The week at Retraction Watch featured more fallout from a citation-boosting episode, and a look at when animal research becomes unnecessary and cruel. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Pfizer has retracted a paper by a former employee who was fired after the company discovered she had been doctoring data. The retraction, in Molecular Cancer Research, is the third of five papers Pfizer asked to retract, after an investigation discovered they contained duplicated images. The papers have been discussed on PubPeer, which is also … Continue reading 3rd retraction appears for fired Pfizer breast cancer researcher
Researchers at Columbia University have retracted a 2013 paper in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, after uncovering abnormalities in the stem cell lines that undermined the conclusions in the paper. Last year, corresponding author Dieter Egli discovered he could not reproduce key data in the 2013 paper because almost all the cell lines first author Haiqing Hua used … Continue reading Unexplained abnormalities in stem cells prompt Columbia researchers to pull diabetes paper
Microbiologist Elies Bik is well-known for applying a close eye to studies, and has spent years anonymously submitting reports on plagiarism and image duplication to journal editors. Last year, she published an analysis of work, with troubling results – that 1 in 25 biomedical papers contains inappropriate duplications in images. She’s never stopped reading papers … Continue reading When does animal research become unnecessary and cruel? A paper’s methods give a biologist pause
The editor of the journal Land Degradation & Development has stepped down amidst an investigation into citation problems at the journal. The editor, Artemi Cerdà of the University of Valencia in Spain, has also disappeared from the list of editors at two journals published by the European Geosciences Union, which recently announced that one of its … Continue reading Editor steps down from journal while it investigates citation irregularities
Is eliminating the concept of “misconduct” a sign of progress in the fight for research integrity, or a step backward? That’s the debate playing out in Australia, where a proposal from national research bodies would make it the latest country to embrace a broader definition of ethical lapses in research, doing away with the term … Continue reading Does labeling bad behavior “scientific misconduct” help or hurt research integrity? A debate rages
Most researchers by now recognize there’s a reproducibility crisis facing science. But what to do about it? Today in Nature, Jeffrey S. Mogil at McGill University and Malcolm R. Macleod at the University of Edinburgh propose a new approach: Restructure the reporting of preclinical research to include an extra “confirmatory study” performed by an independent lab, … Continue reading A new reproducibility fix? Get your work checked before it’s published
John Antonakis is psychologist by training, but his research has run the gamut from showing kids accurately predict election outcomes just by looking at candidates’ faces to teaching charisma to people in leadership positions. Now, as the newly appointed editor of The Leadership Quarterly, he’s tackling problems in academic publishing. But his approach is somewhat … Continue reading Got “significosis?” Here are the five diseases of academic publishing
The week at Retraction Watch featured a retraction of a state senator’s paper, and an editor busted for citation boosting. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
It’s been a busy few months for Brian Wansink, a prominent food researcher at Cornell University. A blog post he wrote in November prompted a huge backlash from readers who accused him of using problematic research methods to produce questionable data, and a group of researchers suggested four of his papers contained 150 inconsistencies. The scientist has … Continue reading “Social science isn’t definitive like chemistry:” Embattled food researcher defends his work