"Compromised science" news/opines (includes retractions, declining academic standards, pred-J, etc)

[C C]

The BMJ investigates financial entanglements between FDA chiefs and the drug industry
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1043758

INTRO: An investigation published by The BMJ today raises concerns about financial entanglements between US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) chiefs and the drug and medical device companies they are responsible for regulating. Regulations prohibit FDA employees from holding financial interests in any FDA “significantly regulated organisation” and the FDA says it takes conflicts of interest seriously, but Peter Doshi, senior editor at The BMJ, finds that financial interests with the drug industry are common among its leaders... (MORE - details, no ads)

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Suspended climate activist GP will not stop protesting
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1043759

EXCERPTS: Last month, Dr Sarah Benn became the first doctor to be suspended from the medical register after being convicted and jailed for actions relating to climate activism.

[...] “The world is facing an unprecedented crisis due to the danger of climate and ecological collapse, and I believe that my actions are a justified and proportionate effort to raise an alarm about the severity and urgency of the situation,” she tells journalist Adele Waters.

Benn explains that two years ago she engaged in peaceful protests to stop the government from granting new oil licences...

[...] The tribunal emphasised that professional rules do not prevent doctors from engaging in peaceful protests but do require them to comply with the law. It concluded that Benn’s conduct fell short of the standards of conduct that should be reasonably expected of a doctor, which amounted to misconduct.

[...] Doctors organisations, including the British Medical Association and The UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, remain concerned that her case could set a precedent for other doctors who peacefully protest.

The GMC is clear, however, that the tribunal’s decision had nothing to do with climate change but because Benn broke the law... (MORE - details, no ads)

RELATED (wikipedia): Scientist Rebellion
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[C C]

Concussion researcher McCrory up to 17 retractions
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/05/09/concussion-researcher-mccrory-up-to-17-retractions/

More than two years after retracting an article by one of its former editors in chief for plagiarism, the "British Journal of Sports Medicine" has retracted six more pieces by the editor, Paul McCrory, a noted concussion researcher in Australia. The retractions join 11 more...

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Give or take a year or two: Case reveals publishers’ vastly different retraction times
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/05...publishers-vastly-different-retraction-times/

After six months, "Neurotherapeutics" pulled one of the studies ... Now, after two years [and several citations of the paper], the Wiley journal has finally issued a retraction...
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[C C]

Chemist under scrutiny resigns from Australian university
https://cen.acs.org/policy/publishing/Chemist-under-scrutiny-resigns-Australian/102/web/2024/05

Chemist Navid Rabiee resigned from his position at Murdoch University at the end of April amid questions about several of his studies and a new journal he is associated with...

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On lying politicians and bullshitting scientists (statistician opinion piece)
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/05/05/on-lying-politicians-and-bullshitting-scientists/

EXCERPTS: I’d like to draw a connection to something I’m more familiar with, which is scientists bullshitting. Sometimes out-and-out lying, but more commonly not “lying” exactly, which would imply some awareness of what they’re doing, but rather saying things that sound good even though they are not accurate.

As with political parties, what’s striking to me is not so much that some scientists bullshit, but that the mainstream of the scientific establishment doesn’t seem to care. [...] You’d think they’d be kind of embarrassed, no? I’m not taking about the authors here, I’m saying the journal editors would be embarrassed, the head of the psychology society would be embarrassed, etc. Mistakes happen, but this is a pretty bad one...

[...] Anyway, the punch line is, No, nobody cares. I care, Retraction Watch cares, whoever got papers rejected by that journal because they were publishing bullshit instead, they probably care, various grad students and postdocs who email me saying they’re upset that their advisors don’t seem to care about getting things right, they care too . . . but that’s about it... (MORE - details)

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The paper's many footnotes and references are apparently the only thing that there is free access to. Purely submitted for those intrigued or interested enough to pursue acquiring it.

(paper) William Lawrence Tower’s Beetles: Experimental Evolution and the Manipulation of Inheritance
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10739-024-09771-x

ABSTRACT: William Lawrence Tower’s work on the evolution of the Colorado Potato Beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata), documenting the environmental induction of mutation and speciation, made him a leading figure in experimental genetics during the first decade of the 20th century. His research program served as a model for other experimental evolution studies seeking to demonstrate the environmental modification of inheritance.

