A good day for transparency

Daniel Mietchen

Some brief excerpts from today’s news on matters of plagiarized dissertations in Germany: >>>

Research ethics: science faces On Fact and Fraud (Ars Technica)

By JOHN TIMMER

David Goodstein has a unique perspective on scientific fraud, having pursued a successful career in research physics before becoming the provost of Caltech, one of the world's premier research institutions. As an administrator, he helped formulate Caltech's first policy for scientific misconduct and applied it to a number of prominent cases—all of which should put him in an excellent position to provide a rich and comprehensive overview of scientific frauds and other forms of research misconduct.

Unfortunately, his book On Fact and Fraud doesn't quite live up to this promise. Goodstein devotes most of the book to case studies of fraud or potential misconduct. Although many of the individual chapters are excellent, they don't come together to form a coherent picture of what constitutes misconduct or how to recognize it.>>>

How journal editors can detect and deter scientific misconduct?

Misconduct happens. So what can journal editors do find and prevent it?

While we don’t claim to be experts in working on the other side of the fence — eg as editors — Ivan was flattered to be asked by session organizers at the Council of Science Editors to appear on a panel on the subject. He was joined on the panel by:

Science executive editor Monica Bradford

Annals of Internal Medicine editor in chief Christine Laine

American Association for Cancer Research publisher Diane Scott-Lichter

Committee on Publication Ethics’s Liz Wager

Their presentations were chock-full of good tips and data. Bradford, for example, said that Science had published  45 retractions since 1997. And Laine recommended copying all of a manuscript’s authors on every communication, which could help prevent author forgery that seems to be creeping into the literature. >>>