Weekend reads: Peer review ‘brutality’; COVID-19 vaccine trial scandal; homeopathy researcher admits ‘unethical behavior’

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: 25,000: That’s how many retractions are now in the Retraction … Continue reading Weekend reads: Peer review ‘brutality’; COVID-19 vaccine trial scandal; homeopathy researcher admits ‘unethical behavior’

Weekend reads: JAMA editor placed on leave pending investigation; Harvard prof sanctioned for Epstein ties; when bad science goes uncorrected

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: “Riddled with errors”: Study of cell phones and breast cancer … Continue reading Weekend reads: JAMA editor placed on leave pending investigation; Harvard prof sanctioned for Epstein ties; when bad science goes uncorrected

Weekend reads: A peer review murder mystery for Halloween; learning from #medbikini; inside the publishing ring that linked COVID-19 and 5G

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: Paper suggesting vitamin D might protect against COVID-19 earns an … Continue reading Weekend reads: A peer review murder mystery for Halloween; learning from #medbikini; inside the publishing ring that linked COVID-19 and 5G

‘An isolated incident’: Should reviewers check references?

Peer reviewers are supposed to be experts in their fields, competent enough at least to spot methodological errors, wayward conclusions and implausible findings. But checking references? Apparently, not so much.  A journal about academic medicine has retracted a 2020 article because its reviewers and editors didn’t bother to confirm that the references said what the … Continue reading ‘An isolated incident’: Should reviewers check references?

Researcher republishes paper retracted for fake authorship — with a different co-author

A researcher in Bangladesh who fabricated a list of co-authors — and possibly her data, too — in a paper on dengue fever that was recently retracted has published the same article in a different journal. In 2019, Farzana Ahmed was a pediatric intensivist at United Hospital Ltd, in Dhaka, when she published a study … Continue reading Researcher republishes paper retracted for fake authorship — with a different co-author

A mystery: How did this team plagiarize an unpublished paper?

A study on a wireless communication algorithm was retracted for being an exact duplicate of a paper submitted to a separate journal last year — but the authors were different and it’s unclear how they got hold of it. The retracted study, “Energy-aware resource management for uplink non-orthogonal multiple access: Multi-agent deep reinforcement learning” was … Continue reading A mystery: How did this team plagiarize an unpublished paper?

Weekend reads: Sexism in a medical textbook; proof Reviewer 2 is a jerk; COVID-19 and research misconduct

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 that editors called “deeply offensive … Continue reading Weekend reads: Sexism in a medical textbook; proof Reviewer 2 is a jerk; COVID-19 and research misconduct

Authors of article on IQ, religiosity and crime retract it to do “a level of vetting we should have done before submitting”

The authors of a paper that some critics have labeled white supremacy in academic robes say they will be retracting the article because some of the data they’d used for their analysis were “highly questionable.”  The January 2020 article, from a group led by Cory Clark, of Heterodox Academy and New York University, was titled … Continue reading Authors of article on IQ, religiosity and crime retract it to do “a level of vetting we should have done before submitting”