Tower enjoyed the support of influential figures in the field, despite well-known problems that plagued Tower’s earlier academic career. The validity of his genetic work, and other findings reported by Tower, were later challenged.

The Tower affair illustrates how questionable and possibly fraudulent scientific practices can be tolerated to explore certain experimental directions and theoretical frameworks, particularly at the frontier of expanding disciplines. When needed, those explorations can be forestalled or extinguished by exploiting conspicuous vulnerabilities of rogue practitioners.

In Tower’s case, both unrefuted allegations of scientific misconduct and personal problems dissolved his institutional support, leading to a swift ouster from academic science. Tower’s downfall discredited soft inheritance and neo-Lamarckian conceptions in the field of experimental genetics, facilitating the discipline’s embrace of a hard inheritance model that featured a hereditary material resistant to environmental modification.
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[C C]

Unimaginable that there could be anything good about the classic "food-like" stuff bought in supermarkets, fast-food outlets, and even some restaurants. But very physically active people who at least avoid soft drinks and mix a processed diet with unrefined fruit and vegetable matter do seem to often dodge the worst of the consequences (sans old age).
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Unraveling the myth of ultra-processed foods?
https://www.acsh.org/news/2024/05/10/unraveling-myth-ultra-processed-foods-17839

Two extensive longitudinal studies are heralded as unveiling the common “truth” that ultra-processed foods hasten our mortality. However, before embracing that kale smoothie, ultra-processed foods may not be the villains portrayed in the media we've been led to believe. ... Participants with higher consumption of ultra-processed foods tended to be younger, less physically active, smokers, had higher body mass index, and lower AHEI scores, the [overall] measure of nutritional quality...
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[C C]

The importance of distinguishing climate science from climate activism
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44168-024-00126-0

I am concerned by climate scientists becoming climate activists, because scholars should not have a priori interests in the outcome of their studies. Likewise, I am worried about activists who pretend to be scientists, as this can be a misleading form of instrumentalization.

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There’s little science behind “No Mow May”
https://undark.org/2024/05/13/little-science-behind-no-mow-may/

INTRO: In 2020, the Wisconsin city of Appleton brought No Mow May to the United States. Each spring, by temporarily forgoing mowing and letting residential lawns grow with flowers, residents could support bees and other insect pollinators, proponents claimed. Indeed, they even said the practice was backed by their own published scientific study. But a little more than two years later, critics turned up severe flaws in the work conducted in Appleton, and the study was formally retracted.... (MORE - details)
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[C C]

We need fewer scientists and fewer science journals
https://www.acsh.org/news/2024/05/14/we-need-fewer-scientists-and-fewer-science-journals-17851

Academic journals and the researchers who publish in them are increasingly engaged in naked political advocacy rather than science. It's time we cut off public funding to peer-reviewed publications and reduce the number of academic scientists chasing after grant money...

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Flood of fake science forces multiple journal closures
https://www.wsj.com/science/academi...rsn8ly2lr3b&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

INTRO: Fake studies have flooded the publishers of top scientific journals, leading to thousands of retractions and millions of dollars in lost revenue. The biggest hit has come to Wiley, a 217-year-old publisher based in Hoboken, N.J., which Tuesday will announce that it is closing 19 journals, some of which were infected by large-scale research fraud.

In the past two years, Wiley has retracted more than 11,300 papers that appeared compromised, according to a spokesperson, and closed four journals. It isn’t alone: At least two other publishers have retracted hundreds of suspect papers each. Several others have pulled smaller clusters of bad papers.

Although this large-scale fraud represents a small percentage of submissions to journals, it threatens the legitimacy of the nearly $30 billion academic publishing industry and the credibility of science as a whole... (MORE - details)

If the WSJ permalink fails, here's the same article distributed by ad-intensive MSN:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mar...-forces-multiple-journal-closures/ar-BB1mmDKS
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[C C]

It's past time to stop using "reading the mind in the eyes" test

It’s past time to stop using the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test

The widely used measure of “theory of mind” needs to be re-examined, along with the long-standing claim that autism is linked to a lack of this ability.

www.thetransmitter.org

EXCERPT: We believe the scientific community needs to re-examine the purported relationship between theory of mind deficits and autism. Based on existing research, it is far from clear that psychological tests designed to measure theory of mind in adults really do measure it, which casts considerable doubt on the evidence for theory-of-mind deficits in autistic adults.

