A round-up from July, with news articles about science integrity, retractions, sleuthing, artificial intelligence, and more.
General Science Integrity News
- Science stands on shaky shoulders with research misconduct. Research misconduct poisons the well of scientific literature, but finding systemic ways to change the current “publish or perish” culture will help. – Stephanie Demarco – Drug Discovery News
- All the Alzheimer’s Research We Didn’t Do – unconventional ideas that do not offer fealty to the dominant approach to study and treat Alzheimer’s — what’s known as the amyloid hypothesis — often find themselves starved for funds and scientific mind share. – Charles Piller – New York Times
- [podcast] False Claims Act Insights – Eureka! Government Investigators Seek Out Research Misconduct – Jonathan Porter talks to Karen Courtheoux
- Why scientific integrity matters now more than ever – Maria A. Caffrey – Nature
- Science Europe ‘renews focus’ on research integrity – Nina Bo Wagner – Research Professional News
- How I learned to embrace open science – Albert W Li – Science Careers
Retractions
- No shame, no blame – How to make retractions work – Tim Kersjes – LSE blog
- Retraction notices are getting clearer — but progress is slow – Communications relating to retractions are often still opaque and lacking in detail, but an analysis finds some evidence of improvement – Miryam Naddaf – Nature
- How you can help improve the visibility of retractions: Introducing NISO’s Recommended Practice for Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern (CREC) – Maria Zalm and Caitlin Bakker – Retraction Watch
- ‘A threat to the integrity of scientific publishing’: How often are retracted papers marked that way? – Ivan Oransky interviews Caitlin Bakker – Retraction Watch
Sleuthing
- Cheshire vs Dr who? – COVID sequel! Cheshire reviews “Are We the Next Endangered Species? Bioweapons, Eugenics, and More” by Richard Fleming – Cheshire – For Better Science
- Queen’s University Belfast fights Welsh Terrorism – “your scatter gun approach has undermind a process that is undertaken confidentially […] It is sad that you are determined to undermine people’s reputations in the way you do.” – Queen’s University of Belfast to Sholto David. – Leonid Schneider – For Better Science News
- Postdoc’s grad-school sleuthing raises questions about bee waggle-dance data – A journal has flagged two papers with expressions of concern, which note a co-author acknowledged errors. – Shaena Montanari – The Transmitter
- What is it like to attend a predatory conference? – Nature sent a reporter to find out as part of an investigation into dud events – Christine Ro – Nature
- A study in ethics: the Chinese science detectives hard on the trail of academic misconduct – The growing industry of ‘scientific sleuthing’ is helping to keep academics ethical amid China’s push for more domestic science publishing – Dannie Peng – South China Morning News
Larry, the world’s most-cited cat
- How easy is it to fudge your scientific rank? Meet Larry, the world’s most cited cat. “Exercise in absurdity” reveals flaws in Google Scholar’s productivity metrics. “All you have to do is put some fake papers on ResearchGate.” – Christie Wilcox – Science
- Engineering the world’s highest cited cat, Larry – Reese Richardson – blog
Biotech and science misconduct: Cassava Sciences
- ‘Rare’ criminal charges for data manipulation in Cassava case send a ‘powerful message’: lawyers. Wang, a professor of medicine at the City University of New York School of Medicine, has had seven papers retracted, some involving work for Cassava, which is developing a drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease. – Ellie Kincaid – Retraction Watch
- Executives Depart Cassava, Maker of Disputed Alzheimer’s Drug – The chief executive and a lead scientist stepped down weeks after a federal grand jury filed fraud charges against a research collaborator – Teddy Rosenbluth – New York Times
Publishers taking action
- ‘We authors paid a heavy price’: Journal retracts all 23 articles in special issue – Avery Orrall – Retraction Watch
Federal and Institutional News
- China’s science ministry names and shames 10 for misconduct in research funding proposals – The researchers have been banned from taking part in state-funded projects for up to seven years – William Zheng – South China Morning Post
- China announces punitive measures against academic misconduct in national R&D projects – Global Times
- Dutch code of conduct for scientific integrity to be updated – Krijn Soeteman – Research Professional News
- New COPE guidelines: Cooperation between research institutions and journals on research integrity and publication misconduct cases – Publication Ethics
Artificial intelligence in science
- Two Major Academic Publishers Signed Deals With AI Companies. Some Professors Are Outraged – Christa Dutton – The Chronicle of Higher Education
- AI is complicating plagiarism. How should scientists respond? The explosive uptake of generative artificial intelligence in writing is raising difficult questions about when use of the technology should be allowed. – Diana Kwon
- Risks of AI-enabled academic misconduct flagged in new study – Julian Sladdin – Pinsent Masons news
- Rethinking research and generative artificial intelligence – The Lancet
- Giant rat penis redux: AI-generated diagram, errors lead to retraction – Dawn Attride – Retraction Watch
New publications and editorials
- Evolving patterns of extreme publishing behavior across science – John P. A. Ioannidis, Thomas A. Collins & Jeroen Baas – Scientometrics
- Ethics and Academic Discourse, Scientific Integrity, Uncertainty, and Disinformation in Medicine: An American College of Physicians Position Paper – Snyder Sulmasy et al. – Annals of Internal Medicine
- Policies on Artificial Intelligence Chatbots Among Academic Publishers: A Cross-Sectional Audit – Daivat Bhavsar – medRxiv
- Public enemies? The differential effects of reputation and celebrity on corporate misconduct scandalization – Han, Pollock, and Paruchuri – Strategic Management Journal
- Research Integrity in Guidelines and evIDence synthesis (RIGID): a framework for assessing research integrity in guideline development and evidence synthesis – Aya Mousa et al. – eClinicalMedicine
- The paper mill crisis is a five-alarm fire for science: what can librarians do about it? – Curtis Brundy and Joel B. Thornton – UKSG Insights
Retraction Watch’s Weekend Reads:
- 6 July: Weekend reads: A ‘star botanist’ has a retraction; the ‘bizarro world of law reviews’; AI and fake papers
- 13 July: Weekend reads: ‘The surprising history of abstracts’; is peer review broken?; bee waggle dance data gets the wrong kind of buzz
- 20 July: Weekend reads: The world’s most cited cat; ‘Is peer review failing its peer review?’; Oxford prof accused of stealing research
- 27 July: Weekend reads: Attending a predatory conference; zombie theories; difficult authors
Science Integrity Digest 