Weekend reads: A gold star in astronomy; leading journals underrepresent women in photos; how papers can mislead

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 the story of a journal that took 13 months to reject a paper, then published a plagiarized version days later; a look at whether institutions gaslight whistleblowers; and news that a medical school had put a researcher found to have committed misconduct in charge of a grant. Oh — and it was our eighth birthday. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: A gold star in astronomy; leading journals underrepresent women in photos; how papers can mislead

Happy birthday, Retraction Watch: We’re eight today

Hey, we’re eight today!

Every year on August 3, we like to remind readers of everything we have to celebrate on our anniversary — and of what a privilege it is to be able to do this work.

We’ve come a long way since we launched in 2010. For one, we’re one shy of 4,500 posts. And we’re very close to completing work on something we hope we become an indispensable tool in scholarly publishing: Our database of retractions. Entries stretch back decades, and include nearly 18,000 retractions so far.

Now that the database is nearly complete, we’re able to step back, take stock, and think more broadly about scientific misconduct, academic incentives, and scholarly publishing. There are well over a thousand retractions each year, and we couldn’t possibly report on each one of them, so we are relying more and more on the database to inform researchers when a study is no longer reliable. Instead, we’re doing deeper dives, prompting us to file public records requests for reports of misconduct investigations and other materials (and our co-founders to urge universities to do a better job with them).

A lot of that work shows up in other outlets. In the past year, we’ve collaborated with a growing host of journalism organizations, using our joint resources to bring readers stories that go deep and reach larger audiences than we can on the blog. There are our established partnerships with STAT and Science, where we continue to break news and help readers make sense of developments. And this year we also appeared other places, for example: Continue reading Happy birthday, Retraction Watch: We’re eight today

Journal editors still don’t like talking about misconduct. And that’s a problem.

by Chris Richmond, via Flickr

In early 2011, less than six months after we launched Retraction Watch, we came across a retraction from a surgery journal. The notice was scant on details, so co-founder Adam Marcus called the editor to ask why the paper had been retracted.

The answer: “It’s none of your damn business.”

It turns out that’s still the answer from some journal editors. In a recent paper, Mark Bolland, of the University of Auckland, and colleagues — including one journalist — found that when they contacted a dozen journals that had published nearly two dozen clinical trials “about which concerns had been previously raised,” “none of the 10 responses was considered very useful.” (The trials were all co-authored by the late Yoshihiro Sato, who is now up to 42 retractions.)

Unbeknownst to the authors, a Retraction Watch reporter was also contacting the same journals. How did we fare? Continue reading Journal editors still don’t like talking about misconduct. And that’s a problem.

A journal waited 13 months to reject a submission. Days later, it published a plagiarized version by different authors

When a researcher submitted a manuscript to a journal about multimedia tools, she was frustrated to wait 13 months for the journal to make a decision — only to have it reject the paper outright. So imagine how she felt when, days after the paper was rejected, she saw the journal had published a plagiarized version of the paper by a group of different authors.

Clearly, something went very awry here — especially since the journal, Multimedia Tools and Applications (MTAP), has retracted three papers by the same group of authors, all of which plagiarized from unpublished manuscripts by other people.

Of course, one possibility is that an author was a peer reviewer of the manuscripts, and stole the unpublished material — something that unfortunately does happen.

There are four authors in common to all three manuscripts, but only one — corresponding author Chao Xiong of the Changzhou Institute of Technology in China — has responded to any queries from MTAP, according to the retraction notices. As the notices state, Xiong agrees with one of the the retractions, but not the other two. (All of the papers cover similar topics and were submitted around the same time, so it’s unclear why Xiong didn’t object to one retraction.)

Here’s a sample notice, for “Image-based reversible data hiding algorithm toward big multimedia data:”

Continue reading A journal waited 13 months to reject a submission. Days later, it published a plagiarized version by different authors

Have retraction notices improved over time?