In a review article published in Clinical Psychology Review in March, we raised serious concerns about the validity of a widely used measure of adult theory-of-mind ability: the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (Eyes Test), which researchers at the University of Cambridge introduced in a 2001 journal article... (MORE - details)

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4 pervasive myths that cause us to abandon science

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/4-prominent-myths-science/

It’s not a gambit. It’s not fraud. It’s not driven by opinion, prejudice, or bias. It’s not unchallengeable. And it’s more than facts alone.

KEY POINTS: There are many legitimate reasons to be mistrustful of some of our most vaunted institutes and ideas, particularly when corruption and bad behavior is easy to spot. Yet the past few years have seen the erosion of the public trust in science, even when it comes to irrefutable and robust findings that no serious scientists dispute. Here are the four most prominent myths that “merchants of doubt” use to sow distrust among us, and how to see through the ruse and determine what’s actually true for ourselves. (MORE - details)
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[C C]

How the Karolinska protected Paolo Macchiarini — and whistleblowers paid the price

https://retractionwatch.com/2024/05/17/how-the-karolinska-protected-paolo-macchiarini-and-whistleblowers-paid-the-price/

Retraction Watch readers may recall the story of Paolo Macchiarini, about whom we first wrote in 2012 before he became the subject of international scrutiny — and who has now been sentenced to prison. We are pleased to present an excerpt about the Macchiarini case from "The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No" by Carl Elliott published by W. W. Norton, May 2024.

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Lack of permits, ‘selective’ data halt research at Swedish prosthetics research center

https://retractionwatch.com/2024/05/16/lack-of-permits-selective-data-halt-research-at-swedish-prosthetics-research-center/

Last year, a team of Swedish researchers presented their work on a technique that uses machine learning to translate the body’s own electric signals used to move a limb. Documents from an internal investigation have now revealed that this case study was part of a series of regulatory lapses and suspicious research practices...

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Norway university committee recommends probe into the country’s most productive researcher

https://retractionwatch.com/2024/05/15/exclusive-norway-university-committee-recommends-probe-into-the-countrys-most-productive-researcher/

In 2019, Filippo Berto was hailed as Norway’s most productive researcher. Five years on, a committee is recommending that the institution carries out an in-depth investigation into his work following a complaint by Per Steineide Refseth, a librarian at the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences in Rena.

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Nature earns ire over lack of code availability for Google DeepMind protein folding paper

https://retractionwatch.com/2024/05/14/nature-earns-ire-over-lack-of-code-availability-for-google-deepmind-protein-folding-paper/

A group of researchers is taking Nature to task for publishing a paper earlier this month about Google DeepMind’s protein folding prediction program without requiring the authors publish the code behind the work.

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Professor, former dean earns nearly 100 expressions of concern for citation manipulation

https://retractionwatch.com/2024/05/14/professor-former-dean-earns-nearly-100-expressions-of-concern-for-citation-manipulation/

A professor at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia who once served as a dean at the Stevens Institute of Technology in the United States, has received expressions of concern on 93 of his conference proceedings for what a publisher said were irrelevant self-citations and “artificially inflating the number of citations.”

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Publisher slaps 60 papers in chemistry journal with expressions of concern

https://retractionwatch.com/2024/05/13/publisher-slaps-60-papers-in-chemistry-journal-with-expressions-of-concern/

An Elsevier chemistry journal has marked more than 60 papers with expressions of concern amid an investigation involving potential undisclosed conflicts of interest among editors, authorship irregularities and manipulation of peer reviews and citations.
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[wegs]

We need fewer scientists and fewer science journals
https://www.acsh.org/news/2024/05/14/we-need-fewer-scientists-and-fewer-science-journals-17851

Academic journals and the researchers who publish in them are increasingly engaged in naked political advocacy rather than science. It's time we cut off public funding to peer-reviewed publications and reduce the number of academic scientists chasing after grant money...

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Flood of fake science forces multiple journal closures
https://www.wsj.com/science/academi...rsn8ly2lr3b&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

INTRO: Fake studies have flooded the publishers of top scientific journals, leading to thousands of retractions and millions of dollars in lost revenue. The biggest hit has come to Wiley, a 217-year-old publisher based in Hoboken, N.J., which Tuesday will announce that it is closing 19 journals, some of which were infected by large-scale research fraud.

