a vaping paper because the author made up a graduate degree
• three more expressions of concern for Hans Eysenck, despite a university’s call for retractions
• a ten-year ban for a former OSU and Academia Sinica researcher

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: A big change in China; revealing a paper mill; plagiarism detection put to the test

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:

Continue reading Weekend reads: an editor wonders whether data exist, ‘how universities cover up scientific fraud,’ detecting paper mills

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 retraction of a Nature paper by Harvard researchers;
• 13 retractions and 61 expressions of concern for a controversial psychology researcher;
• the temporary withdrawal of a paper on cats and female students;
• a fourth retraction in the STAP stem cell scandal.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: How to squander a $10 million grant; paid to publish; funding lotteries

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 retraction of a preprint on coronavirus;
• a finding of misconduct at Michigan State;
• the resignation of an entire editorial board over a dispute with a journal’s publisher;
• and a former grad student who forged a PI’s authorship — and got smacked down for it.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: Highly cited scientist was manipulating citations; ‘botched and unnecessary’ operations; a flawed coronavirus study

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:

• growing concerns — and a new retraction — in a case involving spider research that we first reported on two weeks ago;
• an apology in a retraction notice for a paper about apologizers;
• a retraction at NEJM.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: A Harvard prof in handcuffs; an alleged PhD for grant scheme; unethical reviewer behavior outed