2022 Research Misconduct News
This page offers news-worthy topics for the Responsible Conduct of Research and Research Misconduct. Note: Due to the nature of web page evolution, some links may be broken.
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Journal editors and publishers’ legal obligations with respect to medical research misconduct
December 25, 2022
Sage journals
Naomi Holbeach, Ian Freckelton AO QC, Ben W Mol, etc.
Abstract
As the burden of misconduct in medical research is increasingly recognised, questions have been raised about how best to address this problem. Whilst there are existing mechanisms for the investigation and management of misconduct in medical literature, they are inadequate to deal with the magnitude of the problem. Journal editors and publishers play an essential role in protecting the veracity of the medical literature. Whilst ethical guidance for journal editors and publishers is important, it is not as readily enforceable as legal obligations might be. This article questions the legal obligations that might exist for journal editors and publishing companies with respect to ensuring the veracity of the published literature. Ultimately, there is no enforceable legal obligation in Australia, the United Kingdom, or the United States. In light of this, more robust mechanisms are needed to deliver greater confidence and transparency in the investigative process, the management of concerns or findings of misconduct and the need to cleanse the literature. We show that the law disincentivises journals and publishers from ensuring truth in their publications. There are harmful consequences for medical care and public confidence in the medical profession and health care system when the foundations of medical science are questionable.
Researchers push preprint reviews to improve scientific communications
Shifts in research culture, incentives, and technology would be needed for wide adoption
December 19, 2022
Science
Jeffrey Brainard
For decades, peer reviewing technical manuscripts before they were published in a journal was a regular duty for senior scientists. But James Fraser, a structural biologist at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), says he hasn’t reviewed a paper for a journal in years. Instead, Fraser and members of his lab focus on reviewing preprint studies that are posted online whenever authors like, bypassing a journal’s peer-review process.
To fix peer review, break it into stages
All data should get checked, but not every article needs an expert.
November 23, 2022
Nature
Olavo B. Amaral
Peer review is not the best way to detect errors and problematic data. Expert reviewers are few, their tasks are myriad and it’s not feasible for them to check data thoroughly for every article, especially when the data are not shared. Scandals such as the 2020 retractions of high-profile COVID-19 papers by researchers at US company Surgisphere show how easily papers with unverified results can slip through the cracks.
As a metaresearcher studying peer review, I am struck by how vague the concept is. It conflates the evaluation of rigour with the curation of what deserves space in a journal. Whereas the first is key to keeping the scientific record straight, the second was shaped in an era when printed space was limited.
For most papers, checking whether the data are valid is more important than evaluating whether their claims are warranted. It is the data, not the conclusions, that will become the evidence base for a given subject. Undetected errors or fabricated results will permanently damage the scientific record.
How to protect research ideas as a junior scientist
Ijeoma Opara learnt some hard lessons after getting scooped in a grant application.
November 17, 2022
Nature
Ijeoma Opara
I use community-based participatory research methods to work with youth Black children and their families on issues such as substance use and HIV prevention. When I was applying for my first grant in 2019, I spoke to many mentors, community members and non-academic friends — and basically anyone else who would listen to my ideas. I took two months to write the proposal, much improved by their advice and feedback, and received funding the following year.
In 2020, I planned to apply for another grant, in response to a request from a federal funding agency for proposals investigating protective factors against substance use in young people in minority ethnic groups. As in my previous grant-writing journey, I shared my idea with anyone who would listen, but after realizing that I didn’t have the capacity to take on the project, I had decided to wait a couple of months before applying. I thought I had time because the closing date for grant applications was a few years later.
To my surprise, earlier this year, I saw a multimillion-dollar grant awarded to someone whom I didn’t know professionally, for aims that looked almost identical to mine. I was shocked and upset — but felt it might have been partly my fault for sharing my ideas too early. I had sent my project to many people, including senior scholars whom I didn’t really know, after colleagues had suggested that I contact them. Of course, it is possible that this person came up with the idea on their own — although, personally, I doubt it.
