Tag Archives: retractions

How to approach a PI when you have misgivings about data

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Scientist can feel defensive when hard-earned data are questioned, so careful planning is required when approaching them with misgivings.

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The scientific community is paying close attention to published work, and it means retractions are becoming more frequent, despite the careful pre-publication scrutiny. Retraction Watch publishes the depressing news of retractions almost daily. Although outright fabricated data is rare, mistakes do happen because scientists want to turn a blind eye to unwanted results, want to avoid being scooped or use inadequate experimental tools .

As a scientist, any work that you publish or data you collect becomes associated with your work or your lab. Thus, several reputations hang in the balance if retractions do occur. Rigorous experimental planning, data collection and analysis are paramount. But what happens if, for reasons outside of your control, these things don’t happen?

Unfortunately, early career researchers are often at the receiving end of non-reproducibility when moving into a new laboratory or taking on a new project. If you do believe that you’ve been caught up in a piece of work that doesn’t meet the high standards science demands, how do you approach your supervisor to voice your concerns? Continue reading →

This week on Nature Careers: dealing with retractions

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It’s never an easy thing, finding out that your work isn’t completely right AFTER it’s been published. The career of a scientist still hangs on the number of publications they have, so how do you manage a retraction?

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“The rise in retractions could be because scientists are making more errors, but it could also indicate a growing culture of coming clean on errors.” Continue reading →

Science Online NYC (SoNYC) 10 – Setting the research record straight

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On Thursday evening, we hosted the tenth instalment of the monthly Science Online NYC (SoNYC) discussion series. For this month’s event, the topic for debate was, “Setting the research record straight.”

The internet has enabled the faster and more thorough dissemination of published science, meaning that more eyes than ever are available to check the accuracy, veracity and integrity of the research record. With our enhanced ability to spot plagiarism and image manipulation electronically, it appears that the frequency with which we’ve flagged potentially fraudulent or plagiarized papers has gone up. This panel will look at the trends in retractions and how they relate to real or perceived increases in research misconduct. We hope to discuss what steps publications are taking to deal with the sloppy or fraudulent research practices that sometimes result in retractions, and also what research institutions are doing to investigate and deter such practices. Is the system broken, and what can researchers do to help fix it if it is?

Preparing for the event 

In anticipation of the discussion, we ran a series of guest posts here on Of Schemes and Memes, discussing what steps publications are taking to deal with fraudulent research practices and what is being done to investigate and deter such practices. First we heard from Richard Van Noorden, Assistant News Editor at Nature. He gave us an overview of  what retractions can tell us about setting the research record straight, highlighting some recent high profile cases of retraction, revealing why retraction rates appear to be increasing. We also compiled a Storify from a session at February’s AAAS meeting in Vancouver on Global Challenges to Peer Review which touched on some of the challenges faced by journal editors. Next we heard from Dorothy Clyde (Dot), Senior Editor at Nature Protocols, detailing the role an editor plays in avoiding plagiarism, giving advice to all parties. In our final post, SoNYC panel member Ivan Oransky, executive editor of Reuters Health, explained the concept behind the Retraction Watch blog.

This month’s panel:

  • John Krueger of the Office of Research Integrity.
  • Ivan Oransky, Executive Editor, Reuters Health and one of the people behind the Retraction Watch blog.
  • Liz Williams, Executive Editor, The Journal of Cell Biology.

To read what people on Twitter were saying about the event, check out our Storify of tweets at the bottom of this post.

Blog posts about the 10th #sonyc

Do let us know if you blog about the event and we’ll include a round-up of links here.

  • News Blog: The new gatekeepers: reducing research misconduct.
  • Boston Blog: Boston researchers (with experience) of correcting the scientific record #sonyc
  • NYC Blog: Science Online NYC (SoNYC) – Setting the Research Record Straight: Recap
  • Dana Foundation Blog: Setting the Research Record Straight

Live-streaming and video archiving

We live-stream each SoNYC event to give as many people as possible the chance to take part in the debate. Check out this month’s livestream, or take a look at our archives where you can view the previous meetings.

Finding out more

The next SoNYC will be held on the 2nd May – keep an eye on the SoNYC twitter account for more details and/or watch the #sonyc hashtag.

If you have a suggestion for a future panel or would be interested in sponsoring one of the events, please get in touch.

March’s SoNYC: On setting the research record straight – Keeping science honest: Now it’s everyone’s job

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Ivan Oransky, M.D., is executive editor of Reuters Health and treasurer of the Association of Health Care Journalists’ board of directors. He blogs at Embargo Watch and at Retraction Watch. He also holds appointments as an adjunct professor of journalism and clinical assistant professor of medicine at New York University. 

Reporters have always relied on sources to give them story tips and documents, and to keep them honest. Today, however, some of what used to happen in one-on-one phone calls and meetings is now happening in public, in an acknowledgement that we’re performing “users-know-more-than-we-do” journalism.

That’s certainly true at Retraction Watch, which Adam Marcus and I founded in August 2010 to “track retractions as a window into the scientific process.” Science is too specialized for two individual reporters to cover, so we rely heavily on our thousands of regular readers, who have deep knowledge of particular fields.

