2014 | News Articles on Scientific Practice and Scientific Dysfunction
January:
First Retraction In the Don Poldermans Case (Forbes, January 8, 2014)
Conflict Of Interest? Ethics Debate Intensifies Over Retraction Of Flawed Séralini Rat Study (Science 2.0, January 17, 2014)
New Truths That Only One Can See (The New York Times, January 20, 2014)
Policy: NIH plans to enhance reproducibility (Nature, January 27, 2014)
Research paper by dental researchers from India retracted for plagiarism (Times of India, January 29, 2014)
Scientific Pride and Prejudice (The New York Times, January 31, 2014)
February:
Blind eye to scientific fraud is dangerous (CNN, February 6, 2014)
When Something As Vague As A Leadership Journal Retracts You For Lack Of Data, You Are In Trouble (Science 2.0, February 7, 2014)
A Valuable Reputation: After Tyrone Hayes said that a chemical was harmful, its maker pursued him (The New Yorker, February 10, 2014)
Only On CBS2: Authors Of Controversial New Book Try To Pinpoint What Makes Certain Ethnic Groups Successful (CBS Los Angeles, February 14, 2014)
Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers (Nature, February 24, 2014)
March:
The Shamelessness of Professor Mark Regnerus (Slate, March 4, 2014)
When Studies are Wrong: A Coda (The New York Times, March 7, 2014)
One Author of a Startling Stem Cell Study Calls for Its Retraction (The New York Times, March 10, 2014)
Japan Lab Weighing Retraction of Stem Cell Paper (Associated Press, March 11, 2014)
Evidence Mounts Against Reprogrammed Stem Cell Papers (Science News, March 14, 2014)
Sloppy researchers beware, A new institution has you in its sights (The Economist, March 15, 2014)
What Science Tells Us About Why We Lie (Scientific American, March 18, 2014)
Contrarians bully journal into retracting a climate psychology paper (The Guardian, March 21, 2014)
Scientists Fix Errors in Controversial Paper About Saturated Fats (Science Insider, March 24, 2014)
April:
Rising Japanese scientist faked heralded stem cell research, lab says (Washington Post, April 1, 2014)
Stem cell scientist Haruko Obokata found guilty of misconduct (The Guardian, April 1, 2014)
Publicity Spurs Science Study Retractions 7X More Often (Science 2.0, April 3, 2014)
Circulation Retracts Paper By Stem Cell Pioneer And Its Own Editor (Forbes, April 8, 2014)
Study by Harvard-Affiliated Heart Researcher Retracted from Scientific Journals (Harvard Crimson, April 13, 2014)
John P. A. Ioannidis (Nature News, April 22, 2014)
Stanford launches center to strengthen quality of scientific research worldwide (Stanford Medicine News Center, April 22, 2014)
Stanford launches new center focusing on improving research accuracy (The Stanford Daily, April 22, 2014)
New Center to Improve Research Quality Launches at Stanford (Medscape Medical News, April 24, 2014)
May:
Why Doesn’t Anyone Know How to Talk About Global Warming? (Smithsonian Magazine, May 1, 2014)
A formal request for retraction of a Cancer article (Science-Based Medicine, May 12, 2014)
Why Reporting On Scientific Research May Warp Findings (NPR, May 19, 2014)
A Method to Increase the Credibility of Published Results (University of Virginia, May 19. 2014)
Forgive Me, Scientists, for I Have Sinned (Science Careers, May 20, 2014)
Scientists are only human but statins error shows perils of bias (The Conversation, May 21, 2014)
Did Thomas Piketty Get His Math Wrong? (The New York Times, May 23, 2014)
Piketty findings undercut by errors (The Financial Times, May 23, 2014)
How reliable are medical research checks? (BBC, May 26, 2014)
Thomas Piketty and Spreadsheets (The New York Times, May 26, 2014)
Everything You Need to Know About Thomas Piketty vs. The Financial Times (The New York Times, May 30, 2014)
June:
Let the light shine in (The Economist, June 14, 2014)
Gilles-Eric Seralini Pays Springer To Publish His Retracted GMO-Rat Study (Science 2.0, June 24, 2014)
Researcher Charged in HIV Vaccine Fraud Case (NBCNews.com, June 24, 2014)
Study on genetically modified corn, herbicide and tumors reignites controversy (CBS News, June 25, 2014)
Everything You Need to Know About Facebook’s Controversial Emotion Experiment (Wired, June 30, 2014)
July:
AIDS Scientist Pleads Not Guilty to Faking Study (Star Advertiser, July 1, 2014)
Japanese stem-cell ‘breakthrough’ findings retracted (BBC News, July 2, 2014)
Scientists Withdraw Report on Simpler Stem Cells (Associated Press, July 2, 2014)
How Japan’s most promising young stem-cell scientist duped the scientific journal Nature — and destroyed her career (The Washington Post, July 3, 2014)
Journal responds after controversial Facebook emotion study (CBS News, July 4, 2014)
Academic Scandal Shakes Japan (The New York Times, July 6, 2014)
Debate Continues on Hazards of Electromagnetic Waves (The New York Times, July 7, 2014)
