The week at Retraction Watch featured news of a publisher hack, and a story about a Nature Cell Biology paper likely headed for retraction. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
We all know that researchers continue to cite papers long after they’ve been retracted, posing concerns for the integrity of the literature. But what should you do if one of the papers you’ve cited gets retracted after you’ve already cited it? We posed this question to some members of the board of directors of our … Continue reading What should you do if a paper you’ve cited is later retracted?
The week at Retraction Watch featured an inscrutable retraction notice, and a raft of new retractions for a cancer researcher who once threatened to sue us. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
When a paper is retracted, how many other papers in the same field — which either cite the finding or cite other papers that do — are affected? That’s the question examined by a study published in BioMed Central’s new journal, Research Integrity and Peer Review. Using the case of a paper retracted from Nature in 2014, the authors … Continue reading How much does a retracted result pollute the field?
Can we teach good behavior in the lab? That’s the premise behind a number of interventions aimed at improving research integrity, invested in by universities across the world and even private companies. Trouble is, a new review from the Cochrane Library shows that there is little good evidence to show these interventions work. We spoke … Continue reading Do interventions to reduce misconduct actually work? Maybe not, says new report
This week at Retraction Watch featured seven retractions in a long-running case involving cancer research, as well as the retraction of a paper claiming a link between a vaccine and behavioral issues. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
We’ve found two recent retractions and an expression of concern for Joachim Boldt, former prominent anesthesiologist and currently Retraction Watch leaderboard’s 2nd place titleholder. He now has 94 retractions. One of the retracted articles contains falsified data, along with a researcher who didn’t agree to be a co-author, according to an investigation by the Justus Liebig University Giessen, where Boldt … Continue reading Boldt’s retraction count upped to 94, co-author takes legal action to prevent 95th
After reviewing hundreds of peer review reports from three journals, authors representing publishers BioMed Central and Springer suggest there may be some benefits to using “open” peer review — where both authors and reviewers reveal their identity — and not relying on reviewers hand-picked by the authors themselves. But the conclusions are nuanced — they found … Continue reading Should peer review be open, and rely less on author-picked reviewers? Study says…
In 2005, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity announced that obesity researcher Eric Poehlman had committed misconduct in 10 published papers. You might think that all of those ten articles would have been retracted a decade later. You’d be wrong. Only six of them have. Here’s what Elizabeth Wager (a member of the board of directors of The … Continue reading How long does it take to retract a paper? A look at the Eric Poehlman record
More than one third — 35% — of the world’s top-ranked science journals that responded to a survey don’t have a retraction policy, according to a new study. And that’s a dramatic improvement over findings of a similar study a little more than a decade ago. For the new paper, “Retraction policies of top scientific … Continue reading At least one-third of top science journals lack a retraction policy — a big improvement