Our readers frequently leave comments that add to or advance stories. Take the case of Jatinder Ahluwalia. Our first post about the (now former) University of East London researcher was in November 2010, reporting that he and his colleagues had retracted a Nature paper. The notice referred to a University College London report that wasn’t yet available, but while we waited for word of that, a researcher who had earlier criticized the Nature paper wrote us with comments. They were so good, we turned them into their own post.

It was a month later, when we posted on the UCL report – which found that Ahluwalia had faked results, and probably sabotaged his colleagues – that our community really kicked into gear. One commenter asked whether we knew Ahluwalia had decided to study plagiarism – the one type of scientific misconduct which he didn’t seem to have committed – at his new post at the University of East London. That of course become a post.

And then we received an email from a loyal reader, including two documents about which he said it was “clearly important that your readership be made aware.” Those documents turned out to be letters describing Ahluwalia’s misconduct at Cambridge which, unbeknownst to the institutions where he later trained and worked, had dismissed him the first time he tried to earn a PhD. We agreed with our tipster, and posted them. Ahluwalia’s story has continued to unravel since then; he has left his post at UEL and now risks losing his PhD because the paper it was based on has been retracted.

Some readers will take apart images, often letting us know what’s wrong with a retracted paper even when a journal’s notice is frustratingly opaque. Others will give us important context and background to flesh out posts. And still others end up contributing guest posts, for example telling us what it’s like to have your paper plagiarized.

Among those users who often know more than we do are anonymous whistleblowers, whom some journal editors insist on ignoring. (We applaud the fact that Nature pays attention to anonymous tips.) We think blowing them off is a bad idea. We investigate as many of their tips as we have time for, and we post about those that check out.

Our readers also use the comments to let us know when we’ve made an error, or missed a retraction by a lab about whom we’re writing. We correct our mistakes, and publicly thank the commenters.

In short, we couldn’t do Retraction Watch without our readers. A big part of our role is to simply give voice to the community of people who want to fact-check science.

And anyone can make use of the tools of investigative journalism. You don’t have to be a journalist to file a Freedom of Information request, for example, as I pointed out in a talk at ScienceOnline2012. (My crowdsourced resource list is available here.)

We all benefit from having more engaged eyeballs on our work. That goes for science journals, too. It’s not surprising that last year set a record for retractions, and we look forward to covering more in the coming years. Retractions, after all, aren’t necessarily a bad thing – they mean that science is correcting itself, as it’s supposed to.

Science Online NYC (SoNYC) is a monthly discussion series held in New York City where invited panellists and the in-person and online audiences talk about a particular topic related to how science is carried out and communicated online. For this month’s SoNYC the topic for discussion is:  Setting the research record straight. We’re looking at issues such as retractions and plagiarism and how they relate to real or perceived increases in research misconduct.  More details about this month’s SoNYC can be found here.

To complement the event, we’re running a series of guest posts discussing what steps publications are taking to deal with fraudulent research practices and what is being done to investigate and deter such practices. We’ve already heard from Richard Van Noorden, Assistant News Editor at Nature. He gave us an overview of  what retractions can tell us about setting the research record straight, highlighting some recent high profile cases of retraction, explaining why retraction rates appear to be increasing. We also compiled a Storify from a session at February’s AAAS meeting in Vancouver on Global Challenges to Peer Review which touched on some of the challenges faced by journal editors. Next we heard from Dorothy Clyde (Dot), Senior Editor at Nature Protocols, explaining the role an editor plays in avoiding plagiarism, giving advice to all parties. 

March’s SoNYC: On setting the research record straight – Sound familiar?

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Dorothy Clyde (Dot), is a Senior Editor at Nature Protocols and has been with the journal since its inception in January 2006. In her previous life as a research scientist, she spent close to a decade studying various aspects of fruit fly development and genetics. In her guest post she explains the role an editor plays in avoiding plagiarism, giving advice to all parties. 

Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but I doubt if anyone feels particularly flattered when they come across their own work – copied verbatim and unattributed – in someone else’s publication.  Unfortunately, instances of plagiarism are becoming more commonplace. As a result, tackling plagiarism has now become part of an editor’s job, and at Nature Protocols we work closely with our authors to avoid it. Once upon a time plagiarism was difficult to detect, but now that so much of the scientific literature is online there are a number of services that help us spot when parts of a submitted manuscript have already appeared elsewhere.

Thankfully, plagiarism of the classic kind is rare; when we do come across plagiarism, it usually takes the form of self-plagiarism (where an author reproduces uncited sections of text from one of their previous publications), or duplicate submissions (where the same manuscript is submitted to more than one journal, often simultaneously). Self-plagiarism, if detected early enough, is usually relatively straightforward to resolve. Duplicate submissions, on the other hand, are one of the more frustrating aspects of an editor’s job, as the problem often does not become apparent until the later stages of the editorial process – or worse, until both versions have been accepted and published in different journals!

Why is self-plagiarism a particular problem for Nature Protocols?