Construction and management of retraction stigma in retraction notices: an authorship-based investigation
November 2, 2022
SpringerLink
By Shaoxiong (Brian) Zu & Guangwei Hu
Although retraction is widely perceived as stigmatic in the scientific community, little is known about how retraction stigma is communicated via retraction notices. Drawing on a dataset of 1,000 retraction notices, this study investigated what communication strategies were employed in retraction notices to construct and manage retraction stigma and whether retraction notices penned by journal authorities and authors of retracted publications differed in the use of those strategies. A content analysis of the retraction notices identified three types of retraction stigma construction strategy (i.e., creating marks, assigning responsibility, and exposing perils) and four types of retraction stigma management strategy (i.e., concealing stigma visibility, refraining from labelling, manipulating responsibility assignment, and offering correction and remediation). Authorship-based differences were found in the deployment of all seven types of stigma construction and management strategy and 17 individual strategies. The use of two types of construction strategy were significantly associated with the use of three types of management strategy. These findings revealed retraction notices as capable of both stigmatizing and destigmatizing. Thus, retraction notices constitute a discourse genre that is imbued with communicative tensions rooted in the diverse functions that they can serve.
Conflicting interests: when whistleblowers profit from allegations of scientific misconduct
November 1, 2022
JCI
By Elizabeth M. McNally
The journal Science recently described a series of articles with potential scientific misconduct (1), emphasizing that many of them are connected to the developers of simufilam, an agent being evaluated to treat Alzheimer’s disease. Science called out potential image manipulation in multiple articles, including one published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation in 2012 (2). The Science story relayed many of the same details found in an April 18, 2022, New York Times piece (3).
The articles in Science and the New York Times focused primarily on the very serious topic of potential scientific misconduct. However, these articles only lightly touched upon the concept of short selling stock, and I believe this matter deserves more attention for its inherent conflicts of interest. Short selling entails borrowing shares of a stock, selling shares high, followed by buying shares back at a lower price and pocketing the difference. Short sellers profit from devaluing a stock. It is legal to devalue stocks using public statements, and short sellers will often use social media as a primary venue to make defamatory statements, expressed as opinions. This process is known as “short and distort.”
‘Publish or perish’ culture continues to distort research
October 27, 2022
University World News
By Yojana Sharma
Despite rules brought in two years ago to reduce publishing pressure on postgraduate students in China, severe pressure on research students continues to distort the research environment in the country, a new study has found.
A recently published paper* by Hugo Horta, associate professor in the faculty of education at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), and Huan Li, a PhD student at HKU, titled “Nothing but publishing” provides up-to-date evidence of the scale of the overemphasis on publishing papers during doctoral studies in China and its detrimental impact on all other learning and activities.
Opinion: Science Needs Better Fraud Detection – And More Whistleblowers
An influential paper on amyloid protein and Alzheimer’s potentially fabricated data. Why did it take 16 years to flag?
October 26, 2022
Undark
By Aman Majmudar
IN JULY, news that shook the field of Alzheimer’s disease research emerged: Matthew Schrag, a neurologist at Vanderbilt University, tipped off the scientific community that a groundbreaking 2006 study may have falsified data and images, calling its findings — and much of the research based on those findings — into question.
Scientific misconduct, however, is more common than one would hope, and the Alzheimer’s research incident was just the latest example to call attention to the troubling practice. In 2015, the journal Science retracted a paper after a graduate student uncovered improper survey methods. That same year, news came out that a scholar fabricated data related to cancer research to aggrandize genomic technology he had developed.
‘Honorary authors’ of scientific papers abound—but they probably shouldn’t
Up to one-third of authors don’t meet criteria for adding their name to a paper, study finds
September 28, 2022
Science
By Jeffrey Brainard
It’s a practice that makes some scientists cringe: The lead author of a paper pays homage to a department chair, or a colleague who helped secure a grant, by listing them among the manuscript’s authors—even though the person made no intellectual contribution to the paper. Such “honorary authorship” is discouraged by many journals, publishing industry groups, and universities, who say it undermines the integrity of scientific literature.
Despite such disapproval, however, honorary authors appear to be common, a new study concludes. Up to one-third of more than 600,000 authors examined by the study appear to have been granted authorship even though they didn’t meet some commonly used criteria.
Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science: recommendations from the RISRS report
September 19, 2022
BMC Part of Springer Nature: Research Integrity and Peer Review
By Jodi Schneider, Nathan D. Woods, Randi Proescholdt, & the RISRS Team
Retraction is a mechanism for alerting readers to unreliable material and other problems in the published scientific and scholarly record. Retracted publications generally remain visible and searchable, but the intention of retraction is to mark them as “removed” from the citable record of scholarship. However, in practice, some retracted articles continue to be treated by researchers and the public as valid content as they are often unaware of the retraction. Research over the past decade has identified a number of factors contributing to the unintentional spread of retracted research. The goal of the Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science: Shaping a Research and Implementation Agenda (RISRS) project was to develop an actionable agenda for reducing the inadvertent spread of retracted science. This included identifying how retraction status could be more thoroughly disseminated, and determining what actions are feasible and relevant for particular stakeholders who play a role in the distribution of knowledge.
It takes a laboratory to avoid data loss
Lab members are typically in charge of their own data and notes. But institutional memory is better served if the team works together, say Stephen McInturff and Victor Adenis.
September 15, 2022
Nature
By Stephen McInturff & Victor Adenis
During the 2020 COVID-19 shutdown, one of us (S.M.), a graduate student at the time, was asked to write a short manuscript using a previous laboratory member’s unpublished data. Thinking it would be a quick and easy pandemic project that would lead to a publication and a chapter in his dissertation, he happily took on the project. But the happiness didn’t last.
After weeks of trudging through poorly documented programming codes and data files, S.M. realized that much of the raw data he needed were missing. V.A., a postdoc in the lab, was recruited to help with the project. Together, we were ultimately able to locate some of the lost data, but they were spread across two other hard drives, saved using file names that were inconsistent with the original data set. We spent the following year repeating experiments, but some data could not be re-collected, because the animal models used in the original project were long gone. Two years later, the paper remains unpublished and has no clear narrative because of inconsistencies and gaps in the data. Sadly, such stories of data loss seem common in academia.
Guest Post — Who Cares About Publication Integrity?
August 18, 2022
The Scholarly Kitchen
By Andrew Grey, Alison Avenell, Mark Bolland
"No one questions the critical importance of a reliable biomedical literature. Universities teach research integrity, publishers espouse it fulsomely, government agencies debate and endorse it. There are definitions, recommendations, and guidelines. Yet the cases described above are but a few of the many examples of the slow, opaque, inconsistent, frustrating, and unsatisfactory outcomes of tumbling into the rabbit hole of publication integrity. Watching paint dry is ultimately more fulfilling: at least the paint will be dry eventually. Why is achieving and maintaining publication integrity so fraught? Could it be that the main protagonists don’t actually care?"
Rethinking the retraction process
August 18, 2022
Science
By H. Holden Thorp
"High-profile examples of scientific fraud continue to plague research. Recently, Science published two news stories on alleged image manipulation in Alzheimer’s research and unreliable data in an ecology study, sadly showing that the problem persists. Each case involved back and forth among the journal, authors, and institutions to correct the scientific record. Journalists and advocates for research integrity (including courageous whistleblowers) are understandably frustrated about how long it takes to retract papers or at least to post editorial expressions of concern. It’s time to devise a more efficient solution."
Guest Post — Has Peer Review Created a Toxic Culture in Academia? Moving from ‘Battering’ to ‘Bettering’ in the Review of Academic Research
August 16, 2022
The Scholarly Kitchen
By Avi Staiman
Peer review can be an opportunity for authors to rethink and refine their arguments. For example, vaccines developed by leading pharmaceutical companies to combat Coronavirus were scrutinized by scientists the world over using the peer review process to ensure the veracity of the research and to suggest tweaks and improvements. Trust in the scientific review process in general, and peer review specifically, was put to the test and much of the public debate hinged on the reliability and transparency of the expedited review process.
Promoting trust in research and researchers: How open science and research integrity are intertwined
August 12, 2022
MetaArXiv Preprints
By Tamarinde Have, Gowri Gopalakrishna, Joeri Tijdink, Dorien van der Schot, Lex Bouter
Proponents of open science often refer to issues pertaining to research integrity and vice versa. In this commentary, we argue that concepts such as responsible research practices, transparency, and open science are connected to one another, but that they each have a different focus. We argue that responsible research practices focus more on the rigorous conduct of research, transparency focuses predominantly on the complete reporting of research, and open science’s core focus is mostly about dissemination of research.
