An article on a controversial topic just disappears; mass resignations from a nutrition journal; the likely mistaken history of the vibrator

Retraction Watch

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This week at Retraction Watch featured the retraction of happiness, an apology from a journal, and bad news for a lab with a high “level of disorganization.” Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

• “Half his board, he explained unhappily, had told him that unless he pulled the article, they would all resign and ‘harass the journal’ he had founded 25 years earlier ‘until it died.’ Faced with the loss of his own scientific legacy, he had capitulated.” An article on a controversial topic disappears. without a trace. (Theodore Hill, Quillette)
• “I am requesting a silent retraction of this paper…You may wish to consult with your legal advisors, but unless I get a retraction I will hand it over to my lawyer…” (Newsroom)
• All 10 senior editors of the journal Nutrients resigned last month, alleging that the publisher, MDPI, “pressured them to accept manuscripts of mediocre quality and importance.” (Jop de Vrieze, Science)
• “Peer review is no substitute for fact-checking.” The likely mistaken history of the vibrator. (The Atlantic)
• Arturo Casadevall and Ferric Fang have “a seven-point approach to reengineering the scientific literature so that it is better able to prevent and correct its failures.” (Journal of Clinical Investigation)
• Starting in 2020, European science funders will require grantees to publish in open access journals. (Martin Enserink, Science)
• Taylor & Francis has divested from its journal Prometheus, following a dispute. (Rachael Pells, Times Higher Education)
• “Repressive Experiences ‘Rare but Real’ in China Studies,” reports Elizabeth Redden. (Inside Higher Ed)
• Two of three authors “had not agreed to be listed in this article’s byline, and…the article had been submitted…without their explicit approval.”
• “A former data registry director and assistant psychiatry professor at the University of Utah has been awarded damages in a whistleblower protection case…” (Ben Lockhart, KSL)
• “Corruption, the Lack of Academic Integrity and Other Ethical Issues in Higher Education: What Can Be Done Within the Bologna Process?” Is that anything like salami slicing? (Elena Denisova-Schmidt, European Higher Education Area: The Impact of Past and Future Policies)
• “In fact, Nature Communications lost several reliable reviewers in chemistry when the referees were told their unsigned reviews would be made public if the author opted for it.” (Nature)
• “Can a researcher who (or whose byline) is not well-established, lose credit for an original idea?” (Praveen Chaddha, The Wire)
• “I think what everyone has to understand is that unhealthy discussion leads to unsuccessful funding applications, with referees pointing out that there is a controversy in the matter.” Katarina Zimmer digs into the Smart Flares controversy. (The Scientist)
• “Billed as a documentary, Paywall would be more accurately described as an advocacy film.” Richard Poynder reviews the recently released movie about scholarly publishing for Nature.
• Brian McNaughton wanted a raise. So he made up an offer letter from another university. And then he  “reached a plea deal this week that will allow his case to be dismissed in a year if he remains law abiding and completes 100 hours of community service.” (Jack Stripling and Megan Zahneis, The Chronicle of Higher Education)
• Can anyone parse this notice? “This article has been retracted at the request of the Editors-in-Chief of the Journal of the Affective Disorders, as the choice of data analyzed was found to be inaccurate after updated data was provided by the authors, and this had a significant impact on the original article data and conclusions.”
• “An article in a BMJ journal that criticised a Cochrane review on human papillomavirus vaccine made allegations that were not warranted and gave an inaccurate and sensationalised report of the review’s findings, say Cochrane’s two top editors.” It’s one group of Cochrane editors vs. another group of Cochrane editors. (Nigel Hawkes, The BMJ)
• The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) isending its print edition.
• A group in China has earned a second retraction. Here’s the first.
• If you’ve never heard of the Schön scandal, Douglas Natelson thinks that’s wrong.
• “Data thug” James Heathers has confessions to make. (Two Psychologists Four Beers podcast)
• “In any case, we don’t talk enough about failure, so here’s mine.” (Eiko Fried)
• “That’s right, we made a dreadful mistake in processing a paper for minimizing such mistakes. Boy, do I feel like a fraud.” (Jeff Rouder)
• “Plagiarism has had a comfortable place in Thailand for as long as I can remember, in music, literature, design, education and even politics.” (Surasak Glahan, Bangkok Post)
• “This evidence points to serious, systematic and large-scale fabrication of research results. It has come to our attention that in the meantime, three of these manuscripts were submitted to other journals (two of those submissions simultaneously with our journal!) and were published between March and June of this year. We have contacted and informed the respective journals of our concerns.” Jana Christopher describes how FEBS Letters uncovered likely image manipulation.
• “What and who are medical journals for?” asks Richard Smith.
• The Pasteur Institute has cleared Karolinska Institutet rector Ole Petter Ottersen of misconduct allegations regarding a 1999 paper in the Journal of Neuroscience. (Karolinska release)
• What does this mean, OMICS? An article “accepted for publication…considering the statements provided in the article as personal opinion of the author which was found not having any or biasness towards anything.” Is it even the right article? (Journal of Arthritis)
• “Drug companies routinely tweak their clinical trial designs in ways that seem designed to obtain opportune results. Very often, the FDA doesn’t mind.” (Dan Robitzski, Ashley Lyles & Cici Zhang, Undark)
• “Our results show that [questionable research practice] use is not particularly widespread among students according to their own reports, with less than 20% indicating having engaged in more than one.” (PLOS ONE)
• “It’s a sign of how bad things have got that researchers think it’s acceptable to write this in a Nature journal: ‘we continuously increased the number of animals until statistical significance was reached to support our conclusions.'” (Adrian Barnett)
• “‘A large grain of salt’: Why journalists should avoid reporting on most food studies.” (Kelly Crowe, CBC)
• “The correspondence allegedly reveals that the CEO of the Food and Grocery Council used an intermediary PR company to produce blog posts that denigrated a senior academic psychiatrist advocating for alcohol policy consistent with World Health Organization recommendations.” (Jennie Connor, Kypros Kypri, Drug and Alcohol Review, sub req’d)
• A look at citation sentiment — whether citations to retracted papers are positive or negative — that draws on our retraction database. (by David Ciudad, presented by Daniel Ecer)

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Thank You Retraction Watch.