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:

• The withdrawal of a COVID-19 scoring tool based on Surgisphere data following NEJM, Lancet retractions
• Fallout — including suspensions and resignations — from a controversial essay in a chemistry journal
• News of a sixth retraction for a criminology researcher
• Two retractions for a prolific anesthesiology researcher

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: A wake-up call?; paper’s author accused of racism; an editor resigns over personal attacks

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.

It was a particularly busy week at Retraction Watch, featuring retractions from four of the top journals in the world:

• A retraction from Nature
• The retraction of an Annals of Internal Medicine paper claiming masks didn’t halt the spread of COVID-19
• A group of anesthesiologists losing 10 papers at once
• Retractions from NEJM and Lancet of highly influential COVID-19 papers

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: Top journals under scrutiny; a toxic legacy; science by press release

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 clinical trial about COVID-19 by a convicted felon
• A journal that published a critical letter and then said it was a mistake
• A retraction with ‘rectitude‘
• A group that tried to publish the same paper three times

How many papers about COVID-19 have been retracted? We’ve been keeping track, as part of our database. Here’s our frequently updated list.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: Hydroxychloroquine paper earns correction; company allegedly fakes COVID-19 data; why retractions fail

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:

• the retraction of a French study on hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19
• the retraction of a well-publicized study from a JAMA journal about physician burnout
• a tenth retraction for an associate vice president of research
• another whodunit

How many papers about COVID-19 have been retracted? We’ve been keeping track, as part of our database. Here’s our frequently updated list.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: Hamsters, cats, dogs, and other fake authors; a fraudster regains her medical license; how to ruin journal titles

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:

• The story of what it takes to correct a flawed paper about COVID-19.
• Two retractions as a yeast researcher risks losing her PhD.
• Another loss in court for a cancer researcher.
• A report on a researcher who faked data in seven papers and two grant applications.

How many papers about COVID-19 have been retracted? We’ve been keeping track, as part of our database. Here’s our frequently updated list.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: Revelations about a controversial COVID-19 study; weaponizing uncertainty; a ‘super-spotter’ of duplicated images

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 study finding no evidence of racial bias in police shootings earns a correction that critics call an “opaque half measure”
• Doing the right thing: Researchers retract clinician burnout study after realizing their error
• The circle of life, publish or perish edition: Two journals retract more than 40 papers
• “[I]t took a long time for the scientific community to realize that he was simply making things up”

How many papers about COVID-19 have been retracted? We’ve been keeping track, as part of our database. Here’s our frequently updated list.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: A COVID-19 conspiracy theory; a 15-year-old publishes in NEJM; the need for speed

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:

• the correction of an influential paper on COVID-19 because it cited a withdrawn preprint;
• the retraction of a paper on gender dysphoria following a petition signed by 900 critics
• 20 expressions of concern for papers by a doctor who ran afoul of the FDA;
• the return of the peer review bandits.

How many papers about COVID-19 have been retracted? We’ve been keeping track, as part of our database. Here’s our frequently updated list.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: Retracted COVID-19 papers; a coronavirus study kept under wraps; Harvard and Jeffrey Epstein

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:

• The retraction of a paper claiming that aerosolized coronavirus spread much further than previously thought
• Two Elsevier journals that haven’t retracted papers a year after a university asked them to
• The retraction of a paper in Science on electromagnetics
• A Springer Nature journal that took four years to retract a plagiarizing paper

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: The promise and peril of speedy coronavirus research; a JAMA retraction; Google Scholar indexes a lunch menu

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:

• More questions about a paper about hydroxychloroquine and COVID-19.
• More than 40 retractions or expressions of concern for papers that likely reported on organ transplants from executed prisoners in China.
• The tale of the secret publishing ban.
• A paper that plagiarized a paper that plagiarized — but isn’t being retracted.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Continue reading Weekend reads: The effects of coronavirus on the literature; a sting involving Big Bird; a made-up name appears in a medical journal

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?’”