In the past two years, Wiley has retracted more than 11,300 papers that appeared compromised, according to a spokesperson, and closed four journals. It isn’t alone: At least two other publishers have retracted hundreds of suspect papers each. Several others have pulled smaller clusters of bad papers.

Although this large-scale fraud represents a small percentage of submissions to journals, it threatens the legitimacy of the nearly $30 billion academic publishing industry and the credibility of science as a whole... (MORE - details)

If the WSJ permalink fails, here's the same article distributed by ad-intensive MSN:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mar...-forces-multiple-journal-closures/ar-BB1mmDKS
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I wonder if this is going to get worse with AI. I think it’s creepy that even in the science community, there exist these nefarious hacker types who have found another new way to hurt people.

Imagine though, a fake/fraudulent study/submission is published, and it makes its way to the mainstream general population (let’s say it’s a study about how antibiotics have been proven to cause cancer). Then, a year later, you learn it was a fake study that shouldn’t have been published.

The average person isn’t keeping up to date on scientific blunders and fake studies, so it might be a challenge to disprove the fake study. Soooo, going with this example, imagine antibiotics are recalled and then a year later, they’re being prescribed again because the study was proven to be false. I mean, that could happen. Obviously, I’m just throwing this idea out there, and giving a simplistic example. I’m not sure how quickly these fake submissions are discovered, but we shouldn’t take these fraudulent studies lightly as they have the potential to cause real harm. Otherwise, why would this matter?

 

[exchemist]

I wonder if this is going to get worse with AI. I think it’s creepy that even in the science community, there exist these nefarious hacker types who have found another new way to hurt people.

Imagine though, a fake/fraudulent study/submission is published, and it makes its way to the mainstream general population (let’s say it’s a study about how antibiotics have been proven to cause cancer). Then, a year later, you learn it was a fake study that shouldn’t have been published.

The average person isn’t keeping up to date on scientific blunders and fake studies, so it might be a challenge to disprove the fake study. Soooo, going with this example, imagine antibiotics are recalled and then a year later, they’re being prescribed again because the study was proven to be false. I mean, that could happen. Obviously, I’m just throwing this idea out there, I’m not sure how quickly these fake submissions are discovered, but we shouldn’t take these fake studies lightly as they have the power to cause real harm.

This is just the general problem the internet causes. Rubbish gets the same prominence as good information, due to absence of editorial control of the new communication channels.

There is an argument that modern science, having become a discipline of professionals, judged by the rate at which they publish, has spawned an industry of dodgy publications and bad papers, which clogs up the works. But the saving grace is that good researchers, writing good papers, will be choosy about which journals they publish in. They will avoid the “paper mills” of the bad, pay-to-publish, Indian and Chinese “me too” fly-by-night journals.

So the problem you identify is simply one example of how bad information is amplified by the internet, for those without the knowledge or critical faculties to check sources, or those with malevolent intent.

 

[C C]

A wave of retractions is shaking physics

A wave of retractions is shaking physics

Grappling with problematic papers and poorly documented data, researchers and journal editors gathered in Pittsburgh to hash out the best way forward.

www.technologyreview.com

EXCERPTS: Recent highly publicized scandals have gotten the physics community worried about its reputation—and its future. Over the last five years, several claims of major breakthroughs in quantum computing and superconducting research, published in prestigious journals, have disintegrated as other researchers found they could not reproduce the blockbuster results.

Last week, around 50 physicists, scientific journal editors, and emissaries from the National Science Foundation gathered at the University of Pittsburgh to discuss the best way forward.“To be honest, we’ve let it go a little too long,” says physicist Sergey Frolov of the University of Pittsburgh, one of the conference organizers.

[...] After discussing the problems in the field, conference participants proposed feasible solutions for sharing data to improve reproducibility... (MORE - details
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[exchemist]

A wave of retractions is shaking physics

A wave of retractions is shaking physics

Grappling with problematic papers and poorly documented data, researchers and journal editors gathered in Pittsburgh to hash out the best way forward.

www.technologyreview.com

EXCERPTS: Recent highly publicized scandals have gotten the physics community worried about its reputation—and its future. Over the last five years, several claims of major breakthroughs in quantum computing and superconducting research, published in prestigious journals, have disintegrated as other researchers found they could not reproduce the blockbuster results.

