Weekend reads: The study that never existed; turmoil at Cochrane; a plagiarist is appointed professor

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Scientific/Academic Ethics, again

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The week at Retraction Watch featured a lot of news about Brian Wansink — six new retractions, his resignation, and findings of misconduct. There was other news, too, including a dozen new retractions of work by a scientist who once went to court to try to sue his critics. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

• “Chad Tackett claimed his weight loss program was so good that it was part of a university-sponsored study. That the study never existed was the least shady part of the tale.” (Alex Kasprak, Snopes)
• One of the medical world’s most respected expert bodies — the Cochrane Collaboration — is in turmoil after its governing board voted to expel an outspoken member.
• “Back in 2016, he was convicted of plagiarism.” But the Comenius University in Bratislava appointed Marian Vanderka as a professor anyway. (The Slovak Spectator)
• “Scientific misconduct is more than falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism – and harder to identify. ” (Leah Lawrence, ASH Clinical News)
• “Why one scientist spends hours a week putting together a spreadsheet of documented harassment findings, names and all.” Colleen Flaherty profiles the work of Julie Libarkin. (Inside Higher Ed)
• The authors of a PNAS study of psychological targeting on Facebook add a disclosure saying they “are employed by an institute that receives funding from Facebook, as well as its competitors (e.g., television networks and Google).” They argue that “This balance of interests means that their views are not influenced by any single company or industry group.”
• Meet the “journalologists” using scientific methods to study publishing. (Jennifer Couzin-Frankel, Science) Part of a package on “Research on Research.”
• The U.S. FDA will “(sometimes) impose fines on (some) institutions that fail to post clinical trial results,” writes Till Bruckner of TranspariMED.
• “Are non-monetary rewards effective in attracting peer reviewers?” asks a new study. (Monica Aniela Zaharie, Marco Seeber, Scientometrics)
• “This problem is so entrenched and the lack of response is so distressing, in the face of the rise of scientific fraud, that we resort to denial or pretending everything is fine.” (Claude Huriet, European Scientist)
• “Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, has published his doctoral thesis online in an effort to put an end to allegations of plagiarism and distance himself from the degree scandal that has dogged some of the country’s most high-profile politicians.” (Sam Jones, The Guardian)
• Bad Science: Jason Hoyt speaks to Dorothy Bishop. (PeerJ blog)
• Book ’em, Danno? “The City of Cleveland has terminated 15 police academy cadets accused of cheating and plagiarizing notes in a notebook used during the police academy.” (Ian Cross, News 5 Cleveland)
• Universities should “reboot undergraduate courses for reproducibility,” says Katherine Button. (Nature)
• “A research-funding foundation has revoked a £1-million (US$1.3-million) grant from prominent palaeontologist Nicholas Longrich, who was disciplined by his institution, the University of Bath, UK, after an investigation found he had breached its anti-harassment policy.” (Holly Else, Nature)
• “Women are inadequately represented as peer reviewers, journal editors and last authors of studies, according to an analysis of manuscript submissions to an influential biomedical journal.” Dalmeet Singh Chawla reports on a preprint highlighted previously on Weekend Reads. (Nature)
• “Better incentives could reduce the alarming number of studies that turn out to be wrong when repeated,” writes Shannon Palus. (Scientific American, sub req’d)
• “[W]ithout reliable publishing, what’s the point of a scientific career?” asks Stuart Goldie. (Chemistry World)
• Is peer review only skin-deep? “These results indicate that the majority of dermatologists are not familiar with predatory journals.” (Acta Dermato-Venereologica)
• An article titled “Why all randomized controlled trials produce biased results,” say authors of a new piece, “may create confusion to understanding of RCTs in the research community.” (Annals of Medicine)
• “Cited vs. uncited papers: What do they tell us?” Prashant Kamat, editor in chief of ACS Energy Letters, runs the numbers and critiques Impact Factor calculations.
• “My former advisor, who sexually harassed me and other women, no longer has a glacier named after him in Antarctica.” Another #MeToo moment.
• An odd one: A court settlement in which a reporter, sued by a scientist who didn’t like what was written about him, agreed to call the scientist a “genius.”
• Dear publishers: Please stop saddling authors with retractions because of your own errors. Here’s another example of a phenomenon we’ve described before.
• “AAAS will, in its sole discretion, consider revoking Fellow status in cases of proven scientific misconduct, serious breaches of professional ethics, or when the Fellow in the view of AAAS otherwise no longer merits the status of Fellow.” A new policy.
• “Although we received no written response, the plagiarized article was taken down from their website two days after the demand to retract the article was sent.” (Mark Langdorf, WestJEM)
• Economics is having a replication crisis, says Noah Smith. (Bloomberg) Background here.
• “The world is so large under the electron microscope that if you want, you can find two identical ones.” PubPeer calls this “one of the most poetic author defenses” they’ve seen in six years of running the site.
• When it comes to plagiarism, these aerospace researchers are real stars. (Journal of Guidance and Control)
• “That was embarrassing.” Researcher Detlef Weigel submits a correction to Science, after  comments on PubPeer.
• “Retracted studies are an infrequent problem, but they appear often enough to potentially influence the results of some Cochrane Reviews.” (conference abstract)
• “It is the strictest action yet by a US research-funding agency on the topic of sexual harassment.” The NSF unveils a new policy. (Alexandra Witze, Nature)
• Our Ivan Oransky talks about our database, and how it fits into a roadmap for open science.
• The German Research Foundation (DFG) has imposed a three-year ban on funding for a researcher. As is typical in such cases, they do not say who the scientist is.
• Researchers in Africa are being warned about predatory journals. One criterion: Are they aggressive advertisers? (Maina Waruru, University World News)
• “He also made it clear that the grade won’t be changed, and told students to stop trying to get their points back in the email that reads like poetry from the seventh century.” A professor in China cracks down on plagiarism. (CGTN)
• A judge “dismissed a criminal case against chemist Patrick Harran, who faced charges of violating health and safety standards after an accidental death in his laboratory nine years ago.” (Amy Maxmen, Nature)
• The U.S. Office of Research Integrity has a new acting director of the Division of Investigative Oversight: Brian Mozer.

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