Posted by: Benjamin Mazer
Statisticians clamor for retraction of paper by Harvard researchers they say uses a “nonsense statistic”
“Uh, hypothetical situation: you see a paper published that is based on a premise which is clearly flawed, proven by existing literature.” So began an exasperated Twitter thread by Andrew Althouse, a statistician at University of Pittsburgh, in which he debated whether a study using what he calls a “nonsense statistic” should be addressed by … Continue reading Statisticians clamor for retraction of paper by Harvard researchers they say uses a “nonsense statistic”
Just how common is positive publication bias? Here’s one researcher who’s trying to figure that out
While the presence of publication bias – the selective publishing of positive studies – in science is well known, debate continues about how extensive such bias truly is and the best way to identify it. The most recent entrant in the debate is a paper by Robbie van Aert and co-authors, who have published a … Continue reading Just how common is positive publication bias? Here’s one researcher who’s trying to figure that out
Will scientific error checkers become as ubiquitous as spell-checkers?
How common are calculation errors in the scientific literature? And can they be caught by an algorithm? James Heathers and Nick Brown came up with two methods — GRIM and SPRITE — to find such mistakes. And a 2017 study of which we just became aware offers another approach. Jonathan Wren and Constantin Georgescu of the … Continue reading Will scientific error checkers become as ubiquitous as spell-checkers?
Posted by in investigator error
Should journals credit eagle-eyed readers by name in retraction notices?
One of the most highly-cited journals in cardiology has retracted a paper less than a month after publishing it in response to criticism first posted on Twitter. The article, “Short-term and long-term effects of a loading dose of atorvastatin before percutaneous coronary intervention on major adverse cardiovascular events in patients with acute coronary syndrome: a … Continue reading Should journals credit eagle-eyed readers by name in retraction notices?
Posted by in european heart journal
Can a “nudge” stop researchers from using the wrong cell lines?
Anita Bandrowski, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, works on tools to improve the transparency and reproducibility of scientific methods. (Her work on Research Resource Identifiers, or RRIDs, has been previously featured on Retraction Watch.) This week, Bandrowski and colleagues — including Amanda Capes-Davis, who chairs the International Cell Line Authentication Committee — published … Continue reading Can a “nudge” stop researchers from using the wrong cell lines?
Posted by in misidentified cell lines