Last week, around 50 physicists, scientific journal editors, and emissaries from the National Science Foundation gathered at the University of Pittsburgh to discuss the best way forward.“To be honest, we’ve let it go a little too long,” says physicist Sergey Frolov of the University of Pittsburgh, one of the conference organizers.

[...] After discussing the problems in the field, conference participants proposed feasible solutions for sharing data to improve reproducibility... (MORE - details
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This headline is sensationalist and is not supported by the content of the article. It is not “shaking physics” and they only cite 2 examples. There is an emerging problem of poor research being published, which this conference was convened to address, but there is no suggestion that physics or the physics community as a whole are in trouble because of it. The headline is in fact an example of the kind of disinformation wegs was worrying about in post 309!

 

[C C]

This headline is sensationalist and is not supported by the content of the article. It is not “shaking physics” and they only cite 2 examples. [...]

Or they're the two major items that Sophia Chen chose to zero in on, to the exclusion of others. Direct announcements about the conference from the University of Pittsburg itself don't seem to address any particular retractions, but refer to the "prevalence of unreliable research and ways to identify it".

"Prevalence" suggesting widespread.

"Shaking physics" doubtless is aggrandizement, since it's just one conference with a reputed mere "fifty" concerned individuals. But over the decades such headlines have unfortunately long-since established themselves as a common expectation from science reporters and their outlets -- continuing into the future despite routine criticism about language choices.

International Conference on Reproducibility in Condensed Matter Physics
https://bioethics.pitt.edu/event/international-conference-reproducibility-condensed-matter-physics

ABSTRACT: This program will examine ongoing reproducibility efforts in experimental, theoretical, and computational condensed matter physics; the prevalence of unreliable research and ways to identify it; examples of best reproducibility practices; ways to integrate reproducibility principles into education and training; ways to build up infrastructure to support reproducibility and open science; advice on changes to publication and funding policy; reproducibility work and open science efforts.
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[C C]

Even some [scientists] just want to believe

Some People Just Want to Believe | Skeptical Inquirer

This article examines why a huge percentage of Americans believe that aliens are among us and buzzing our military jets with impunity in their spacecraft. And yes, theoretical physicist Michio Kaku is at least partly to blame.

skepticalinquirer.org

EXCERPTS: When I first read this I was bewildered. How could a physicist say this? What Michio Kaku does in this statement is called “shifting the burden of proof”—stating that your claim is true unless someone can prove it false. In short, if you make an extraordinary claim (alien ships are buzzing our jets with impunity), you need to be able to back that up with extraordinary evidence. I presume that Kaku believes the videos are, in fact, extraordinary evidence. The problem is that he is profoundly wrong. The videos he points to as evidence have been investigated and explained without any need to accept the extraordinary aliens-are-here hypothesis.

[...] So, with all the coverage in the news and on social media credulously proclaiming that aliens are here—be it in documentary films, TV shows, or interviews of a prominent theoretical physicist saying he believes—is it any wonder that over 40 percent of the population is now convinced that UAP are indisputably flying saucers? (MORE - details)
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[C C]

‘Lab shenanigans’: TikTok influencer faked data, feds say

‘Lab shenanigans’: TikTok influencer faked data, feds say

Darrion Nguyen A well-known content creator and former lab technician at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas admitted taking “several shortcuts” in work that has been found to contain falsified dat…

retractionwatch.com

A well-known content creator and former lab technician at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas admitted taking “several shortcuts” in work that has been found to contain falsified data funded by the National Institutes of Health, according to a U.S. government watchdog...

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A retraction milestone: 200 for one author

A retraction milestone: 200 for one author

Ludwigshafen Hospital, via Wikimedia Numbers are everywhere in retraction land lately: A record 10,000-plus retractions in 2023. 19 journals shut down at Wiley. Now here’s another. Readers who have…

retractionwatch.com

One researcher, Joachim Boldt, has now been credited with 210 retractions – making him the first author (to our knowledge) with more than 200 retractions to his name...