Why scientists might cheat (and how to prevent it)
More than ethics or knowledge of procedure, it may be a result of the competitive way we fund science.
August 11, 2022
Start Tribune
By Raymond De Vries
“In the U.S.,” writes Raymond De Vries, “we believe that competition, not collaboration, is the best way to increase scientific knowledge. We ask scientists to compete for research grants, for publications, for recognition via traditional and social media. To the winner goes the spoils — the best jobs, promotions and continued funding.”
"In late July, the Star Tribune published the discouraging news that Sylvain Lesné, a University of Minnesota neuroscientist, is alleged to have doctored data in an influential paper exploring the causes of Alzheimer's disease. A few days later we learned that an Ohio State University cancer research lab manipulated images in its publications.
It is disheartening to learn that scientists cheat. Misbehavior among researchers slows the search for cures for diseases like Alzheimer's and cancer and adds to a growing skepticism about science.
As one who has studied cheating in science, I have good news and bad."
Benchmarking Scientific Image Forgery Detectors
August 2, 2022
Science and Engineering Ethics
By Joao P. Cardenuto & Anderson Rocha
The field of scientific image integrity presents a challenging research bottleneck given the lack of available datasets to design and evaluate forensic techniques. The sensitivity of data also creates a legal hurdle that restricts the use of real-world cases to build any accessible forensic benchmark. In light of this, there is no comprehensive understanding on the limitations and capabilities of automatic image analysis tools for scientific images, which might create a false sense of data integrity. To mitigate this issue, we present an extendable open-source algorithm library that reproduces the most common image forgery operations reported by the research integrity community: duplication, retouching, and cleaning.
Cardenuto, J.P., Rocha, A. Benchmarking Scientific Image Forgery Detectors. Sci Eng Ethics 28, 35 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-022-00391-4
The Amyloid Theory: Questions Arise Around Possible Research Misconduct and the Validity of Aß as a Therapeutic Target
After an investigative report published in Science called to question years of research around the existence of an amyloid oligomer known as Aß*56, debates about the amyloid hypothesis have been reignited in the Alzheimer community.
July 29, 2022
NeurologyLive
By Matt Hoffman
In late July, just days ahead of the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, the Alzheimer disease (AD) clinical community was lit ablaze with controversy with the publication of a multimonth report from Science bringing to light potentially dubious research practices related to an amyloid-ß (Aß) oligomer that many now claim does not exist, known as Aß*56—the consequences of which could have had downstream effects totaling millions of dollars invested and thousands of hours of research wasted.
Faked Beta-Amyloid Data. What Does It Mean?
July 25, 2022
Science
By Derek Lowe
Late last week came this report in Science about doctored images in a series of very influential papers on amyloid and Alzheimer’s disease. That’s attracted a lot of interest, as well it should, and as a longtime observer of the field (and onetime researcher in it), I wanted to offer my own opinions on the controversy.
First off, I’ve noticed a lot of takes along the lines of “OMG, because of this fraud we’ve been wasting our time on Alzheimer’s research since 2006”.
When A Science Journal Does The Right Thing
July 25, 2022
Forbes
By Steven Salzberg
Today I want to tell a positive story, where a science journal did the right thing.
I’ve written a lot over the years about bad science. A particular gripe of mine is when bogus scientific results, sometimes fraudulent, sometimes just sloppy, manage to sneak into the peer-reviewed scientific literature. This happens all too often, especially as the number of papers published each year has grown. These bad papers are then used by fraudsters and charlatans (and sometimes by innocent people who just don’t have the expertise to understand) to “prove” an unscientific claim.
Fortunately, a growing number of journals–the better ones, in general–are showing more concern than in the past, and taking actions (sometimes) to retract papers, even over the objections of the authors.
BLOTS ON A FIELD?
