Another busy week at Retraction Watch, with a lot of media attention to a story about 60 retractions at a single journal for peer review fraud, and our op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Lawsuits are usually dry and boring, so it’s always fun to read one with a little life. Here’s one of those: CrossFit, the fitness program famous for its brief, strenuous exercises and passionate devotees, is suing the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NCSA), which it considers its staid competitor for the nation’s sweat and cash. According to … Continue reading CrossFit to be tied: Fitness company sues journal to retract “sloppy and scientifically unreliable work”
This story began as a report of a one-off case of potential predatory practice last month, and has escalated to an official call to disband an entire international editorial board, and an accusation against the editor of mass-scale nepotism and other publishing misconduct. The journal, Archives of Biological Sciences (ABS) is the official publication of … Continue reading Serbian journal lands in hot water after challenge on 24 hour peer review that cost 1785 euros
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) is subjecting a much-criticized study involving Facebook that it published just two weeks ago to an Expression of Concern. From the abstract of the original study:
We haven’t covered that many retractions in economics, and a 2012 paper found very few such retractions. Now, a new study based on a survey of economists tries to get a handle on how often economists commit scientific misconduct. Here’s the abstract of “Scientific misbehavior in economics,” which appeared in Research Policy:
A review of past publications by the Japanese research institution RIKEN has produced three corrections of articles by a molecular geneticist, Haruhiko Koseki, The Scientist is reporting. The articles had appeared in Molecular and Cellular Biology between 2005 and 2010. The review was triggered by the scandal involving Haruko Obokata, a former RIKEN scientist whose … Continue reading RIKEN inquiry prompted by STAP stem cell controversy generates three corrections
A group of authors in China has lost their 2011 paper in Bioresource Technology on pig poop because the journal detected a whiff of the familiar in a previously published article by other researchers in the same journal (a major tsk tsk and, well, oops). The article, “Feasibility of biogas production from anaerobic co-digestion of … Continue reading If it smells like pig sh@#, it probably is pig sh@#: A stinky retraction
It’s time to review the reviews. That’s the central message of a new paper in Trends in Ecology & Evolution , “Errors in science: The role of reviewers,” by Tamás Székely, Oliver Krüger, and E. Tobias Krause. The authors propose that the process of manuscript reviewing needs to be evaluated and improved by the scientific publishing … Continue reading Is it time for a journal Review Quality Index?
Another busy week at Retraction Watch. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
From the world of physics, we have a retraction involving rivalry and alleged sock puppetry. The Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology has removed a letter from its website after a scientist complained that it was making unproven allegations against him. It’s a head-scratching case. The letter, from Lorenzo Iorio, first appeared … Continue reading Journal retracts letter accusing physicist of using fake names to criticize papers