In order to ensure that our protocols are reproducible, Nature Protocols has a policy that all our protocols are based on a previous primary research paper from the author’s lab, in which the technique was used to generate data. If this supporting paper is very methodological, there may be some degree of overlap with the Nature Protocols manuscript. Alternatively, the authors may have published a protocol-type paper on a similar topic in another journal. In these circumstances, it is easy for sections of duplicated text to creep in, especially if the authors are unaware of the problems associated with self-plagiarism.

With respect to duplicate submission, we hope that all authors realise that it is unacceptable to submit identical manuscripts to more than one journal at the same time. However, duplicate submission (and self-plagiarism) problems can arise when manuscripts that were seemingly unrelated at initial submission, progressively become more similar as they pass through the editorial process, for example, when additional material is added in response to referee or editorial comments. In addition, some authors view protocols differently to other publication types and do not see a potential conflict in publishing the same protocol in more than one journal.

The role of editors in avoiding plagiarism

It is our job as editors to ensure our authors are fully informed about our plagiarism policies and to detect potential problems early in the editorial process. So how do we set out to achieve this at Nature Protocols?

  1. When an author agrees to submit a full manuscript to Nature Protocols, they will be sent an e-mail that reminds them we take plagiarism seriously and it must be avoided, directing them to “NPG’s policy on plagiarism” for further information. This e-mail also requests that authors make the editor aware of any methods/protocol papers they have previously written or have agreed to write on a similar topic – and, if possible, to provide us with a copy of these papers. We also ask authors to provide us with a copy of their supporting primary research paper. Editors will have already carried out extensive literature checks by this stage and may ask authors to upload specific publications that these searches have identified as being potentially overlapping or a source of potential problems. In such cases, the editor will make it clear that we expect the Nature Protocol to add substantial value to the existing literature and request that the author outlines to the editor how the manuscript expands upon previous publications.
  2. Authors are reminded of our policy again when their manuscript is returned to them for revision. It is also made clear in the editorial comments that duplication of text must be avoided and that all our manuscripts are cross-checked against the published literature before being accepted for publication. Thus, all authors are informed at least twice of our position on plagiarism.
  3. Nature Protocols (along with all other NPG journals) participates in the “CrossCheck initiative.” Prior to accepting any manuscript for publication, it is compared to the CrossCheck database using “iThenticate”.  iThenticate will generate an overall similarity score and provide a summary report that highlights instances of duplicated text in the submitted manuscript and links back to the original source(s). The editor then carefully checks each ‘hit’ in the report to determine its significance. Large sections, or multiple smaller sections, of highly similar text are an immediate red flag; if such sections are a clear indication of deliberate plagiarism or if the duplicated text cannot be removed by careful revision by the author (for example, by extensive rewriting or appropriate referencing) the manuscript will be rejected. We understand that paraphrasing sections of the Procedure can be difficult and not always helpful so in these cases it may make most sense to ensure the original source is prominently cited. However, the software will also turn up hits that are not plagiarism, such as isolated occurrences of partially similar sentences. Some standard phrases will be present in most of our manuscripts and can also be excluded, for example text reminding authors to follow institutional and national guidelines when performing experiments on animals. Another example where our editorial requirements make some duplication inevitable is the Materials section and so hits limited to this section can usually be overlooked.

Taking action

If self-plagiarism is detected before a manuscript is accepted for publication, the author is made aware of the offending sections and asked to either cite the original source or to rewrite the duplicated text. Duplicate submissions will be rejected outright as soon as they are detected. No manuscript will be accepted for publication until we are satisfied that all text is original and appropriately referenced.

Once a manuscript has been published, the course of action will depend on a number of factors, including: proof of intent; severity of plagiarism; policies of other journals involved. In cases where it is judged that the plagiarism is relatively minor and unintentional, authors will most likely be given the opportunity to correct the publication record by including additional citations or rewriting sections of text in the form of an official correction. In more serious cases, it is likely that we will retract the Protocol. That is about the limit of what we as editors can do ourselves although an author’s institution may well decide to investigate. In theUS, there is also the US Office of Research Integrity (ORI) which will investigate complaints of plagiarism. We are of course happy to cooperate with Institutions, the ORI or equivalent authorities.

Limitations of our approach

Unfortunately, there will be cases of plagiarism that slip past the Nature Protocols editors unnoticed. Plagiarism detection software, such as iThenticate, is not foolproof; determined individuals will find a way to ensure their manuscripts evade detection. Services such as PubMed, Scopus or CrossCheck do not index content from every journal; neither do they index all content types from participating journals. And by definition, only published papers are included in these databases. Thus, concurrent submission of identical manuscripts to more than one journal is a serious problem with no immediate solution.

A closing plea to authors

Authors – remember, your editor is your friend when it comes to avoiding plagiarism. It is in everyone’s best interests to identify and resolve potential issues early in the publication process. To facilitate this, I would urge all authors to be honest and transparent with your editor. And if you are unsure about how the policies apply to your manuscript –just ask!

Science Online NYC (SoNYC) is a monthly discussion series held in New York City where invited panellists and the in-person and online audiences talk about a particular topic related to how science is carried out and communicated online. For this month’s SoNYC the topic for discussion is:  Setting the research record straight. We’re looking at issues such as retractions and plagiarism and how they relate to real or perceived increases in research misconduct.  More details about this month’s SoNYC can be found here.