A neuroscience image sleuth finds signs of fabrication in scores of Alzheimer’s articles, threatening a reigning theory of the disease
July 21, 2022
Science
By Charles Pillar
In August 2021, Matthew Schrag, a neuroscientist and physician at Vanderbilt University, got a call that would plunge him into a maelstrom of possible scientific misconduct. A colleague wanted to connect him with an attorney investigating an experimental drug for Alzheimer’s disease called Simufilam. The drug’s developer, Cassava Sciences, claimed it improved cognition, partly by repairing a protein that can block sticky brain deposits of the protein amyloid beta (Aβ), a hallmark of Alzheimer’s. The attorney’s clients—two prominent neuroscientists who are also short sellers who profit if the company’s stock falls—believed some research related to Simufilam may have been “fraudulent,” according to a petition later filed on their behalf with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Exclusive: investigators found plagiarism and data falsification in work from prominent cancer lab
Ohio State University investigations identified misconduct by two scientists in lab of high-profile cancer researcher Carlo Croce. The university has cleared Croce of misconduct, but disciplined him over management problems.
July 20, 2022
Nature
By Richard Van Noorden
Over the past decade, questions have swirled around the work coming out of a prominent US cancer-research laboratory run by Carlo Croce at the Ohio State University (OSU). Croce, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, made his name with his work on the role of genes in cancer. But for years, he has faced allegations of plagiarism and falsified images in studies from his group. All told, 11 papers he has co-authored have been retracted, and 21 have required corrections.
Dynamics of cross-platform attention to retracted papers
June 14, 2022
PNAS
By Hao Peng, Daniel Romero, and Emoke-Agnes Horvat
“Retracted papers often circulate widely on social media, digital news, and other websites before their official retraction. The spread of potentially inaccurate or misleading results from retracted papers can harm the scientific community and the public. Here, we quantify the amount and type of attention 3,851 retracted papers received over time in different online platforms. Comparing with a set of nonretracted control papers from the same journals with similar publication year, number of coauthors, and author impact, we show that retracted papers receive more attention after publication not only on social media but also, on heavily curated platforms, such as news outlets and knowledge repositories, amplifying the negative impact on the public.”
The Peer-Review Crisis
The peer-review system, which relies on unpaid volunteers, has long been stressed. COVID-19 has made it worse. Possible solutions include paying reviewers or limiting revise-and-resubmits. Are these Band-Aids on structural problems?
June 13, 2022
INSIDE HIGHER ED
By Colleen Flaherty
"Gale Sinatra, professor of psychology and the Stephen H. Crocker Professor of Education at the University of Southern California, is stepping down as associate editor of the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. Officially, it’s because she’s becoming an associate dean for research and won’t have as much time to devote to her editorship. But the new job is only part of it: like so many other journal editors, Sinatra is facing a serious shortage of available scholars to review submitted articles, and it’s a problem she can’t solve on her own.
Worse Than Ever
This issue isn’t new: academic publishing has long been a delicate system that operates—tenuously—on goodwill, in the form of comprehensive, unpaid article analyses from expert volunteers."
Putting an End to Abusive Workplaces
How do we optimize the learning environment in academic research labs, Patrick Brandt asks, and what must we do when the environment is toxic to trainees?
June 13, 2022
INSIDE HIGHER Ed
By Patrick Brandt
"Every graduate student or postdoc deserves to be trained in a supportive environment by a respectful adviser. Yet you don’t have to search far to hear stories from graduate students and postdocs who suffer under abusive ones.
Most of those stories do not rise to the level of national outcry, and as is generally the case with any kind of bullying, it is the unrelenting microaggressions of badly behaved (tor)mentors compounded over months and years that snuff out the career aspirations of trainees. This is a tragedy not only for those trainees personally but also for science as a whole. We lose out on new and diverse discoveries when young scientists are not allowed to thrive."
AI-generated images could make it almost impossible to detect fake papers
May 24, 2022
Chemistry World
By Katrina Kramer
"In mid-March, a one minute video of Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy appeared first on social media and later on a Ukrainian news website. In it, Zelenskiy told Ukrainian soldiers to lay down their arms and surrender to Russian troops. But the video turned out to be a deepfake, a piece of synthetic media created by machine learning.
Some scientists are now concerned that similar technology could be used to commit research fraud by creating fake images of spectra or biological specimen."
Is There an Epidemic of Research Fraud in Natural Medicine?
May 21, 2022
IMCJ
By Alan Gaby, MD
"During the past 49 years, I have reviewed and analyzed more than 50 000 papers from the biomedical literature, most of which were related to the field of nutritional medicine. Doing this work has given me some understanding of how to assess the reliability of a study. Over the past 10 to 15 years, an uncomfortably large and growing number of published papers related to my area of expertise have left me wondering whether the research was fabricated; that is, whether people were writing papers about research that had not actually been conducted. If the studies were not actually conducted, the publishing of this research is an affront to all who value integrity in science, and it has the potential to harm practitioners and patients who rely on its findings."
