Retraction Watch

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

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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

Nobel Prize winners correct the literature, too

If you’re ever cringing at the thought of having to correct a paper, here’s a story that may help you work through that pain.

Paul Nurse shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 2001. While holding posts at Oxford University, the Rockefeller Institute and elsewhere, and now as director of the Francis Crick Institute, he has continued doing research. And earlier this month, he corrected a 2017 paper in the Journal of Cell Science, “Screening and purification of natural products from actinomycetes that affect the cell shape of fission yeast.”

Here’s the correction notice: Continue reading Nobel Prize winners correct the literature, too

Nature cancer paper that raised animal welfare concerns is retracted

When Nature published a paper in 2011 describing a compound extracted from a pepper plant that appeared to kill cancer cells but leave healthy cells unscathed, it got some attention.

Of course, the news caught the media’s eye, but also that of other researchers, who have since jumped on the concept, and continued to study the effects of the compound — piperlongumine — on cancer, as well as other conditions.

But ever since the 2011 letter appeared, researchers have raised concerns about some of the figures — including one that showed mice with massive tumors, suggesting they had experienced an unreasonable amount of distress during the study. Nature has responded by issuing two lengthy correction notices in 2012 and 2015 — as well as an editorial that admitted the animals may have “experienced more pain and suffering than originally allowed for,” but did not warrant retracting, as the results remained “valid and useful.”

Today, the journal is retracting the paper, with the following brief notice:

Continue reading Nature cancer paper that raised animal welfare concerns is retracted

Meet two data sleuths who paid a steep price for raising concerns about a problematic paper

Researchers Malte Elson and Patrick Markey probably didn’t know what they were getting into when they first raised questions about a problematic study of the possible effects of violent video games.

Like many other data sleuths out there, they simply wanted to ensure the scientific record wasn’t muddied by problematic data — particularly in such a high-profile area with a potentially profound impact on policy. Although their efforts ultimately paid off — the paper was retracted, and the first author lost her PhD — they also paid a price. Continue reading Meet two data sleuths who paid a steep price for raising concerns about a problematic paper

Former VA postdoc committed misconduct, banned from agency research for four years

A former postdoc at the U.S. VA Health Care System in Albuquerque, N.M., committed misconduct in three papers, the agency announced today.

Alba Chavez-Dozal, who studied the basic science underpinnings of infectious diseases, had three papers retracted between 2015 and 2016. In findings dated July 18, 2018, but released today, the VA said that Chavez-Dozal, “a post-doctoral research fellow who formerly held a VA without compensation appointment, engaged in research misconduct by intentionally and/or knowingly:” Continue reading Former VA postdoc committed misconduct, banned from agency research for four years

“[T]he data and findings…are unreliable:” Authors explain how a refutation came to be published in the same journal as the original

A group of tiny, all-female animals called bdelloid rotifers has long fascinated scientists. Among other questions, of course, is: Why haven’t they gone extinct, if they can’t mix up their genes? In 2016, a group of authors published a paper in Current Biology claiming to show that rotifers could swap DNA the way bacteria do. But a paper published earlier this month in the same journal found “clear evidence that the data and findings of [that study] are unreliable.” It’s unusual for a journal to publish a full paper clearly refuting another — and Current Biology left the original paper as is, without even a link to the new one. The authors of the new paper — Chris Wilson, Reuben Nowell, and Tim Barraclough, all of Imperial College London — explain how all of this came to pass, and why the authors of the original paper deserve praise.