To complement the event, we’re running a series of guest posts discussing what steps publications are taking to deal with fraudulent research practices and what is being done to investigate and deter such practices. We’ve already heard from Richard Van Noorden, Assistant News Editor at Nature. He gave us an overview of  what retractions can tell us about setting the research record straight, highlighting some recent high profile cases of retraction, explaining why retraction rates appear to be increasing. We also compiled a Storify from a session at February’s AAAS meeting in Vancouver on Global Challenges to Peer Review which touched on some of the challenges faced by journal editors. More guest posts coming soon.

Communities Happenings – 12th March

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SoNYC

SoNYC is the monthly discussion series that the nature.com Communities team organises in collaboration with Ars Technica and Rockefeller University. The event is also live-streamed and archived and we create a round-up post including a Storify storyboard of all the online conversations around the event. March 20th’s event is a re-scheduling of last October’s event on, Setting the research record straight and features Retraction Watch blogger, Ivan Oransky, John Krueger of the Office of Research Integrity and Liz Williams, Executive Editor of The Journal of Cell Biology:

The internet has enabled the faster and more thorough dissemination of published science, meaning that more eyes than ever are available to check the accuracy, veracity and integrity of the research record. With our enhanced ability to spot plagiarism and image manipulation electronically, it appears that the frequency with which we’ve flagged potentially fraudulent or plagiarized papers has gone up. This panel will look at the trends in retractions and how they relate to real or perceived increases in research misconduct. We hope to discuss what steps publications are taking to deal with the sloppy or fraudulent research practices that sometimes result in retractions, and also what research institutions are doing to investigate and deter such practices. Is the system broken, and what can researchers do to help fix it if it is?

As we did for February’s event, we have been posting related content on Of Schemes and Memes and first up we heard from Richard Van Noorden, Assistant News Editor at Nature, giving us an overview of what retractions can tell us about setting the research record straight. In his post he highlights some recent high profile cases of retraction, explaining why retraction rates appear to be increasing:

For suddenly, in the last ten years, retractions have shot up, rising ten- fold while the scientific literature expanded only 44%.  A blog, Retraction Watch, has monitored them over the past 18 months. Recent examples include prominent psychologist Diederik Stapel’s fraud  (particularly shocking because Stapel had such a stellar reputation); the dispute over whether or not chronic fatigue syndrome is linked to a virus ; and the scandal in which cancer geneticist Anil Potti’s flawed research led to patients being enrolled in clinical trials based on faulty data. Those are the ones that made headlines – but as Retraction Watch and Neil Saunders’ live feed of retraction notices on PubMed show, rarely a day goes by where a paper is not being withdrawn. The new norm nowadays is to expect hundreds of retractions, and perhaps that number will continue to rise.

Do stay tuned for more posts and please get in touch if you’d like to contribute anything.

SciBarCamb tickets

April sees the return of SciBarCamb – an unconference for scientists and technologists, taking place on the evening of Friday 20th April and all day on Saturday 21st. The earlybird tickets have now sold out, but there’s another chance to reserve your place from 10am on February 29th.  If you’d like to find out more about the event, read what co-organiser, Eva Amsen has to say about it.

NPG to publish new open access journal CPT

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (ASCPT) are pleased to announce a new, open access journal. CPT: Pharmacometrics & Systems Pharmacology (CPT:PSP) will launch in fall 2012 and will be hosted here. The journal will be a companion title to Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics (CPT) and will be accepting submissions in summer 2012:

CPT:PSP will be a cross-disciplinary journal devoted to publishing original research in advances in quantitative methods as applied in pharmacology, physiology and therapeutics in humans. The common focus will be on quantitative methods that improve an understanding of pharmacology and therapeutics in humans. The editorial team will be led by newly-appointed Editor-in-Chief Pieter H. van der Graaf, PhD, PharmD. The team aims to provide a unique international forum for scientists in the pharmacometrics and systems pharmacology space.

All content will be open access and will be freely available to researchers worldwide through the nature.com platform. You can find out more in the official press release found here.

Tweetups and Facebook

Science tweetups offer opportunities to mix and mingle in person with sciencey friends you may have met online and are also a chance to learn something new. For those interested the next #NYCscitweetup will be held on Thursday 29th March in the Peculier Pub.  Join in from 6:30pm – all welcome! You can also find more NYC events in our NYC Science Communication events calendar that lists this event and others like it.

For those of you interested in science events across the world, you can find a list of our science events calendars here and a Facebook list of science events here. Feel free to let us know what is missing.

To make life easier, we have also created a list of NPG Facebook pages, so make sure you subscribe!

UK Conference of Science Journalists and Science communication events

The UK conference of science journalists will take place this year on June 25th. Their website is now live and earlybird registration is open until the end of March. The keynote will be by Jay Rosen and you can follow the online discussions on the #ukcsj hashtag.