Improving research integrity: a framework for responsible science communication
May 15, 2022
BMC Research Notes
By Ilinca I. Ciubotariu & Gundula Bosch
"Science has a credibility problem. The underlying issues are multi-factorial such as inadequate training in rigorous research methods, irreproducibility of results, logical fallacies and statistical mistakes during data analysis and interpretation, erroneous communication, sloppy literature outputs, and outright misconduct. The result is an ongoing pandemic of retractions. That in turn can undermine public confidence in research outcomes and transparent policy, along with societal factors such as geography or culture. It is of utmost importance to properly train the next generation of scientists and protect the integrity of the central principles of scientific inquiry and discovery.
This commentary discusses the role of institutional graduate programs in promoting good research practice through teaching the core values of reliable science, while at the same time, focusing on a framework for embracing responsible scientific communication."
NIH gains new power to police sexual harrassment
New law requires institutions to tell NIH about disciplinary actions
May 12, 2022
Science Insider
By Jocelyn Kaiser
"The National Institutes of Health announced this week that—at the direction of Congress—it is tightening rules for reporting sexual and workplace harassment by NIH-funded investigators. Institutions will now be legally required to tell NIH if a grantee has been disciplined because of harassment findings.
NIH calls the policy a “major step” to close loopholes that have allowed institutions to hide harassment cases from the agency. “There’s no question that we’re going to be hearing about cases that we either would not have heard about at all, or only after a substantial delay,” says NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research Michael Lauer.
Observers welcome the law, but they note that NIH’s reporting requirements still fall short of those at the National Science Foundation (NSF). That could leave the agency in the dark about some ongoing investigations."
Construction and Validation of the Research Misconduct Scale for Social Science University Students
May 9, 2022
Frontiers in Psychology
By Saba Ghayas, Zaineb Hassan, Sumaira Kayani, and Michele Biasutti
"Misconduct in research and academic dishonesty are important, persistent issues for universities, as most students have engaged in academic misconduct at some point of their careers. Almost all (92%) surveyed students reported having cheated at least once or knowing someone who had. Unethical research practices and research misconduct can also be found among scholars."
It's Time for Science to Take Down Bullies in Its Own Ranks
Academics too often use intellectual attainment to excuse abusive behavior. That needs to stop.
May 1, 2022
Scientific American
By Naomi Oreskes
"Early this year one of the world’s most prominent scientists, Eric Lander, had to resign his position as President Joe Biden’s science adviser and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He was forced to quit because of evidence that he had bullied staff members and created a hostile work environment. Lander, a leader in the successful effort to sequence the human genome, had headed the prestigious Broad Institute of Harvard and M.I.T. before being tapped for the White House job. He now joins the ranks of other top scientists who have been sanctioned over behavior ranging from disrespect and bullying to illegal sexual harassment."
China focuses on ethics to deter another ‘CRISPR babies’ scandal
But some question whether a statement from the government will deter scientists from carrying out research that violates ethical norms.
April 27, 2022
Nature
By Smriti Mallapaty
"China’s powerful State Council is calling on research institutions to expand and improve their ethics training. The directive, one of several detailed in a comprehensive ethics statement, is intended to address gaps in oversight exposed when Chinese researcher He Jiankui shocked the world by creating the first babies with edited genomes in 2018.
Researchers have mostly welcomed the statement, which was released with the central committee of the Chinese Communist Party last month. They say it sends the strongest warning yet to scientists who might consider carrying out research that violates ethical norms, such as genome editing of human embryos. But some have also questioned how effective the document will be at preventing such practices."
Creating a science legacy
Senior academics offer tips to develop world-class research programmes and train successfel protégés.
April 5, 2022
Nature
By Andy Tay
"Researchers have many ways to establish a legacy, including technical innovation, commercialization and changes to scientific culture. All of these approaches require input from talented people who can generate ideas and execute them. Here, five senior research leaders offer their tips on building a legacy in science.
KRISTI ANSETH: Build long-term collaborations
Professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Building a science legacy requires the willingness to take risks: many problems are complex, and solving them requires innovative, out-of-the-box approaches.
