Weekend reads: A ‘hoax paper’ author resigns; Uyghur DNA papers retracted; a year without p values

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:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 154. And there are now 30,000 retractions in our database.

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: A ‘hoax paper’ author resigns; Uyghur DNA papers retracted; a year without p values

‘Misleading and inaccurate information’: Rocky tenure for high mountain paper as complaints prompt retraction

by EEJCC via Wikimedia

A journal has retracted a study that sought to dispel fears about the risks — real and inflated — associated with travel to high altitudes after receiving complaints from a group of experts who found fault with the paper. 

That’s the official version. The backstory is somewhat more complex. 

“Acute Mountain Sickness, High Altitude Pulmonary Edema, and High Altitude Cerebral Edema: A view from the High Andes” was published online in February 2021 in Respiratory Physiology & Neurobiology, an Elsevier title.  The authors were Gustavo Zubieta-Calleja and his daughter, Natalia Zubieta-DeUrioste, of the High Altitude Pulmonary and Pathology Institute in La Paz, Bolivia — which, at nearly 12,000 feet above sea level, is no stranger to hypoxia. 

According to the abstract: 

Continue reading ‘Misleading and inaccurate information’: Rocky tenure for high mountain paper as complaints prompt retraction

Obama intelligence official shortchanged grad student in 2015 book

Gregory Treverton

A top intelligence official in the Obama administration failed to adequately credit a research assistant for a 2015 book but eventually relented after the grad student refused to back down about the slight, Retraction Watch has learned. 

Gregory Treverton, who served as chairman of President Obama’s National Intelligence Council, wrote “National Intelligence and Science: Beyond the Great Divide in Analysis and Policy” with Wilhelm Agrell, a Swedish political scientist. At the time, Treverton was at the RAND Corporation, and he enlisted the help of Tyler Lippert, then a student at the Pardee RAND Graduate School and a RAND analyst. 

According to Lippert, Treverton used extensive passages of text that Lippert provided to him with no acknowledgment that Lippert had done the work. Emails between Lippert and Treverton obtained by Retraction Watch show an increasingly acrimonious exchange between the two scholars. 

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University orders PhD supervisor to retract paper that plagiarized his student

Andy Eamens

A researcher at the University of Newcastle in Australia plagiarized a former student’s thesis, according to a summary of a university investigation obtained by Retraction Watch.

Andy Eamens, who at least until recently was an agronomy researcher at Newcastle, published a paper in 2019 that included work by Kate Hutcheon, whose PhD work he supervised, without any credit. Hutcheon, who earned her PhD in 2017, contacted the journal, Agronomy, an MDPI title, in November 2019. 

The journal, Hutcheon told Retraction Watch, “forwarded a copy of my complaint directly to my PhD supervisor (without my consent). Thankfully they also forwarded me a copy of his response.” In what we found a bit confusing, to say the least, Eamens wrote, in part:

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Authors object after Springer Nature journal cedes to publisher Frontiers’ demand for retraction

The authors of a paper taking a major database to task for including papers from allegedly predatory journals are objecting to the retraction of the article, which followed a request by one of the publishers mentioned in the analysis.

And at least one of the journal’s editorial board members is considering resigning over the move.

The paper, “Predatory publishing in Scopus: evidence on cross-country differences,” was published in Scientometrics, a Springer Nature journal, on February 7. It used Jeffrey Beall’s now-defunct list of allegedly predatory publishers to identify relevant journals. The next day, the study’s findings were the subject of a news story in Nature.

On May 6, Fred Fenter, chief executive editor of Frontiers, a publisher which figured in the analysis, sent Scientometrics editor Wolfgang Glänzel a letter, obtained by Retraction Watch, demanding that the paper be retracted immediately. Much of the letter is a critique of Beall’s list, which has certainly come under fire before. Fenter — whose criticisms of of the list prompted an investigation by Beall’s university, after which Beall eventually retired — writes:

Continue reading Authors object after Springer Nature journal cedes to publisher Frontiers’ demand for retraction

Introducing two sites that claim to sell authorships on scientific papers

Two years ago, we reported on a website based in Russia that claimed to have brokered authorships for more than 10,000 researchers. (Apparently, neither our coverage nor a cease-and-desist letter from Clarivate Analytics had any effect on the site’s operations.)

And now, we bring you news of what look like two very similar sites — one out of Iran, and one out of Latvia.

The site in Iran, Teziran.org, claims to offer a variety of services, from help with immigration issues to scientific training. What caught our eye in particular was a section of the site (pictured above) that lists a number of “articles ready for acceptance” — at least by Google Translate:

Continue reading Introducing two sites that claim to sell authorships on scientific papers

Weekend reads: A deep dive into a problematic study of ivermectin; how journals respond to allegations; prison and now scrutiny

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:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 154.

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: A deep dive into a problematic study of ivermectin; how journals respond to allegations; prison and now scrutiny

In which we ask: What exactly did peer review accomplish here?

A retraction notice for a 2021 paper in an environmental sciences journal has us wondering if the peer review process for the publication should be declared a Superfund Site. 

The article, “Experimental study and numerical prediction of HTO and 36Cl− diffusion in radioactive waste at Téguline Clay,” appeared in Environmental Technology, a Taylor & Francis title, and was written by a group at Central South University, in Changsha. 

Evidently, little in that title was accurate. 

According to the retraction notice: 

Continue reading In which we ask: What exactly did peer review accomplish here?

Former Tufts grad student settles lawsuit alleging retaliation for whistleblowing

A former veterinary student at Tufts University has settled a $1 million lawsuit alleging that she was punished for claiming that her mentor at the school falsified data in a 2014 article. 

In 2019, Kristy Meadows sued Tufts and two faculty members, Elizabeth Byrnes and Dean Joyce Knoll, whom she said retaliated against her for claiming that Byrnes cooked her results in an article Meadows and Byrnes published in Neuroscience titled “Sex- and age-specific differences in relaxin family peptide receptor expression within the hippocampus and amygdala in rats.” 

According to Law360, which first reported on the settlement: 

Continue reading Former Tufts grad student settles lawsuit alleging retaliation for whistleblowing

Pro-tip: Before submitting your manuscript, delete the plagiarism detection report text

via James Kroll

It’s happened to all of us: You’re putting the final touches on your manuscript and run plagiarism detection software against it. Somehow, part of the software’s report ends up in your abstract — and neither you nor the peer reviewers nor the publishing team notices.

Well, it’s happened to one group of researchers, anyway.

Here’s one such passage, which appears right in “Identification of Selective Forwarding Attacks in Remote locator Network utilizing Adaptive Trust Framework,” a 2019 paper that was part of the IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering:

Continue reading Pro-tip: Before submitting your manuscript, delete the plagiarism detection report text