Now onto another science communication focused event, “Scientists and journalists need different things from science. Discuss”. Held at the Royal Institution in London on Tuesday 13th March 7pm , the event will be guest curated by The Guardian’s Alok Jha, with Alice Bell, Chris Chambers and Nature’s Ananyo Bhattacharya as panel members. The session will look at the gulf between what journalists do and what scientists think they should do.

To warm up for Tuesday’s event, you can read Ananyo’s guest blog posts in The Guardian’s Notes and Theories blog: Science journalists should be asking questions and deflating exaggeration and Nine ways scientists demonstrate they don’t understand journalism. If you wish to attend you can find tickets here and do check out the official hash tag #Riscimedia for the online talk.

March’s SoNYC: On setting the research record straight – What retractions tell us.

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Richard Van Noorden, Assistant News Editor at Nature, gives us an overview of  what retractions can tell us about setting the research record straight. In his post he highlights some recent high profile cases of retraction, explaining why retraction rates appear to be increasing.

Up until the turn of this century, the research record shows that scientists hardly ever published work that was totally flawed: that is to say, so wrong that it needed to be retracted. Around the millennium, about 30 papers a year were being officially withdrawn; and so the total number of retractions in the scientific literature was admirably low.  In retrospect, suspiciously low. Was the literature ever really that clean?

For suddenly, in the last ten years, retractions have shot up, rising ten- fold while the scientific literature expanded only 44%.  A blog, Retraction Watch, has monitored them over the past 18 months. Recent examples include prominent psychologist Diederik Stapel’s fraud  (particularly shocking because Stapel had such a stellar reputation); the dispute over whether or not chronic fatigue syndrome is linked to a virus ; and the scandal in which cancer geneticist Anil Potti’s flawed research led to patients being enrolled in clinical trials based on faulty data. Those are the ones that made headlines – but as Retraction Watch and Neil Saunders’ live feed of retraction notices on PubMed show, rarely a day goes by where a paper is not being withdrawn. The new norm nowadays is to expect hundreds of retractions, and perhaps that number will continue to rise.


The fraction of papers retracted is still utterly miniscule of course – just 0.02%; for retractions, after all, usually imply serious experimental or ethical errors. (According to Thomson Reuters, the number of retractions and corrections together has remained roughly stable at about 0.75% of the literature over the past two decades – but because there are so many, no-one has worked out whether ‘serious’ corrections are rising significantly; the signal is swamped by the myriads of corrections for trivial errors. For more data on who retracts papers, and why, see my blog post ‘The reasons for retraction’).

But as a result of the rise, the retractions system – and, more broadly, the trustworthiness of published research – has started to attract intense debate. Should we trust the science literature less, because more of it is being withdrawn? Or more, because editors and researchers are finding it easier to catch and signal mistakes?

Retractions and trust

The nagging question underlying such trust debates is whether scientific fraud and error are actually rising. From retractions data alone, this question cannot be answered – so people tend to go with their gut reactions. Many commentators opine that today’s ultra-competitive, publish or perish, photoshop-savvy, tenure-obsessed and blockbuster-drug-focused scientific culture is leading to a rise in both fraud and error. On the other hand, others think not; John Iannoidis, who certainly knows a thing or two about erroneous research findings, told me he didn’t think there was a sudden boom in the production of fraudulent or erroneous work, a view shared by the research ethicist Nick Steneck (see my feature, ‘The trouble with retractions’). Science journalist Jonah Lehrer made the same judgement in his blog.

There’s some logic behind this position. Surveys in which scientists report their misconduct all show that self-admissions of fabrication and falsification run into the low single % mark; claims to spot this in others typically reach above 10%; and admissions to a variety of other questionable research practices hit 30% or higher – see studies in the United States, the UK, Germany (PDF in German), and a much-quoted meta-analysis. Therefore errors and frauds are undoubtedly more widespread than the 0.02% retractions (and a few mega-corrections) suggest. It seems reasonable to assume that scientists have been publishing sloppy work – and in a tiny number of cases fraudulent work – for centuries; and that the number of retracted papers vastly undercounts this. Even though the rates of retraction have shot up recently, this tells us little about real rates of fraud and error. (Yet when the Wall Street Journal’s Gautam Naik covered the trend, his article was headlined ‘Mistakes in Scientific Studies Surge’).

Changing norms

The internet and electronic publishing has certainly helped to change retraction norms. It makes it easier to spot mistakes: image manipulation or plagiarism that once might have passed un-noticed now gets picked up by whistleblowers. Just as importantly, the internet allows the easier dissemination of papers among a wider community (including non-scientists). This community effect matters: in the 20th century, a particular group of scientists might have been justified in feeling that since everyone knew a paper was faulty, there was no need to officially signal this with a retraction (unless the signal was to warn others of a scientist’s egregious fraud). That’s increasingly not true: even very old papers can easily be resurrected among communities unfamiliar with how the field has moved on.  All of this means that editors need to change any pre-millennial attitudes to officially retracting or correcting outdated research, and how those changes are signalled on journal websites.