During my postdoctoral research from 1995 to 1996 at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, then the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, I decided to get out of my comfort zone and investigate the use of soft materials in biological applications."
PLOS ONE Pulls Five Papers Tied to Alzheimer's Drug Controversy
The retracted studies were coauthored by a scientist who worked on an Alzheimer's therapy in development by Cassava Sciences, a company reportedly under investigation for providing falsified data to the FDA.
March 31, 2022
The Scientist
By Jef Akst
"Five studies coauthored by Hoau-Yan Wang at the City University of New York and colleagues were pulled from PLOS ONE over concerns about data integrity yesterday (March 30), Retraction Watch reports. Wang, who already had another retraction to his name and who contributed to three other papers that have received expressions of concern, conducted research on an Alzheimer’s therapy called Simufilam that is under development by Austin, Texas–based Cassava Sciences (formerly Pain Therapeutics). Wang is also a paid advisor to the company, and Cassava employee Lindsay Burns is a coauthor on two of the newly retracted papers, which don’t pertain to Simufilam or Alzheimer’s disease.
Citing 'people familiar with the matter,' The Wall Street Journal reported in November that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is looking into claims that the company submitted Simufilam-related materials to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that included altered data."
Fraud and Peer Review: An Interview with Melinda Baldwin
March 24, 2022
The Scholarly Kitchen
By Robert Harington
"In 2018, I talked with Melinda Baldwin (Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland) about a fascinating article she authored entitled “Scientific Autonomy, Public Accountability, and the Rise of “Peer Review” in the Cold War United States” (Isis, volume 109, number 3, September 2018).
In talking again with Melinda this month, we initiated a discussion of whether peer review has a role to play in uncovering scientific fraud. Perhaps in the first blush, one may suggest that peer review is entirely appropriate as a fraud detector, but Melinda suggests this is not the role of peer review
I ask Melinda here to take us through her perspective on the role of peer review in context for scientific fraud from her perspective as a historian of science – a perspective that I hope you agree sheds a clear light on the benefits and limitations of peer review in the scientific endeavor."
Science Knows No Country: Culture’s Impact on Research Misconduct Proceedings
February 22, 2022
Cohen Seglias
By Paul S. Thaler and Paul E. Simon
As Louis Pasteur once said, “Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.” Science is, in many ways, a universal language. However, as a practical reality, science relies on other languages to be communicated. While the very earliest science we know of today was published in Egyptian hieroglyphs, early Greek, and Latin, developing eventually to a rough split between French, German, and English, English became the dominant language during the past hundred years. This, unsurprisingly, presents a challenge to non-native English-speaking scientists, who must often learn a new language alongside their scientific training and research.
How to Be a Great Leader in Science
Building a positive research environment requires intention, support and a belief that kindness isn’t weakness
February 11, 2022
Scientific American
By Alison L. Antes
There is a common narrative, in academia and beyond, that says, “You have to be a jerk to be successful.” As a scientist who studies what makes a great leader, it is disheartening how often research trainees and junior faculty in the sciences ask me if this is true.
So, it’s been an especially eye-opening week for science, as academics reflect on Eric Lander’s resignation from his roles as the director the Office of Science and Technology Policy and White House science adviser. A whistleblower investigation found that he had bullied and mistreated his staff, and seemed to be especially abusive toward women who worked with him.
PLOS Publication Ethics: A frank discussion on handling difficult cases
February 22, 2022
PLOS Blogs
By Renee Hoch
Since 2003, PLOS has published nearly 300,000 research articles, contributing a tremendous body of knowledge to the scientific corpus. However, our roles in scientific communications do not end at the time of publication. PLOS, like many other scholarly publishers, has a Publication Ethics team dedicated to addressing ethics and integrity concerns raised about PLOS content, many of which arise after publication.
U.S. scientific research agencies tighten foreign affiliation rules
American effort responds to China's aggressive talent recruitment program
February 15, 2022
Roll Call
By Gopal Ratnam
"U.S. research institutions and universities are gearing up to implement steps announced last month by the Biden administration to ensure that scientists seeking federal grants are not beholden to foreign governments or interests.
