The week at Retraction Watch featured a PhD student expelled for submitting a paper without her co-authors’ permission, and a look at the six types of peer reviewers. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
The week at Retraction Watch featured a first in transparency from Canada, and the second retraction for a fan of a conspiracy theory. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
If you’ve searched recently for retracted articles in PubMed — the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s database of scientific abstracts — you may have noticed something new. In fact, you may have had trouble ignoring it, which is sort of the point. “It” is a large salmon banner that looks something like this:
How can academic journals ensure the integrity of the data they publish? For one journal, the key is looking deeply at statistics, which revealed crucial problems in the research of recent high-profile fraudsters such as Anil Potti. Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Management, Patrick Wright from the University of South Carolina, recently authored an editorial about how he’s … Continue reading “We should err on the side of protecting people’s reputation:” Management journal changes policy to avoid fraud
Several years ago, a UK academic living in Thailand for decades decided to expose the fact that a Thai official had plagiarized his PhD thesis. And he’s paid the price. Last year, Wyn Ellis was held in a Thai airport for five days, as officials claimed he was a “danger to Thai society.” As some new … Continue reading Broken windows, threats, and detention: Is whistleblowing worth it?
More scientists are trying to settle accusations of misconduct in court, a trend very familiar to Washington, DC-based lawyer Paul Thaler. Regular readers may recall the name of one of Thaler’s clients — Rakesh Kumar, a scientist at George Washington University who filed an $8 million lawsuit for how the school handled an investigation into his work. … Continue reading Here’s why this lawyer defends scientists accused of misconduct
Remember last week, when JAMA replaced an article about the impact of moving homes on kids’ mental health after discovering some errors in the analysis? We’re going to see more of these somewhat unusual notices coming out of JAMA journals in the near future – the JAMA Network journals may issue more “retract and replace” … Continue reading Retract – and replace? JAMA may expand use of this tool
A PhD student who was supposed to complete part of an experiment passed the job on to a third party company, which in turn provided figures that were plagiarized and fabricated. That’s according to the corresponding author of the paper, which has now been retracted. Hong Ren, affiliated with Xi’an Jiao Tong University in China, told us that he … Continue reading Third party company botched student’s doctoral work, says biologist
Epilepsy researcher Toni Schneider has received a retraction and a correction in quick succession, after a former colleague raised red flags about the work. The retraction for Schneider, based at the University of Köln in Germany, is for “unintentional inclusion of erroneous data” due to limitations of the recording system used in the paper, according to the … Continue reading Epilepsy researcher gets retraction, correction after former colleague flags work
The Guardian is taking down 13 articles and excerpts from others after a freelance writer couldn’t provide evidence for the material. The writer, however, has defended his work, saying he simply lost his notes from earlier stories: The claim that I fabricated stories is wrong. Yesterday, the UK newspaper released a statement from editor Lee … Continue reading Guardian retracts 13 articles for fabrication; writer defends his work