Last month, a publisher announced that one of its editors had resigned, following accusations he’d asked authors to cite particular papers, boosting his profile and that of journals where he worked. The publisher declined to name the editor. But when an anonymous report began circulating about the incident, the publisher named the researcher: Artemi Cerdà, … Continue reading Ousted editor speaks: I did not manipulate citations
When two surgeons in Greece learned that a patient had developed a rare side effect following weight loss surgery, they were eager to publish the case. After extensive testing, the patient was diagnosed with Wernicke’s encephalopathy—a neurological disorder caused by thiamine deficiency—following a sleeve gastrectomy procedure. As the authors note in the paper, they had seen only eight … Continue reading Patient misdiagnosed with rare neurological side effect in retracted case study
An earth science journal has asked an editor to resign after it was revealed he had been manipulating citations at multiple journals. Artemi Cerdà had already agreed to step down temporarily from Land Degradation & Development after the publisher, Wiley, was alerted that Cerdà had resigned from other journals for citation manipulation. In a new statement, … Continue reading An editor in chief was caught manipulating citations. Now he’s been asked to resign.
Despite taking some serious hits, a 2006 letter in Nature isn’t going anywhere. Years ago, a university committee determined that two figures in the letter had been falsified. The journal chose to correct the paper, rather than retract it — and then, the next year, published a correction of that correction due to “an error … Continue reading Nature paper adds non-reproducibility to its list of woes
By now, most of our readers are aware that some fields of science have a reproducibility problem. Part of the problem, some argue, is the publishing community’s bias toward dramatic findings — namely, studies that show something has an effect on something else are more likely to be published than studies that don’t. Many have … Continue reading What leads to bias in the scientific literature? New study tries to answer
The week at Retraction Watch featured a lawsuit threat following criticism of a popular education program, and the new editor of PLOS ONE’s explanation of why submissions are down. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Under threat of a lawsuit, an education journal changed its mind about publishing a paper that it had already accepted after peer review. Last summer, Education Policy Analysis Archives, published by the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University, informed San Francisco State University professor Stanley Pogrow that the journal would be publishing … Continue reading After lawsuit threat, journal forces author to heavily revise education paper
When zoologists at the University of Oxford published findings in Science last year suggesting ducklings can learn to identify shapes and colors without training (unlike other animals), the news media was entranced. However, critics of the study have published a pair of papers questioning the findings, saying the data likely stem from chance alone. Still, … Continue reading Headline-grabbing Science paper questioned by critics
A group of researchers in France has been forced to retract their 2002 article in the Journal of Virology after learning that the paper was marred by multiple image problems. The paper, “P0 of Beet Western Yellows Virus Is a Suppressor of Posttranscriptional Gene Silencing,” came from the lab of Veronique Ziegler-Graff, a plant biologist at the … Continue reading 15-year old paper pulled for image problems
With so many journals out there, it can be hard to know which ones are legitimate, and which ones have adopted so-called “predatory” practices – publishing anything as long as authors can pay. In this guest post, computer scientist Jacob Beal at BBN Technologies highlights one way he believes software companies may indirectly endorse questionable publishers … Continue reading Should software companies choose not to work with predatory publishers?