Weekend reads: Problems in studies of gender; when scholarship is a crime; a journal about Mark Zuckerberg photos

The week at Retraction Watch featured a call to make peer reviews public, lots of news about Cornell food researcher Brian Wansink, and a request by the U.S. NIH that the researchers it funds don’t publish in bad journals. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Project to “fact check” genetic studies leads to three more retractions. And it’s just getting started.

A project to identify studies doomed by problematic reagents has triggered three more retractions, bringing the total to five. Jennifer Byrne, a scientist at the University of Sydney, who developed the the idea of double-checking the nucleic acid sequences of research materials — thereby ensuring studies were testing the gene in question — told Retraction … Continue reading Project to “fact check” genetic studies leads to three more retractions. And it’s just getting started.

Once-prominent researcher logs retraction following misconduct finding

A researcher who resigned from the University of Dundee in Scotland after it concluded he was guilty of misconduct has issued his first retraction. According to an internal email to staff forwarded to us last year, the university concluded that Robert Ryan had misrepresented clinical data and images in 12 different publications. The first retraction, published … Continue reading Once-prominent researcher logs retraction following misconduct finding

Weekend reads: Pseudoscience in the literature; a world without journals; “invisible and abandoned” trials

The week at Retraction Watch featured the heartfelt response of a researcher when she found out a paper she’d reviewed had been retracted, and a new member of our leaderboard.  Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Bone researcher with lifetime funding ban earns third retraction

A researcher who received a lifetime funding ban for misconduct from a Canadian agency has logged her third retraction, after a re-analysis of her work unveiled “serious inconsistencies.” In July, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) released a report about Sophie Jamal, following an investigation by her former employer, The Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, Canada. … Continue reading Bone researcher with lifetime funding ban earns third retraction

We’ve temporarily removed a Retraction Watch post. Here’s why. (Hint: A bad law.)

Longtime Retraction Watch readers may recall that in 2013, we were forced to temporarily remove ten posts following a false — and frankly ridiculous — copyright infringement claim. Well, it’s happened again. On Wednesday, our host, Bluehost, forwarded us another false copyright claim — aka a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice — by someone … Continue reading We’ve temporarily removed a Retraction Watch post. Here’s why. (Hint: A bad law.)

Weekend reads: Fake scientists; fake research; major evils of modern research

The week at Retraction Watch featured the story of a graduate student who fought back after being caught in the middle of a fraud case, and the retraction of a hotly debated paper from Nature Cell Biology. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Error in one line of code sinks cancer study

Authors of a 2016 cancer paper have retracted it after finding an error in one line of code in the program used to calculate some of the results. Sarah Darby, last author of the now-retracted paper from the University of Oxford, UK, told Retraction Watch that the mistake was made by a doctoral student. When … Continue reading Error in one line of code sinks cancer study

Amid controversial Sarepta approval decision, FDA head calls for key study retraction

The head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has called for the retraction of a study about a drug that the agency itself approved earlier this week, despite senior staff opposing the approval. On September 19, the FDA okayed eteplirsen to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a rare genetic disorder that results in muscle degeneration and … Continue reading Amid controversial Sarepta approval decision, FDA head calls for key study retraction

“We should err on the side of protecting people’s reputation:” Management journal changes policy to avoid fraud

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