All in all, we should be pleased that journal editors and scientists are apparently more willing to retract. A clear retraction takes guts and hard work from both parties, and there are still many problems with the system that need fixing. As Retraction Watch has pointed out, retractions are often irritatingly opaque, leaving the reader mystified about what went wrong. Journals are inconsistent in their attitudes to retraction. And it isn’t clear that retractions always work as signals to wider readers – although a recent study suggests that annual citations of an article drop 65% after retraction, compared to control articles. The launch of the CrossMark system should further improve our awareness of changes to research papers.

Setting the record straight

More widely, the rise in retractions is welcome because it’s focusing discussion on how we straighten out our research record and promote best practice in the internet era: an age when it seems more important that scientists officially retract or correct erroneous records.

As Retraction Watch’s Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus said recently, the research paper is not a sacred, never-to-be altered object. (I hope that no scientist ever thought it was). If scientists continue to record their results by publishing a series of research papers that form ‘the literature’, then revisions to this literature can probably only go so far; after all, scientists work by publishing new papers, not obsessively revising and re-linking what they’ve already published. But there’s no doubt that right now we can afford to encourage many more such revisions and to accept that mistakes do happen. There are many honest retractions; while embarrassing, such admissions should be treated differently to fraud.

Straightening out the research record goes far beyond best practice on retractions and corrections. To avoid errors of unconscious bias affecting what gets published, we should encourage the publication of negative results, so that we see the 19 out of 20 hypotheses that failed, not just the one success.  In a similar vein, we should force clinical trials to be registered before they start – though a US effort to attempt just that appears to be off to a poor start. And we should focus on instilling an honest scientific culture; training researchers on what is and isn’t acceptable when it comes to plagiarism (particularly those for whom English is a second or third language); and welcoming oversight institutions like the US Office of Research Integrity, although this is a kind of oversight which the UK science community apparently thinks it can do without.

Such prescriptions are easy to write down; much harder to put into practice. And the more retractions, corrections and negative result publications we encourage, the more perceptions may suggest that the research record is less trustworthy, prone to U-turns and failure. In fact – as we should not fail to point out – it will be more honest and trustworthy, and reflective of how science really works, than ever before.

Science Online NYC (SoNYC) is a monthly discussion series held in New York City where invited panellists and the in-person and online audiences talk about a particular topic related to how science is carried out and communicated online. For this month’s SoNYC the topic for discussion is:  Setting the research record straight. We’re looking at the trends in retractions and how they relate to real or perceived increases in research misconduct.  More details about this month’s SoNYC can be found here.

To complement the event, we’re running a series of guest posts discussing what steps publications are taking to deal with fraudulent research practices and what is being done to investigate and deter such practices. More guest posts coming soon.

Communities Happenings – 5th March

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Communities Happenings is a weekly post with news of interest to NPG’s online communities. The aim is to provide this info in one handy summary. Listings include tweetups and conferences which we’re attending and/or organising as well as new online tools, products or cool videos. We also occasionally flag up NPG special offers and competitions plus updates about NPG social media activities such as new accounts you might want to follow. Do let us know what you find most useful!

#LensesonBiology

Last week Nature included an Outlook supplement focusing on Lenses on Biology, to coincide with the launch of Nature’s Education’s Principles of Biology textbook. Featuring overviews of 5 different subject areas by 5 top scientists, we complemented the special on Of Schemes and Memes with 5 blog posts by 5 young scientists at different stages of their careers.

First up was Vince Macri discussing productive failure and cancer research:

Part of my focus this term (Spring 2012) is on the molecular biology of cancer, a field which thrives on collaboration between various disciplines.  Novel drug-delivery systems, medical devices and techniques increasingly allow us to engage with and manipulate the various environments of malignant tumors. For example,  insight into molecular markers expressed frequently or exclusively by cancer cells allows for targeting of nanoparticles and drug conjugates to tumors and tumor vasculature.  Such targeted therapies have the potential to increase the effectiveness and reduce the side effects of drugs to combat cancer.

Researchers Use Gold Nanoparticles as Drug Carrier in New Cancer Treatment

 Next up was PhD student Christie Wilcox revealing her route to grad school:

 Christie Wilcox with a small gecko on her nose

 I got into science for a lot of reasons. I have always loved animals of all shapes and sizes. My childhood desire to gaze upon gecko tongues was just the beginning of a life-long obsession that includes squealing each and every time I hold a baby anything, an inexplicable urge to swim towards dangerous animals instead of away, and compulsively touching the bells of jellyfish. My passion for wildlife is only trumped by my fascination with puzzles. I am excited by the adventure of science, by the idea of stepping out into the universe and discovering something no one else has ever seen or solving a mystery no one else has. 

Post-doc, Holly Bik, taking a slightly more alternative approach to explaining how she enjoys looking for the zen in genomes:

I realised that success requires you to define your own niche. My niche, I’m finding, lies at the intersection of tradition and innovation, using cutting-edge genomics and computational biology to answer longstanding questions about deep-sea ecosystems. The deep-sea is a vast, complicated ecosystem, we know little about the “big picture” and next to nothing about the cellular machinery which breathes life into a specialized and sometimes grotesque fauna.

