We often hear that life is too short. I would add: Too short for what? Clearly, it all depends on what you choose to do. If you are trying to unravel the secrets of the universe, then life is surely too short. Ars lunga vita brevis, said the Romans. On the other hand, if you […]
He Jiankui, the scientist who achieved notoriety with the gene-edited babies scandal, may be facing an unusually harsh punishment in China. Even the death penalty seems to be in the cards. The most troublesome aspect of his misadventure appears to be that which relates to corruption charges. He Jiankui allegedly misled the participants in the […]
We love science, we also know that getting and keeping our scientific work published in a good venue can be an arduous task. This is true now more than ever due to a lack of leadership in the scientific establishment and to the advent in 2010 of a new player in the game: the angry […]
Carlo M. Croce is a towering figure in cancer genetics. His discovery of the molecular mechanisms in leukemia and other malignancies places him in the league of pioneers in the field like Janet Rowley. Croce’s peers have recognized his contributions, elected him to the US National Academy of Science in 1996 and showered him with […]
The New York Times wants to make us aware there is a reproducibility crisis in science. This is hardly news at all. There surely is a problem and has been there ever since science began to be run like a business, with its system of gratification and punishment, with the explosion in the number of […]
Not long ago Science Editor Marcia McNutt published an appalling editorial entitled “Due process in the twitter age“, where she claimed that social media created an anxiety and added a sense of urgency to the post-publication peer review (PPPR) of reported scientific research. In a post at Science Transparency, we swiftly retorted that if the […]
On 26 June 2015, Science magazine published an article in its section “Policy Forum” entitled “Promoting an Open Research Culture” (B. A. Nosek et al. Science, Vol. 348, pp. 1422-1425, DOI: 10.1126/science.aab2374). The article and two related pieces (“Self-correction in science at work”, and “Solving reproducibility“) published in the same issue seem to have been inspired by the perception that there […]
It is hard to justify the sheer existence of Retraction Watch, a blog run by people with no visible credentials in the sciences who are seeking notoriety in a context where anybody is basically allowed to say anything. The information that Retraction Watch provides is redundant at best. And this redundancy will now be multiplied, […]
We are often forced to highlight the toxicity of Retraction Watch, a blog that professes to cover scientific mishaps. Retraction Watch has turned into a beacon of junk scientific journalism, fit for the Wild Web. At Retraction Watch there is no publication barrier but there surely is an agenda: anybody says whatever he/she wants and […]
We would like to believe that people associated with the practice of science regard the process of tracking down corruption in research as a worthy undertaking. We better be careful with what exactly we wish for because the emerging picture, as it stands today, is looking ugly and getting uglier: Corruption is far more frequent […]