Over the years, we have written about a number of the sleuths who, on their own time and often at great risks to their careers or finances, have looked for issues in the scientific literature. Here’s a sampling: Continue reading Meet the scientific sleuths: More than two dozen who’ve had an impact on the scientific literature
Weekend reads: How to kill zombie citations; wanted: 6,000 new journals; does peer review matter anymore?
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 retraction and replacement of a diet study in the New England Journal of Medicine, an introduction to the philosophy plagiarism police, and an explanation for why some PLOS ONE retraction notices include more information lately. Here’s what was happening elsewhere (and it was a lot):
University of Liverpool announces it’s investigating someone for misconduct. But don’t ask who.
Transparency begins …. with a T, as Ali G once said. That seems to be extent of the University of Liverpool’s commitment to openness, at least in the handling of an ongoing misconduct investigation at the UK institution.
We know this much: The school in late 2017 launched an inquiry into one of its scientists — apparently someone involved in liver research. The investigators concluded that the employee, who has since left the institution, had indeed committed research misconduct, according to a statement from the university.
The problem is, that’s all we know at this point. The university is refusing to name the researcher, identify any affected papers or shed any other light on the matter. The only salient facts in the statement are that the work involves:
Two years of stonewalling: What happened when a scientist filed a public records request for NASA code
Retraction Watch readers may know Nathan Myhrvold, who holds a PhD in physics, as the former chief technology officer at Microsoft, or as the author of Modernist Cuisine. They may also recall that he questioned a pair of papers in Nature about dinosaurs. In that vein, he has also been raising concerns about papers describing the sizes of asteroids. (Not everyone shares those concerns; the authors of the original papers don’t, and astronomer Phil Plait said Myrhvold was wrong in 2016.) Last month, Myhrvold published a peer-reviewed paper as part of his critique. The final version of that paper went live today, as did a story about the science in The New York Times and a detailed explanation by Myrhvold in Medium. As the discussion over the results continues, here he shares his experience trying to obtain details about the methodology the authors used.
Two years ago, I uploaded a preprint to arXiv.org describing what I considered serious problems, including apparently irreproducible results, that I had uncovered when analyzing a set of research articles published by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) NEOWISE project. NEOWISE is the largest scientific analysis of asteroids ever conducted; the researchers on the project have so far published estimated sizes of more than 164,000 objects in the solar system, estimates they have claimed were all derived by applying a standard approach to raw observations from the WISE space telescope.
My findings generated quite a stir in the media, including stories in The New York Times, Science, and Scientific American, among other outlets. My hope and expectation was that shining light on these troubling issues would spur the JPL researchers to retract or correct their papers. At the very least, I thought, they would release the various unpublished techniques that they had used in a series of highly cited papers, stretching from 2011 to 2015, thus lifting the veil of secrecy that had prevented me and other astronomers from replicating their results. Continue reading Two years of stonewalling: What happened when a scientist filed a public records request for NASA code
An awkward correction later, these researchers have a warning for would-be authors
Mitchell Knutson learned to take a journal’s policies seriously the hard way.
Early in 2017, Knutson, a professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville who studies iron metabolism, had findings he and his team were excited about publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). So they submitted a manuscript on January 30. Continue reading An awkward correction later, these researchers have a warning for would-be authors
Does the Mediterranean diet prevent heart attacks? NEJM retracts (and replaces) high-profile paper
The New England Journal of Medicine has retracted a 2013 paper that provided some proof that the Mediterranean diet can directly prevent heart attacks, stroke, and other cardiovascular problems.
The original paper, “Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease with a Mediterranean Diet,” has been cited 1,759 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.
But the findings haven’t disappeared — the authors have replaced the paper with a new version, which softens its earlier claims. Continue reading Does the Mediterranean diet prevent heart attacks? NEJM retracts (and replaces) high-profile paper
Journal corrects, but will not retract, controversial paper on internet porn
Dismissing concerns of the Committee on Publication Ethics and extensive allegations of misconduct, a journal has corrected, but is refusing to retract, a 2016 paper linking online pornography to sexual dysfunction in men.
The article, “Is internet pornography causing sexual dysfunctions? A review with clinical reports,” appeared last year in Behavioral Sciences, which is published by MDPI.
After publication, critics asked COPE to look at the paper, and in particular whether the authors had obtained adequate informed consent for two patients described in the work. COPE, which has no enforcement authority, said in an email to the publisher that it would have recommended retraction of the article.
Continue reading Journal corrects, but will not retract, controversial paper on internet porn
Philosophers, meet the plagiarism police. His name is Michael Dougherty.
Some researchers spot an issue with a paper, groan inwardly, and move on. Not Michael Dougherty. Over the years, the philosophy professor at Ohio Dominican University has sent us several tips about plagiarized papers, which have led to numerous editorial notices — including a correction to a more than 30-year-old paper written by a cat, and the outing of a prominent researcher who was mysteriously using a pseudonym. Last week, we reported that one of the world’s foremost economists had reused material in multiple papers — again, information that was revealed based on a tip from Dougherty. Of course, he’s not the only sleuth out there — journals regularly get queries from self-titled “data thugs” such as Nick Brown, James Heathers, and Brendan O’Connor. We spoke with Dougherty about how he finds the time for such a never-ending, thankless side project — and why he’s okay with the idea he might end up getting more papers retracted than he publishes himself.
Retraction Watch: You do a lot of plagiarism sleuthing — often a thankless job. What motivates you? And how time-consuming is it?
Continue reading Philosophers, meet the plagiarism police. His name is Michael Dougherty.
Have you seen more detail in PLOS ONE retraction notices? You’re welcome
If you’ve been pausing at some detailed PLOS ONE notices lately — such as one issued last month for a cancer paper that lists 21 shortcomings — you’re not alone.
According to a spokesperson for the publisher, the journal has been progressively pushing towards more transparency in its notices — in part, because it was getting too many calls from our reporters, asking about details that weren’t in the notice but that were “easily answerable.” This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a journal become more transparent following these kinds of questions — the Journal of Biological Chemistry, for instance, has become much more informative in its retraction notice, following criticism for its previous opacity.
Both the spokesperson and editor Joerg Heber, who took the role in November 2016, were quick to clarify that the increase in detail of notices is not only due to our queries — instead, it’s meant to benefit the entire scientific community. According to the spokesperson:
Continue reading Have you seen more detail in PLOS ONE retraction notices? You’re welcome
Weekend reads: Scientists citing themselves; gender and clinical trials; jail after plagiarism
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 allegations of text reuse by a Harvard professor, news about a new predatory publishing scam, and the refusal of a journal to retract a paper by Paolo Macchiarini. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Scientists citing themselves; gender and clinical trials; jail after plagiarism