Unidentified crustacean species inhabiting the Mid-Atlantic ridge surrounding the Charlie-Gibbs Fracture zone in the North Atlantic

Undergrad, Katy Chalmers looks at how combining science and art has helped her to see details she might have otherwise missed:

The field of synthetic biology, which combines science and engineering to come up with new biological systems not found in nature, has many parallels with the relationship that I discovered between science and art. By looking at living systems in new and different ways, synthetic biologists find new ways of seeing the world. Using art to communicate science can do the same. In order to create a cohesive image, the subject material must be looked at from different perspectives. Often these different perspectives can lead to increased knowledge of the subject material, both on the part of the artist and the viewer.

Ornithoptera alexandrae butterfly. 

Finally, high-school student and Scitable blogger, Naseem Syed considers a how her experiences out of the classroom have enhanced her interest within it:

As I advance into my freshman year, I have begun to answer more of my own curiosities: Why do some male animals such as the Blue Footed Booby prance around in a seemingly silly dance? Having studied animal interactions I know their dance is part of a ritualistic mating courtship. Why don’t we look 100% like our parents? The field of genetics helps us understand that DNA is like a shuffled card deck with some probabilities dictated by the genes of our parents. Knowing more about biology helps with everyday life; having studied plant life I now know that the closet isn’t a good place to leave my potted plants and by learning more about climate change, I can understand news stories about global warming and what the consequences mean for our planet.

To continue with the Lenses On Biology discussion, follow the #lensesonbiology hashtag on Twitter, read Nature Job’s summary, or check out Scitable’s Khalil A. Cassimally‘s post, Scientists And Science Students Tell Us Why Science Matters.

UK Conference of Science Journalists

The UK conference of science journalists will take place this year on June 25th. Their website is now live and earlybird registration is open until the end of March. The keynote will be by Jay Rosen and you can follow the online discussions on the #ukcsj hashtag. Nature.com’s Lou Woodley will be helping to coordinate a session focusing on online tools for science journalists, so stay tuned for further information.

Shorty awards – final round

The Nature News team‘s Twitter account has made it to the final round of the Shorty Industry Awards in the category, ‘Best Use of Social Media for News’ for their coverage of Fukushima. This means they are now in competition with CNN, the BBC Breaking News and NBC News/MSNBC Twitter accounts.  They are also up for the science shorty too – so thanks if you have voted for them!

Good luck, News team!

SoNYC

SoNYC is the monthly discussion series that the nature.com Communities team organises in collaboration with Ars Technica and RockefellerUniversity. The event is also live-streamed and archived and we create a round-up post including a Storify storyboard of all the online conversations around the event. February’s event took place on Thursday 16th in partnership with the American Museum of Natural History for Social Media Week and discussed, Beyond a trend: enhancing science communication with social media. The panel included author Carl Zimmer, BBC journalist, Matt Danzico and was moderated by Jennifer Kingson of the New York Times Science section. Write-up, including Storify of the tweets here.

March 20th’s event is a re-scheduling of last October’s event on, Setting the research record straight and features Retraction Watch blogger, Ivan Oransky, John Krueger of the Office of Research Integrity and Liz Williams, Executive Editor of The Journal of Cell Biology.  As we did for February’s event, we will be posting related content on Of Schemes and Memes so stay tuned and please get in touch if you’d like to contribute anything.

Twitter, Facebook and Google +

This week has seen the revival of another NPG account on Twitter: @NatureEDU 

You can also find a full Twitter list of NPG journals and products here.

Nature Reviews and Scientific American Mind  now have their own Facebook pages, so make sure you “like” them.

Finally, there are now 8 NPG Google+ pages and they can all be found in this circle.

SciBarCamb tickets

April sees the return of SciBarCamb – an unconference for scientists and technologists, taking place on the evening of Friday 20th April and all day on Saturday 21st. The earlybird tickets have now sold out, but there’s another chance to reserve your place from 10am on February 29th.  If you’d like to find out more about the event, read what co-organiser, Eva Amsen has to say about it.

Events elsewhere

Our scientific events calendars have been freshly updated to include the latest scientific events. Make sure you check them out. Please do get in touch if we are missing any events or if you would like to contribute to this calendar or any of the other calendars listed below.

London Science Events

Cambridge Science Events

DC Science Events

NYC Sci Comm events

Boston Science Events

San Francisco Science Events

Paris Science Events

 

Communities Happenings – 27th February

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Communities Happenings is a weekly post with news of interest to NPG’s online communities. The aim is to provide this info in one handy summary. Listings include tweetups and conferences which we’re attending and/or organising as well as new online tools, products or cool videos. We also occasionally flag up NPG special offers and competitions plus updates about NPG social media activities such as new accounts you might want to follow. Do let us know what you find most useful!

Free Ebook 

Nature Reviews Key Advances in Medicine eBook is now available to download for free. The 90 page eBook summarises the key clinical studies published in 2011 and highlights trends to watch for in 2012. It has already been downloaded over 10,000 times this year! The 43 Key Advances  articles are written by international experts who identify the ground-breaking research papers published in their speciality and between them, the authors summarise 200 key papers.

This eBook is a perfect resource for busy medical students, physicians and clinical researchers who want to catch up with the medical literature from 2011, so make sure you download your free copy today.

Events in Cambridge, UK.

