Nearly two years ago, a report from the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) called for a new advisory board that would promote research integrity and tackle misconduct. That board does not yet exist, but today in Nature, five authors, led by C. K. Gunsalus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, … Continue reading Is it time for a new research integrity board in the U.S.?
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 criminology professor who has had four papers retracted for … Continue reading Weekend reads: Fishy research on fishes; was “Sokal Squared” misconduct?; the misuse of metrics
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 retraction of a paper by a journalist in Australia … Continue reading Weekend reads: Conflict of interest debate roils on; fake peer review scams; amateur hour at journals
A researcher in Malaysia is up to 18 retractions, for faked peer review and a host of other sins. We first wrote about Shahaboddin Shamshirband, of the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, in early 2017, because Elsevier had pulled, or planned to pull, nine of his papers. Jeffrey Beall, known for his list of … Continue reading Energy researcher up to 18 retractions
Are current classification systems for research misconduct adequate? Toshio Kuroki — special advisor to the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo and Gifu University — thinks the answer is no. In a new paper in Accountability in Research, Kuroki — who has published on research misconduct before … Continue reading Is it time for a new classification system for scientific misconduct?
In 2015, Peter Yoachim became interested in how long astronomers remained active astronomers or, more to the point, how long they continued publishing in astronomy. Yoachim, an astronomer at the University of Washington in Seattle, dug into some data, “did a burst of work in late 2015/early 2016, then fizzled out by 2017 when I … Continue reading Two years after he shared a draft of a “random brain fart side-project,” an astronomer sees a version published — without his name
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 tale of the researcher who pleaded guilty to faking … Continue reading Weekend reads: A climate change study correction; predatory journal critic banned from campus; why are publishers “the joint enemy?”
Carlo Croce, a prolific cancer researcher at The Ohio State University in Columbus who was the subject of a front page story in The New York Times last year about allegations of misconduct against him, has had most of a lawsuit he filed against the newspaper thrown out. As first reported by Courthouse News Service, … Continue reading Judge dismisses most of Carlo Croce’s libel case against the New York Times
Yesterday, Cornell University told a group of researchers who had petitioned them to release a report of their investigation into alleged misconduct by Brian Wansink, a food marketing researcher who recently resigned his post there, that they would not release that report. As BuzzFeed reports, the university is now conducting a “Phase II” investigation into … Continue reading It’s time to end the code of silence at universities
A pair of researchers in Japan has lost their third paper in a UK journal, which cites problematic images and an institutional investigation for the move. The 2016 article, “Novel Rh-substituted hexaaluminate catalysts for N2O decomposition,” was written by Rachid Amrousse and Akimasa Tsutsumi, of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, in Sagamihara. It … Continue reading Aerospace researchers in Japan up to three retractions