Search Results for: sting

Remembering Mario Biagioli, who articulated how scholarly metrics lead to fraud

Mario Biagioli, a distinguished professor of law and communication at the University of California, Los Angeles — and a pioneering thinker about how academic reward systems incentivize misconduct — passed away in May after a long illness. He was 69.  Among other intellectual interests, Biagioli wrote frequently about the (presumably) unintended consequences of using metrics … Continue reading Remembering Mario Biagioli, who articulated how scholarly metrics lead to fraud

Do men or women retract more often? A new study weighs in

When you look at retracted papers, you find more men than women among the authors. But more papers are authored by men than women overall. A recent study comparing retraction rates, not just absolute numbers, among first and corresponding authors confirms that men retract disproportionally more papers than women.  The paper, published May 20 in … Continue reading Do men or women retract more often? A new study weighs in

Springer Nature book on machine learning is full of made-up citations

Would you pay $169 for an introductory ebook on machine learning with citations that appear to be made up? If not, you might want to pass on purchasing Mastering Machine Learning: From Basics to Advanced, published by Springer Nature in April.  Based on a tip from a reader, we checked 18 of the 46 citations … Continue reading Springer Nature book on machine learning is full of made-up citations

Swedish regulators drop investigations into Chalmers’ prosthetics lab

Two Swedish agencies have closed their investigations into a high-profile research center at Chalmers University of Technology that was suspended last year for “shortcomings in the operations.”  The Center for Bionics and Pain Research (CBPR), known for its work on restoring limb function, was scrutinized and ultimately shut down after a university investigation last April … Continue reading Swedish regulators drop investigations into Chalmers’ prosthetics lab

Slovak science academy ‘strictly condemns’ government official’s paper on mRNA vaccines

Slovakia’s national science academy has issued a strong critique of a paper on mRNA vaccines coauthored by a member of the country’s parliament. The group called the work “insufficiently detailed” and “lacking controls,” with data that “may be misleading” and conclusions “not supported by sufficiently robust data.”  Peter Kotlár, the paper’s second author, is an … Continue reading Slovak science academy ‘strictly condemns’ government official’s paper on mRNA vaccines

10 years after the downfall of a same-sex marriage canvassing study, tenure, some better practices — and an engagement

“Gay Advocates Can Shift Same-Sex Marriage Views,” read the New York Times headline. “Doorstep visits change attitudes on gay marriage,” declared the Los Angeles Times. “Cure Homophobia With This One Weird Trick!” Slate spouted. Driving those headlines was a December 2014 study in Science, by Michael J. LaCour, then a Ph.D. student at the University … Continue reading 10 years after the downfall of a same-sex marriage canvassing study, tenure, some better practices — and an engagement

$900,000 grant to Retraction Watch’s parent organization will fund forensic analysis of articles that affect human health

The Center for Scientific Integrity, the parent nonprofit of Retraction Watch, has launched a new initiative to investigate and rapidly disseminate problems in the medical literature that directly affect human health. Thanks to a $900,000 grant from Open Philanthropy, the Medical Evidence Project will leverage the tools of forensic metascience — using visual and computational … Continue reading $900,000 grant to Retraction Watch’s parent organization will fund forensic analysis of articles that affect human health

Guest post: NIH-funded replication studies are not the answer to the reproducibility crisis in pre-clinical research

President Trump recently issued an executive order calling for improvement in the reproducibility of scientific research and asking federal agencies to propose how they will make that happen. I imagine that the National Institutes of Health’s response will include replication studies, in which NIH would fund attempts to repeat published experiments from the ground up, … Continue reading Guest post: NIH-funded replication studies are not the answer to the reproducibility crisis in pre-clinical research

Weekend reads: MAHA report cites nonexistent studies; RFK Jr. threatens publishing access; can ‘zombie papers’ be killed?

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 59,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately … Continue reading Weekend reads: MAHA report cites nonexistent studies; RFK Jr. threatens publishing access; can ‘zombie papers’ be killed?

IQ study retracted in fallout from decades-old misconduct report

The authors of a paper on how motivation influences  intelligence test scores have retracted their paper following the retraction of a 50-year-old study included in their analysis.  Part meta-analysis and part longitudinal study, “Role of test motivation in intelligence testing” appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2011. The meta-analysis portion included … Continue reading IQ study retracted in fallout from decades-old misconduct report