A journal has issued an expression of concern for a 17-year-old paper by one of the world’s most prominent behavioral psychologists after it partly failed a statistical stress test conducted by a group that has been trying to reproduce findings in the field. The 2004 article, by Dan Ariely, of Duke University but then at … Continue reading Prominent behavioral scientist’s paper earns an expression of concern
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: Drug company withdraws court motion requesting retraction of papers critical … Continue reading Weekend reads: Government interference in research; ‘mega’ reviewers; tobacco funding draws scrutiny
An Elsevier journal has retracted more than two dozen Covid-19 papers by a researcher in Malta with a fondness for Star Trek after determining that the articles did not meet its standards for publication. The move comes several months after we reported that Hampton Gaddy, a student at the University of Oxford, had raised questions … Continue reading Beam us up! Elsevier pulls 26 Covid-19 papers by researcher with a penchant for Star Trek
An Elsevier journal has retracted a 2020 paper on the heritability of temperament that a prominent critic derided as “transparently ridiculous,” after concluding that the peer review process — which it initially defended — was not up to snuff. The journal, Meta Gene, says it has changed that way it considers manuscripts to “ensure that … Continue reading A journal retracts a paper called “transparently ridiculous” — and an author says thank you
We’re always on the lookout for papers with that fillip of irony that lets us wonder if the Great Comedian in the Sky enjoys our little project. This week, we found two such articles. One involves a 2008 paper in the Journal of Psycholinguistic Research titled “Examining Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis as One of the Main … Continue reading Irony alert: stolen voices, relative rip-off
When David Cox noticed on Dec. 10, 2020 that two papers in the journal Cluster Computing listed him as an author, he didn’t think much of it at first. I have a common name, so it is not unheard of to have an article written by another David Cox assigned to my profile. I thought … Continue reading “The whole thing is yucky:” When you’re surprised to find yourself as an author on a paper
A Springer Nature journal has retracted a 2019 article by a Slovenian physicist who claims that both Creationism and Big Bang theory are wrong, and that black holes are the engines driving the universe. The paper, in Scientific Reports, was titled “Mass-energy equivalence extension onto a superfluid quantum vacuum,” and was written by Amrit Srečko … Continue reading “Confrontation is an important element of physics progress:” Paper on black holes retracted
In September 2019 Nicola Smith, a molecular pharmacologist in Australia, faced a brutal decision. She’d realized that she’d made a mistake — or rather, failed to catch a mistake in her group’s research before the crippling error was published — in two academic articles which were the culmination of years of work. And she could … Continue reading “The most horrific time of my career.” What do you do when you realize years of your published work is built on an error?
A team of researchers in England has retracted a 2014 paper after a graduate student affiliated with the group found a fatal error while trying to replicate parts of the work — and which might affect similar studies by other scientists, as well. The article, “Perceptual load affects spatial tuning of neuronal populations in human … Continue reading The grad student who found a fatal error that may affect lots of papers
A journal published by the Royal Society in the United Kingdom has issued an updated expression of concern for a 2018 paper by a mathematician whose work has been the subject of intense scrutiny on this website and elsewhere. But the notice is less of a statement of problems than a rationalization. The paper, “Quantum … Continue reading Subtraction by addition: A journal expresses concern again — but this time, with feeling