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Ethics in the News

Page history last edited by Jeremy Houska 11 years, 8 months ago

Introduction to Research Ethics

Fraud Case Seen as a Red Flag for Psychology Research (NY Times, 11/2/2011)

Useful article to help introduce an Ethics unit.

 

A Sharp Rise in Retractions Prompts Call for Reform (NY Times, 4/16/2012)

Can be used to get deeper into the issue of retractions, scientific misconduct, watchdog initiatives such as Retraction Watch and/or specific types of retractions

 

Retractions in Psychology

Retraction of “The Secret Life of Emotions” and “Emotion Elicitor or Emotion Messenger? Subliminal Priming Reveals Two Faces of Facial Expressions” (Psychological Science, 6/28/2012)

"The editors and publishers of Psychological Science have made the retractions following the results of an investigation into the work of Diederik A. Stapel (https://www.commissielevelt.nl/).The Levelt Committee has determined that these articles contained data that were fabricated by author Stapel. His coauthor was unaware of his actions, was not in any way involved in the generation of the data, and agrees to the retraction of the articles."

 

Withdraw that emotion: Psych journal retracts two Stapel papers on mood (Retraction Watch blog, 6/29/2012)

"“The secret life of emotions” has been cited 26 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, while the other paper has been cited 24."

 

Following investigation, Erasmus social psychology professor retracts two studies, resigns (Retraction Watch blog, 6/25/2012)

"According to an Erasmus press release, a scientific integrity committee found that the results in two of [Dirk] Smeesters’ papers were statistically highly unlikely. Smeesters could not produce the raw data behind the findings, and told the committee that he cherry-picked the data to produce a statistically significant result. Those two papers are being retracted, and the university accepted Smeesters’ resignation on June 21."

 

Retractions in fields other than Psychology

Science Publishing: The Paper is Not Sacred (Nature, 2011, Vol. 480, pp. 449-450)

"Retractions have increased 15-fold over the past decade, while the number of papers has risen by less than 50%"

 

Science Publishing: The Trouble with Retractions (Nature, 2011, Vol. 478, pp. 26-28)

"This week, some 27,000 freshly published research articles will pour into the Web of Science, Thomson Reuters' vast online database of scientific publications. Almost all of these papers will stay there forever, a fixed contribution to the research literature. But 200 or so will eventually be flagged with a note of alteration such as a correction. And a handful — maybe five or six — will one day receive science's ultimate post-publication punishment: retraction, the official declaration that a paper is so flawed that it must be withdrawn from the literature. It is reassuring that retractions are so rare, for behind at least half of them lies some shocking tale of scientific misconduct — plagiarism, altered images or faked data — and the other half are admissions of embarrassing mistakes. But retraction notices are increasing rapidly." 

 

Rise of the Retractions (figures from the article above) 

"In the past decade, the number of retraction notices has shot up ten-fold, even as the literature has expanded by only 44%. It is likely that only about half of all retractions are for researcher misconduct."

 

Reasons for Retractions

 

Self-Plagiarism

No small matter: ACS Nano journal growing alarmed by self-plagiarism (Retraction Watch blog, 2/1/2012)

"Is self-plagiarism — perhaps best referred to as duplication of your own work – a big problem in nanotechnology research?"

 

Recycling is not always good: The Dangers of Self-Plagiarism (American Chemical Society, ACS Nano, 2012, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 1-4)

"It all comes down to the central issue of deception; were the authors trying to deceive the editors, the referees, and the readers into presenting recycled data, text, and figures as entirely new material? We understand that experimental sections may run into difficulties of similar textual descriptions, and while care should be taken with the experimental method descriptions, these have not been the source of problems."

 

Faked Data

Archive for the "Faked Data" category on Retraction Watch

 

Lack of IRB Approval

Archive for the "Lack of IRB Approval" category on Retraction Watch

 

Not Reproducible

Archive for the "Not Reproducible" category on Retraction Watch

 

Plagiarism

Archive for the "Plagiarism" category on Retraction Watch

 

Failure to Disclose Conflict of Interest

Archive for the "Failure to Disclose COI" category on Retraction Watch

 

 

 

 


 

 

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