There are two important dates for your calendars if you’re in or around Cambridge, UK.  Firstly, March 2nd is when the next #camscitweetup will take place in The Empress pub. A chance to meet others interested in science for an evening of relaxed chatting, everyone is welcome to join in.

Secondly, April sees the return of SciBarCamb – an unconference for scientists and technologists, taking place on the evening of Friday 20th April and all day on Saturday 21st. The earlybird tickets have now sold out, but there’s another chance to reserve your place from 10am on February 29th.  If you’d like to find out more about the event, read what co-organiser, Eva Amsen has to say about it.

Events elsewhere

Our scientific events calendars have been freshly updated to include the latest scientific events. Make sure you check them out. Please do get in touch if we are missing any events or if you would like to contribute to this calendar or any of the other calendars listed below.

London Science Events

Cambridge Science Events

DC Science Events

NYC Sci Comm events

Boston Science Events

San Francisco Science Events

Paris Science Events

SoNYC

Make a note in your diary for this month’s Science Online NYC (SONYC!) which will take place onTuesday 20th March at Rockefeller University from 7pm EST at Rockefeller University from 7pm EST. You can also watch online via our Livestream channel. The theme is Setting the research record straight:

The internet has enabled the faster and more thorough dissemination of published science, meaning that more eyes than ever are available to check the accuracy, veracity and integrity of the research record. With our enhanced ability to spot plagiarism and image manipulation electronically, it appears that the frequency with which we’ve flagged potentially fraudulent or plagiarized papers has gone up. This panel will look at the trends in retractions and how they relate to real or perceived increases in research misconduct. We hope to discuss what steps publications are taking to deal with the sloppy or fraudulent research practices that sometimes result in retractions, and also what research institutions are doing to investigate and deter such practices. Is the system broken, and what can researchers do to help fix it if it is?

Panelists:

– John Kreuger of the Office of Research Integrity.

– Ivan Oransky, Executive Editor, Reuters Health and one of the people behind the Retraction Watch blog.

– Liz Williams, Executive Editor, The Journal of Cell Biology.

The event is free to attend and includes the opportunity to meet the panelists and other attendees afterwards. If you’d like to follow the online discussion, keep an eye on the #sonyc hashtag or check back here for our write-up and Storify of the online conversations.  There’s also a SoNYC Twitter account and Facebook page where you can find information and do check out our NYC Science Communication events calendar that lists this event and others. To prepare for the upcoming discussion, we’re running a series of guest posts here on Of Schemes and Memes. In our series we will consider examples of research misconduct, look at what publications are doing to prevent fraudulent research and discuss the role of social media in exposing dishonesty, so stay tuned. If you would like to contribute to this series please do get in touch, or leave a comment in the thread.

 

March’s SoNYC: On setting the research record straight – Introduction

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It’s time to share some details of the latest Science Online NYC (SoNYC). This month’s event will take place on Tuesday 20th March at Rockefeller University from 7pm EST. You can also watch online via our Livestream channel. The topic for discussion is:  Setting the research record straight

The internet has enabled the faster and more thorough dissemination of published science, meaning that more eyes than ever are available to check the accuracy, veracity and integrity of the research record. With our enhanced ability to spot plagiarism and image manipulation electronically, it appears that the frequency with which we’ve flagged potentially fraudulent or plagiarized papers has gone up. This panel will look at the trends in retractions and how they relate to real or perceived increases in research misconduct. We hope to discuss what steps publications are taking to deal with the sloppy or fraudulent research practices that sometimes result in retractions, and also what research institutions are doing to investigate and deter such practices. Is the system broken, and what can researchers do to help fix it if it is?

Panelists:

– John Krueger of the Office of Research Integrity.

– Ivan Oransky, Executive Editor, Reuters Health and one of the people behind the Retraction Watch blog.

– Liz Williams, Executive Editor, The Journal of Cell Biology.

The event is free to attend and includes the opportunity to meet the panelists and other attendees afterwards. If you’d like to follow the online discussion, keep an eye on the #sonyc hashtag or check back here for our write-up and Storify of the online conversations.  There’s also a SoNYC Twitter account and Facebook page where you can find information and do check out our NYC Science Communication events calendar that lists this event and others.

Preparing for the discussion 

To prepare for the upcoming discussion, we’re running a series of guest posts here on Of Schemes and Memes. In our series we will consider examples of research misconduct, look at what publications are doing to prevent fraudulent research and discuss the role of social media in exposing dishonesty.

If you would like to contribute to this series please do get in touch, or leave a comment in the thread.

What role can peer review play in keeping the research record straight?

Last week various representatives from Nature were in Vancouver, B.C for the The American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, an annual gathering and one of the most widely recognised global science events. The programme included a mix of plenary talks, smaller discussions and scientific exhibits.

One particular discussion, “Global challenges to peer review of scientific publications” touched on some of the issues relevant to March’s SoNYC and addressed a range of questions.  Can peer review can help to detect fraud? How can technology and certain software programmes be used to help? What about fraudulent images? You can find a Storify summary below, collating this online conversation.  Do let us know if we have missed anything and check out the official conference hashtag, #AAASmtg.