Late last week, Nature reported some details of PubPeer’s fight against a subpoena from a researcher who claims to have lost a job because of comments on the site. (Background here.) Here’s another installment of PubPeer Selections:
Highlights at Retraction Watch this week included a case of overly honest referencing and the story of how a medical resident flagged up a pseudoscientific study. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Thomson Reuters’ online peer review system ScholarOne is having quite a year. This summer, a scientist exploited basic security flaws in how the system accepts author suggestions for peer reviewers to review a whole pile of his own manuscripts, ultimately resulting in the retraction of 60 papers and the resignation of the Taiwan minister of … Continue reading It’s happened again: Journal “cannot rule out” possibility author did his own peer review
First, a housekeeping note: We migrated web hosts this week, and while the move seems to have gone mostly smoothly, we’ve noticed a few issues: Comments aren’t threaded (even though we have them set up to be), categories aren’t properly nesting, and a small percentage of comments didn’t transfer over with the rest, the way … Continue reading Weekend reads: Scientists behaving badly; sexual harassment at Yale; help us find Retraction Watch bugs
This week we learned that Fazlul Sarkar, who is suing PubPeer commenters, claiming he lost a job offer at the University of Mississippi because of their critiques, declined an opportunity to respond to said comments. Here’s another installment of PubPeer Selections:
Kidney International is in the process of retracting a stem cell paper containing plagiarized images, Retraction Watch has learned. Here’s the notice that will appear for “Human renal stem/progenitor cells repair tubular epithelial cell injury through TLR2-driven inhibin-A and microvesicle-shuttled decorin“:
Former University of Tokyo researcher Shigeaki Kato has notched his 26th, 27th, and 28th retractions, all in Nature Cell Biology. The three papers have been cited a total of 677 times. Here’s the notice for “DEAD-box RNA helicase subunits of the Drosha complex are required for processing of rRNA and a subset of microRNAs:”
The former director of the X-ray crystallography lab at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, faked findings in three papers, according to the Office of Research Integrity. Two of the three papers by Bijan Ahvazi were published in 2004, and later retracted in 2007, … Continue reading Former NIH lab director faked findings in three papers: ORI
Last month, we reported that a Wayne State University cancer researcher had threatened legal action involving post-publication peer review site PubPeer, claiming that he had lost a job offer from the University of Mississippi because of comments on the site. Fazlul Sarkar — who has received $12.8 million in NIH funding and has been an investigator … Continue reading Scientist sues PubPeer commenters, subpoenas site for names
There’s a new journal in town. Inference’s first issue includes a lengthy review of a laboratory by a tennis instructor, a set of caricatures, and an exchange of emails from 1996 that is “perhaps, less remarkable for what it says than for the fact that it took place at all.” In short, its editors — … Continue reading “Editors are pleased to receive death threats on the third Thursday of the month:” A new journal launches