Search Results for: medical

Legal threats once again force corrections over a scale measuring medication usage

A journal is warning contributors that they should avoid using a controversial scale for assessing adherence to medication regimens or they might wind up wearing an omelette on their faces. The chicken here, of course, is the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale. The instrument was developed by a UCLA professor named Donald Morisky, who with a … Continue reading Legal threats once again force corrections over a scale measuring medication usage

A reviewer stole a manuscript and published it himself. But you wouldn’t know it from this retraction notice.

Fish off someone else’s peer review! So writes (in somewhat different words) Mina Mehregan, a mechanical engineer at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in Iran. Mehregan and a colleague recently discovered that they’d been victimized by a group of unscrupulous reviewers who used the pretext of a long turnaround time to publish a hijacked version of … Continue reading A reviewer stole a manuscript and published it himself. But you wouldn’t know it from this retraction notice.

Do the humanities need a replication drive? A debate rages on

Since last year, a half-dozen researchers have been having a debate: Should the humanities focus on replication? No, said Sarah de Rijcke and Bart Penders in Nature last August: “Resist calls for replicability in the humanities.” In the most recent piece on this subject, de Rijcke and Penders were joined by J. Britt Holbrook to again … Continue reading Do the humanities need a replication drive? A debate rages on

Weekend reads: A call for 400 retractions of papers on organ donors; “citation mania;” AAAS reassessing award for work on herbicide

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 reviewer who told authors to cite … Continue reading Weekend reads: A call for 400 retractions of papers on organ donors; “citation mania;” AAAS reassessing award for work on herbicide

Weekend reads: New revelations about CRISPR’d babies experiment; Impact Factor developer warns against using single metrics; is peer review just a game?

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 eight retractions at once for a biochemist in Spain; a … Continue reading Weekend reads: New revelations about CRISPR’d babies experiment; Impact Factor developer warns against using single metrics; is peer review just a game?

Can a “nudge” stop researchers from using the wrong cell lines?

Anita Bandrowski, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, works on tools to improve the transparency and reproducibility of scientific methods. (Her work on Research Resource Identifiers, or RRIDs, has been previously featured on Retraction Watch.) This week, Bandrowski and colleagues  — including Amanda Capes-Davis, who chairs the International Cell Line Authentication Committee — published … Continue reading Can a “nudge” stop researchers from using the wrong cell lines?

Biochemist in Spain retracts eight papers at once

A high-profile researcher at the Universidad de Oviedo in Spain has retracted eight papers from the Journal of Biological Chemistry for figure issues. All of the papers were co-authored by Carlos López-Otín, who studies a group of enzymes that break down proteins, cancer genomics and aging, and whose lab web site boasts that His works … Continue reading Biochemist in Spain retracts eight papers at once

Weekend reads: Sokal on Sokal Squared hoax; is open access enough?; replication in the humanities

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 showdown over a paper on abortion laws that left … Continue reading Weekend reads: Sokal on Sokal Squared hoax; is open access enough?; replication in the humanities

“We were very uncomfortable with this situation:” French group loses aging paper for “overlap”

The authors of a 2017 paper on how chronic inflammation might hasten aging have retracted the work because it turned out to be a collage of previously published articles. The paper, “Chronic Inflammation: Accelerator of Biological Aging,” appeared in  The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, an Oxford University Press title. It has been cited 41 … Continue reading “We were very uncomfortable with this situation:” French group loses aging paper for “overlap”

Weekend reads: #MeToo in a political science journal; 15 articles that challenged dogma in 2018; an entire editorial board resigns

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 sixth retraction for a researcher cleared of misconduct; a … Continue reading Weekend reads: #MeToo in a political science journal; 15 articles that challenged dogma in 2018; an entire editorial board resigns