The week at Retraction Watch featured a lot of movement on our leaderboard, with a new total for Diederik Stapel, and a new entry. It also featured a lot going on elsewhere, so here’s part I of Weekend Reads (we’ll have more tomorrow morning):
We’ve learned about two more retractions we missed for Diederick Stapel, the Dutch social psychology researcher who has now racked up a total of 57 retractions by our count. Both retractions were issued after a committee released a report which established fraud in dozens of papers co-authored by Stapel. Stapel is still #4 on our leaderboard.
We are pleased to present a guest post by Paolo Macchiarini, a surgeon best known for pioneering the creation of tracheas from cadavers and patients’ own stem cells. Macchiarini has faced some harsh criticisms over the years, including accusations of downplaying the risks of the procedure and not obtaining proper consent. We have covered the investigation, including … Continue reading Where I think Retraction Watch went wrong: A guest post from Paolo Macchiarini
This is the third and final article in a series by John R. Thomas, Jr., a lawyer at Gentry Locke [Editor’s note, 3/26/19: He has since moved to Haley, Hafemann, Magee and Thomas] who represents whistleblowers in a variety of False Claims Act cases. His first article discussed the background of the False Claims Act … Continue reading So you want to be a whistleblower? Part III
A correction to a 2011 paper doesn’t change its main conclusion: Hearing song lyrics about violence — “let the bodies hit the floor,” for example — can prompt aggressive behavior, even more so than violent imagery in music videos. The correction follows an investigation by Macquarie University that found errors in data analysis to be an “honest … Continue reading Violent songs can lead to spicy food, and other lessons we learned from corrected graphic
In a rare development, neuroscientist Milena Penkowa has been sentenced by a Danish court for faking data. The ruling, from the Copenhagen City Court, resulted from Penkowa’s publication of her 2003 thesis describing experiments that she never carried out. The court “placed weight” on the fact that she didn’t just commit fraud, but “systematically supplied false information” to avoid … Continue reading Danish neuroscientist sentenced by court for lying about faked experiments
The week at Retraction Watch featured the appeal of a modern-day retraction, and a look at whether a retraction by a Nobel Prize winner should be retracted 50 years later. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Additional lab tests, creating a clinical trial patient registry, and rewards for honesty are among the advice doled out in this week’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine for researchers to help avoid the major issue of participants lying to get into clinical trials. In the Perspective, David B. Resnik and David J. McCann, … Continue reading Here’s how to keep clinical trial participants honest (and why that’s a big deal)
A study on the trendy and grueling workout regimen known as CrossFit has a correction concerning the number of participants hurt during 10 weeks of training. The paper has been the center of multiple lawsuits — one by CrossFit, and one by a CrossFit gym owner — for allegedly over-inflating the risks associated with the regimen. The original paper claimed that 9 … Continue reading Journal corrects CrossFit injury data in paper at center of lawsuit
Retraction Watch readers, please join us in welcoming the newest member of our staff, Alison Abritis. To say that Abritis is a good fit for Retraction Watch would be a colossal understatement. Abritis started her PhD in public health at the University of South Florida several years ago, intending to focus on toxicology. But her … Continue reading Meet the new Retraction Watch researcher, Alison Abritis