July 2011
28/7/2011 9.13am by Elizabeth Wager
A report from the UK House of Commons Select Committee inquiry into peer review recommends, among other things, that all institutions should appoint somebody to take a lead in research integrity. This was one of the recommendations made by COPE to the inquiry. The full report is available here.
27/7/2011 4.36pm by Elizabeth Wager
Scientists in India have called for a body to investigate research misconduct. See the report here
20/7/2011 4.01pm by Elizabeth Wager
A second paper has been published from the retraction research funded by COPE. It used qualitative methods to examine editors' experiences of retracting articles. See Williams P & Wager E. Exploring why and how journal editors retract articles: findings from a qualitative study. Science & Engineering Ethics: doi 10.1007/s11948-011-9292-0. Available here.
14/7/2011 3.04pm by Elizabeth Wager
An interesting study published in Nursing Ethics by Broome et al examined ethical concerns of peer reviewers and discovered that these are not always satisfactorily handled by editors.
13/7/2011 9.33am by Elizabeth Wager
The New York Times (June 25th) reports on the difficulties for editors over whether to retract reports of findings that cannot be replicated and also the problems caused if journals are reluctant to publish confirmatory or negative studies.
11/7/2011 1.51pm by Elizabeth Wager
According to Retraction Watch, an author discovered his work had been plagiarised when he asked students in his class to give a presentation on a recent paper they'd picked from a peer-reviewed journal. The researcher recognised his own work from the student's presentation and, when he checked the article, found it included large plagiarised sections.
11/7/2011 1.33pm by Elizabeth Wager
The New York Times describes how a paper describing a method for determining which treatment cancer patients should get was used as the basis for a clinical trial (therefore putting patients at risk) before being retracted. A fuller description of the case has also been published in Annals of Applied Statistics 2009; 3:1309-1334.
6/7/2011 4.35pm by Elizabeth Wager
The Times Higher Education Supplement reports on current problems with organizations involved with research integrity in the UK (see here).
(Note: COPE is represented on the UKRIO advisory board and donated money to help get UKRIO established)