Evelyne Decullier
Hervé Maisonneuve

Evelyne Decullier & Hervé Maisonneuve have been studying retractions for a long time. They’ve looked at how long retractions take to show up in PubMed, and five years ago they published a paper on the quality of retraction notices — and how well they were disseminated — in 2008. Now, they’ve repeated that analysis for papers retracted in 2016, and in a new paper in BMC Research Notes, conclude that “management of retraction has improved.” We asked them some questions — one of which, about an Elsevier policy, as noted below, led to a re-examination of the conclusions — about their findings:

Retraction Watch (RW): Why do you think it’s important for journals to provide a reason for retraction?

Evelyne Decullier & Hervé Maisonneuve (ED and HM): Correcting the literature is key for ensuring the quality of data and that the scientific method is respected. Readers should at least be able to differentiate retractions for honest errors from retractions for fraud or plagiarism.

Their confidence in the authors’ integrity is linked to the kind of retraction. We insist on the importance of the reader knowing whether the data, and which data, are valid. Continue reading Have retraction notices improved over time?

After years of court battles, former Wayne State researcher barred from federal grants for five years

In a case that has involved eight years of misconduct allegations, two U.S. Federal agencies, a state university, and multiple lawsuits, a former Wayne State researcher has earned a five-year ban on Federal funding.

U.S. Administrative Law Judge Keith W. Sickendick found that Christian Kreipke Continue reading After years of court battles, former Wayne State researcher barred from federal grants for five years

A medical school put a scientist found guilty of misconduct in charge of an NIH grant

Santosh Katiyar

After a scientist was found guilty of misconduct at one university, a new institution asked to take over his grant and put him in charge of it.

But the new institution — the Morehouse School of Medicine, in Atlanta, Georgia — denies they ever employed him. Continue reading A medical school put a scientist found guilty of misconduct in charge of an NIH grant

How institutions gaslight whistleblowers — and what can be done

We’ve covered a number of stories about scientific whistleblowers here at Retraction Watch, so readers will likely be familiar with what often happens to them: Their motives are questioned, they are ostracized or pushed out of labs, or even accused of misconduct themselves. But there’s more to it, says Kathy Ahern in a recent paper in the Journal of Perinatal and Neonatal Nursing. Ahern writes that “although whistle-blowers suffer reprisals, they are traumatized by the emotional manipulation many employers routinely use to discredit and punish employees who report misconduct.” Another way to put it is that “whistleblower gaslighting” — evoking the 1944 film of the same name — “creates a situation where the whistle-blower doubts her perceptions, competence, and mental state.” We asked Ahern some questions about the phenomenon.

How is gaslighting typically used against whistleblowers? What are some examples of what perpetrators (including institutions) do? Continue reading How institutions gaslight whistleblowers — and what can be done

Weekend reads: Medical device maker demands a retraction; an admission from a predatory publisher; a journal digs in and won’t retract

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 the story of two scientific sleuths who were right — but paid a price; a retraction from Nature; and the closure of a journal following an editorial mutiny. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Medical device maker demands a retraction; an admission from a predatory publisher; a journal digs in and won’t retract

Months after an editorial mutiny, publisher decides to shutter public health journal

Less than a year after the entire editorial board of a public health journal resigned in protest of moves by publisher Taylor & Francis, the publisher has decided to call it quits for the journal, Retraction Watch has learned.

In November, the editorial board resigned en masse because its members were unhappy with how the publisher had chosen a new editor, Andrew Maier, who had ties to industry. Maier is chair of the fellows program at Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA), which they described as a “corporate consulting firm” in a letter to Taylor & Francis. What’s more, now-former members protested the unexplained withdrawal — after publication — of a paper by the previous editor, David Egilman about how companies use research to “manufacture doubt about the health hazards of products.”

Recently, the journal has been contacting authors who submitted manuscripts to tell them that Continue reading Months after an editorial mutiny, publisher decides to shutter public health journal