The White House National Science and Technology Council issued a set of guidelines in January designed to ensure that scientists seeking federal grants do not have conflicts of interest stemming from their participation in foreign talent recruitment programs. The guidelines address a presidential national security memorandum issued in early 2021.
That memorandum required any research institution receiving more than $50 million in federal science and technology grants in a year to certify that it has a research security program that can identify conflicts of interests."
Course corrections needed in peer review publication process
February 14, 2022
Research Matters
By Dr. Vikram Singh and Dr. Sukumar Kalvapudi
"In early 2020, as the world was grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists the world over were scrambling to characterise the novel pathogen. Research findings were being generated at an astonishing pace and within the first 6 months of the pandemic, nearly 61000 articles had been published!
The ominous flip side to this was that the sheer number of submissions completely overwhelmed the peer review process, particularly for medical journals. In their haste to publish the next important finding about the virus, journals apparently cut corners.
In May 2020, the Lancet retracted a paper that claimed that hydroxychloroquine was almost miraculously effective in treating COVID-19 (it isn’t)."
How bullying becomes a career tool
February 7, 2022
Nature
By Susanne Tauber and Morteza Mahmoudi
Amongst recent high-profile bullying and (sexual) harassment scandals in academia, many have involved perpetrators who are ‘star academics’, yet had records of bullying and multiple complaints over many years1. People often believe that these scientists are bullies despite being star academics. Their misbehaviours are attributed to an unfortunate decoupling between being a good scientist and being a decent person. However, academics who have experienced bullying often describe patterns that suggest a different explanation entirely: bullying is a means for mediocre scientists to rise to the top. Some star academics reached their position because they are bullies, not in spite of it.
DOJ Increases Focus on Clinical Trial Fraud
February 1, 2022
Ropes & Gray
By Mark Barnes, Andrew O'Connor, Samantha Barrett Badlam, Beth P. Weinman, & Kyle S. Shaub
"While speaking at the Food & Drug Law Institute’s Enforcement, Litigation and Compliance Conference in December, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Arun Rao identified clinical trial fraud as one of four key areas of enforcement focus by the Consumer Protection Branch of the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”). Rao warned against the 'dangerous consequences' of research fraud (often referred to as 'research misconduct'), which he said serves to 'undermine confidence in the health care industry as a whole.'
Rao’s remarks come at a time of increasing focus on scientific misconduct in clinical trials. Rao cited two recent clinical trial fraud enforcement actions in southern Florida that involved allegedly fabricated data, and he suggested that more enforcement actions may be on the way."
The relationship between readability and scientific impact: Evidence from emerging technology discourses
February 2022
Journal of Informatics
By Lennart Ante
This study examines how the readability of scientific discourses changes over time and to what extent readability can explain scientific impact in terms of citation counts. The basis are representative datasets of 135,502 abstracts from academic research papers pertaining to twelve technologies of different maturity. Using three different measures of readability, it is found that the language of the abstracts has become more complex over time. Across all technologies, less easily readable texts are more likely to receive at least one citation, while the effects are most pronounced for comparatively immature research streams. Among the more mature or larger discourses, the abstracts of the top 10% and 1% of the most often cited articles are significantly less readable. It remains open to what extent readability actually influences future citations and how much of the relationship is causal. If readability indeed drives citations, the results imply that scientists have an incentive to (artificially) reduce the readability of their abstracts in order to signal quality and competence to readers—both to get noticed at all and to attract more citations. This may mean a prisoner dilemma in academic (abstract) writing, where authors intentionally but unnecessarily complicate the way in which they communicate their work.
How fake science is infiltrating scientific journals
January 5, 2022
The Sydney Morning Herald
By Harriet Alexander
"In 2015, molecular oncologist Jennifer Byrne was surprised to discover during a scan of the academic literature that five papers had been written about a gene she had originally identified, but did not find particularly interesting.
'Looking at these papers, I thought they were really similar, they had some mistakes in them and they had some stuff that didn’t make sense at all,' she said. As she dug deeper, it dawned on her that the papers might have been produced by a third-party working for profit.
'Part of me still feels awful thinking about it because it’s such an unpleasant thing when you’ve spent years in a laboratory and taking two to 10 years to publish stuff, and making stuff up is so easy,' Professor Byrne said. 'That’s what scares the life out of me.'"