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Journal taking ‘corrective actions’ after learning author used ChatGPT to update references

Journal taking ‘corrective actions’ after learning author used ChatGPT to update references

An interdisciplinary journal says it will take “corrective actions” on a paper following a thorough investigation on a paper for which one author used ChatGPT to update the references. …

retractionwatch.com

An interdisciplinary journal says it will take “corrective actions” on a paper following a thorough investigation on a paper for which one author used ChatGPT to update the references...
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[Magical Realist]

In a 2023 Newsweek interview regarding the significance of these Navy videos, he said: “I think that there’s been a game changer. In the old days, the burden of proof was on the true believers to prove that what they saw last night was a flying saucer of some sort. Now the burden of proof has shifted. Now it’s the military, the military has to prove that these aren’t extraterrestrial objects.”

When I first read this I was bewildered. How could a physicist say this? What Kaku does in this statement is called “shifting the burden of proof”—stating that your claim is true unless someone can prove it false. In short, if you make an extraordinary claim (alien ships are buzzing our jets with impunity), you need to be able to back that up with extraordinary evidence. I presume that Kaku believes the videos are, in fact, extraordinary evidence. The problem is that he is profoundly wrong.

I think what Kaku meant by the claim that the burden of proof (or of disproof actually) has shifted to the skeptics is simply that we now have solid evidence (in videos and radar data and photos and multiple eyewitness accounts) for uaps, and the ball is basically in the skeptics' court now. The skeptics typically whine and bitch that there is no evidence of uaps, and when we finally get some, they drag out that old Sagan cliche about extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence. Which is to say they won't accept any evidence at all for uaps because they can always claim it isn't extraordinary enough for them to take seriously. It becomes the standard justification for inaction and indifference on the part of skeptics that is actually opposite to the true spirit of science. It's the infinitely raiseable bar of the dogmatic skeptic---a comfortable excuse to continue believing there aren't and never will be uaps in its newly defined sense of unidentified anomalous phenomena. Don't believe me? To quote from another poster's excellent thread OP on this:

"The most absurd extreme I have encountered for denial of evidence came from a discussion about UFOs, and whether some might be alien spacecrafts. I had no definite opinion either way but asked a friend what evidence he would require to accept they are real. He quickly responded, NOTHING! I asked what he meant. Surely there is some standard he would find acceptable. Eventually I realized no reasonable evidence would ever be enough for him. No evidence could be extraordinary enough. So I asked "What if a UFO landed in your back yard, and an alien emerged and offered to take you for a ride in his flying saucer? You then go in his craft and fly around for a bit," He replied, I would assume I was hallucinating."---- https://www.sciforums.com/threads/e...rdinary-evidence-a-crackpot-assertion.166256/

 

[C C]

Exclusive: Scandal at America's Top Science Fair

Exclusive: Scandal at America's Top Science Fair

''Honestly ISEF is probably going to sweep this under the rug unless it comes in the news. Someone needs to send it to CNN or something.''

www.karlstack.com

This case highlights a significant oversight failure by the world's most prestigious science fair. The responsibility now lies with The International Science and Engineering Fair to take action and issue a statement....

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Scientists on trial: Follow the money

Scientists on Trial: Follow the Money | Skeptical Inquirer

Shock waves rolled through academia in August 2023 when Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino sued her employer, Harvard University. The reaction ...

skepticalinquirer.org

EXCERPTS: The reaction to this news was not caused by the mere fact of the lawsuit. [...] How did it come to this? ... In my view, much of this comes from the injection of money and fame into a world where it never was before. ... Today, professors write bestselling books, give TED talks, appear on TV, and enjoy lucrative consulting contracts and speaking fees...

[...] This is not the way science is supposed to be done, but in a world that creates rockstar academics making large sums of money, it is likely to continue. Good science also requires an equal playing field, and when researchers cannot speak freely without the threat of legal entanglements, we all suffer... (MORE - details)
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[C C]

Devastating report: how archaeologist couple got away with misconduct, intimidation, alcohol abuse and theft

Devastating report: how archaeologist couple got away with misconduct, intimidation, alcohol abuse and theft

On Monday, the university published a damning report on the decades-long reign of terror by Caribbean archaeology professor Corinne Hofman and her partner and researcher Menno Hoogland.

www.mareonline.nl

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Pay researchers to spot errors in published papers

Pay researchers to spot errors in published papers

Borrowing the idea of ‘bug bounties’ from the technology industry could provide a systematic way to detect and correct the errors that litter the scientific literature.

www.nature.com

My goal is not to prove that a bug-bounty programme is the best mechanism for correcting errors, or that it is applicable to all science.