Two ‘Goldilocks planets’ that might support life are proven false (Penn State News, July 7, 2014)
Scientific journal Nature retracts controversial stem cell papers (PBS Newshour, July 8, 2014)
What lesson do rising retraction rates hold for peer review (The Conversation, July 9, 2014)
Crack down on scientific fraudsters (New York Times, July 10, 2014)
This scientific journal just had to retract 60 papers. How does that even happen? (Vox, July 10, 2014)
Academic papers retracted as fraud exposed (Taipei Times, July 11, 2014)
Science Journal Pulls 60 Papers in Peer-Review Fraud (The New York Times, July 11, 2014)
Retractions are coming thick and fast: it’s time for publishers to act (The Guardian, July 14, 2014)
Congressmen push NCSU on case of flawed research (The Charlotte Observer, July 17, 2014)
The bias busters (BMJ, July 23, 2014)
Academia’s seamier side: Lying, cheating and fraud (Washington Post, July 29, 2014)
Study linking narcolepsy to autoimmunity retracted (Science News, July 30, 2014)
August:
Why do some controversies persist despite the evidence? (The Conversation, August 3, 2014)
Scientific Integrity: Please SBoRE Me with the Details (Huffington Post, August 5, 2014)
Controversial ‘Hobbit Species’ Simply May Have Been Early Human With Down Syndrome (The Huffington Post, August 6, 2014)
Scientists retract narcolepsy study linked to GSK vaccine (Reuters, August 7, 2014)
Fighting Back Against Research Fraud (Asian Scientist Magazine, August 8, 2014)
Who governs science? (The Guardian, August 15, 2014)
Fabricated results, hidden data: The case for criminalizing research fraud (Vox, August 18, 2014)
Research replication in social science: reflections from Nathaniel Beck (OUPBlog, August 24, 2014)
Social sciences suffer from severe publication bias (Nature, August 28, 2014)
Why null results rarely see the light of day (Science, August 29, 2014)
September:
Asteroid paper to be retracted because of faulty analysis (Science Insider, September 1, 2014)
When Science Finds Nothing, It Often Publishes Nothing (Pacific and Standard, September 3, 2014)
Retracted Papers Stigmatize, Jeopardize Solid Research in Related Fields (Science 2.0, September 4, 2014)
To Get More out of Science, Show the Rejected Research (New York Times, September 18, 2014)
Cosmic inflation: BICEP ‘underestimated’ dust problem (BBC News, Sep 22, 2014)
Criticism of Study Detecting Ripples From Big Bang Continues to Expand (New York Times, September 22, 2014)
October:
Citizen Science Can Help Reduce Scientific Fraud And Cherry-Picking (Science 2.0, October 6, 2014)
The Quote Of The Week – A Between-The-Lines Accusation Of Scientific Fraud (Science 2.0, October 7, 2014)
How a Now-Retracted Autism Study Went Viral — Again (ABC News, October 9, 2014)
Correcting the scientific record: An introduction to retractions (Scientific American, October 14, 2014)
Dr.Oz-endorsed diet pill study was bogus, researchers admit (CBS News, October 20, 2014)
The research paper behind a favorite Dr. Oz product was just retracted (Vox, October 20, 2014)
Government prosecutes alleged scientific fraud on AIDS research (CNN, October 21, 2014)
Inflation, Elation, Deflation (PBS (blog), Oct 23, 2014)
Professors’ Research Project Stirs Political Outrage in Montana (The New York Times, October 28, 2014)
Is Social Psychology Biased Against Republicans? (The New Yorker, October 30, 2014)
Realize that not all journals are good (Vox, October 31, 2014)
November:
Research Re-examined (Stanford Medicine, Fall 2014)
Stanford’s Attempt At Improving Research Accuracy (Canada Free Press, November 2, 2014)
Science Research Needs an Overhaul (Scientific American, November 3, 2014)
December:
Scientists scammed at least 110 academic papers into publication using fake peer reviews (Vox, December 7, 2015)
Facebook’s Emotionally Manipulative Study Was 2014’s Most Popular Paper (The Huffington Post, December 10, 2014)
Science Forum: An open investigation of the reproducibility of cancer biology research (eLife, December 10, 2014)
The Chinese Publisher SCIRP (Scientific Research Publishing): A Publishing Empire Built on Junk Science (Scholarly Open Access, December 16, 2014)
Half of Dr. Oz’s medical advice is baseless or wrong, study says (The Washington Post, December 19, 2014)
The shameful final chapter for one of Japan’s most promising stem cell scientists (Washington Post, December 19, 2014)
Science journals screw up hundreds of times each year. This guy keeps track of every mistake (Vox, December 20, 2014)
The 8 most bogus health claims of 2014 (Vox, December 23, 2014)
One of the biggest science breakthroughs of 2014 never really happened (Vox, December 29, 2014)
China sees dip in research-grant misconduct (Nature, December 31, 2014)