Search Results for: doing the right thing

Doing the right thing, 150 years later: Paper retracts editorial condemning Gettysburg Address as “silly”

Okay, so great speechifying isn’t always recognized the first time it’s heard. We’re sure “I Have a Dream” had its detractors at the time. And Homer probably put more than his share of listeners to sleep while reciting the Iliad (that sucker’s LONG, after all). But when the Patriot & Union, of Pennsylvania, trashed Lincoln’s … Continue reading Doing the right thing, 150 years later: Paper retracts editorial condemning Gettysburg Address as “silly”

Doing the right thing: Scientists reward authors who report their own errors, says study

We’ve always like to highlight cases in which scientists do the right thing and retract problematic papers themselves, rather than being forced to by editors and publishers. Apparently, according to a new paper by economists and management scholars, scientists reward that sort of behavior, too. The study by Benjamin Jones of the Kellogg School of … Continue reading Doing the right thing: Scientists reward authors who report their own errors, says study

Doing the right thing: Researchers retract quorum sensing paper after public process

We’ll say it again: We like being able to point out when researchers stand up and do the right thing, even at personal cost. In December 2011, Pamela C. Ronald, of the University of California, Davis, and colleagues published a paper in PLOS ONE,”Small Protein-Mediated Quorum Sensing in a Gram-Negative Bacterium.” Such quorum sensing research … Continue reading Doing the right thing: Researchers retract quorum sensing paper after public process

Doing the right thing: Researchers retract two studies when they realize they misinterpreted data

What do you do when new experiments show that you interpreted the data from your old experiments the wrong way? Some scientists might just shrug and sweep those errors — and their previous papers — under the rug. But when it happened to Jeffery Kelly, of the Scripps Research Institute, and his colleagues, they decided … Continue reading Doing the right thing: Researchers retract two studies when they realize they misinterpreted data

Doing the right thing: Psychology researchers retract after realizing data “were not analyzed properly”

Amid an ongoing investigation, a group of psychology researchers at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium have taken a painful decision to retract a paper now that they’ve realized there were serious problems with one aspect of the work. Here’s the notice for “The Emergence of Orthographic Word Representations in the Brain: Evaluating … Continue reading Doing the right thing: Psychology researchers retract after realizing data “were not analyzed properly”

Scientists doing the right thing: Malfunctioning lab equipment leads to retraction of neuroscience paper

For the second time inside of a week, we come to praise scientists who did the right thing when they realized their lab equipment or reagents weren’t performing as expected. Here’s the retraction of a 2011 paper in Cerebral Cortex:

Weekend reads: How junior scientists are mistreated; how to fix nutritional science; a journal does nothing after Monsanto ghostwriting claims

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 finding of plagiarism by a star health care policy … Continue reading Weekend reads: How junior scientists are mistreated; how to fix nutritional science; a journal does nothing after Monsanto ghostwriting claims

“No wrongdoing had occurred,” says Karolinska, following investigation of cancer research

A journal has removed an expression of concern for a 2011 paper after Karolinska Institutet (KI) “concluded no wrongdoing had occurred.”  In June, Journal of Cell Science (JCS) issued the expression of concern, after a reader contacted the editors with questions about the data in one of the figures. JCS investigated but could not resolve … Continue reading “No wrongdoing had occurred,” says Karolinska, following investigation of cancer research

A shadow was cast on a bone researcher’s work. What are journals doing about his papers?

Last year, a researcher cast doubt on a bone scientist’s clinical trials, suggesting some of the findings may not be legitimate. So what’s happened since? Since 2015, journals have retracted 14 papers by bone researcher Yoshihiro Sato, based at Mitate Hospital in Japan, for issues ranging from self-plagiarism, to problems with data, to including co-authors without their consent. … Continue reading A shadow was cast on a bone researcher’s work. What are journals doing about his papers?

We’re wasting a lot of research funding using the wrong cell lines. Here’s one thing we can do.

If you could help reduce the waste of tens of billions of dollars per year in research spending, you’d do it, right? This is the second in a series of two guest posts about the havoc misidentified cell lines can wreak on research, from Leonard P. Freedman, president of the Global Biological Standards Institute. Freedman who … Continue reading We’re wasting a lot of research funding using the wrong cell lines. Here’s one thing we can do.