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Why scientific fraud is suddenly everywhere

Why Scientific Fraud Is Suddenly Everywhere

Retraction Watch co-founder Ivan Oransky talks about how academic metrics got Moneyballed, causing many research journals to fold.

nymag.com

EXCERPTS: [...] I’ll start by saying that paper mills are not the problem; they are a symptom of the actual problem. ... Everybody wanted to pretend all these problems didn’t exist. The problems in scientific literature are long-standing, and they’re an incentive problem. ... When you say there aren’t enough jobs, it’s because we’re training so many Ph.D.’s and convincing them all that the only way to remain a scientist is to stay in academia. It’s not, and that hasn’t been true for a long time. So there’s definitely a supply-and-demand problem, and people are going to compete... (MORE - details)
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[C C]

Tobacco funded research still appearing in top medical journals

Tobacco funded research still appearing in top medical journals

Tobacco-funded research is still appearing in highly-cited medical journals - despite attempts by some to cut ties altogether, finds an investigation by The Investigative Desk and The BMJ today.

www.eurekalert.org

INTRO: Tobacco-funded research is still appearing in highly-cited medical journals - despite attempts by some to cut ties altogether, finds an investigation by The Investigative Desk and The BMJ today.

Although the tobacco industry has a long history of subverting science, most leading medical journals don’t have policies which ban research wholly or partly funded by the industry.

And even when publishers, authors and universities are willing to restrict tobacco industry ties, they struggle to identify funding sources because tobacco companies have funded front groups and have diversified into pharmaceutical and health technology fields.

These investments include treatments for conditions caused or aggravated by smoking, such as lung cancer, heart disease, and asthma.

These ties complicate ongoing efforts of researchers, scientific organisations and journals to distance themselves from the industry and has led to calls for journals to not only institute bans on research by tobacco companies but also on their subsidiaries.

The Investigative Desk and The BMJ searched the PubMed database and found hundreds of relationships between Big Tobacco’s medical and pharmaceutical subsidiaries and medical research... (MORE - details, no ads)
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Neuroscience journal retracts eight articles for image distortion

Neuroscience journal retracts eight articles for image distortion

Mu Yang Elsevier’s Journal of Chemical Neuroanatomy has retracted eight articles for image manipulation and overlap, with more on the way, according to the sleuth who notified the publication of th…

retractionwatch.com

Elsevier’s "Journal of Chemical Neuroanatomy" has retracted eight articles for image manipulation and overlap, with more on the way, according to the sleuth [Professor Mu Yang] who notified the publication of the issues...

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Indonesian university dean dismissed, barred from teaching, asked to apologize
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/05...ssed-barred-from-teaching-asked-to-apologize/

Kumba Digdowiseiso has been dismissed from his position as dean of the economics and business faculty at the Universitas Nasional (UNAS) in Jakarta, Indonesia, following an investigation into claims he used the names of other academics without consent on papers with which they were not involved...

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Pharmaceutical researcher faked data in two papers, says federal watchdog
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/05...ked-data-in-two-papers-says-federal-watchdog/

A former professor and vice provost for research at the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in New York, falsified data in two published papers, according to findings from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI)...

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Caught by a reviewer: A plagiarizing deep learning paper lingers
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/05...r-a-plagiarizing-deep-learning-paper-lingers/

He checked the accompanying source code and found the authors of the other paper seemed to have directly copied and built upon his own publicly released code without any attribution – a violation of the license connected to the work...

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University vice president for research contests retraction for image issues
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/05...esearch-contests-retraction-for-image-issues/

A university vice president has received his first retraction – and disagrees with it, according to the journal...

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University of Sydney dean working to amend review papers that cited papermill articles

University of Sydney dean working to amend review papers that cited papermill articles

Marcel Dinger The dean of science at the University of Sydney is reassessing a series of review papers after commenters on PubPeer pointed out each cited several retracted articles, Retraction Watc…

retractionwatch.com

The dean of science at the University of Sydney is reassessing a series of review papers after commenters on PubPeer pointed out each cited several retracted articles...
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