Search

The article discusses the creation of the SCIgen software which produces nonsensical science research papers. Originally created to expose conferences that scam researchers with publication and conference fees, the program eventually ended up as a means to produce fake papers by academics and students who want to pad their publication records and as a way for creating fake academic credentials by an underground market. SciDetect was created using a method similar to spam e-mail detection.

The article cites that the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is seeking to calm the fray over whether scientific results should be freely available. On Friday, it released a draft policy aimed at improving public access to the results of NIH-funded research. The proposal requires grantees to deposit copies of their papers in NIH's free PubMed Central archive once they're accepted by a journal and calls for posting them on PubMed 6 months after publication. In July, a congressional spending panel recommended that NIH post NIH-funded manuscripts within 6 months of publication, or immediately if NIH grant funds were used to pay publication costs.

The author encourages researchers to publish their work in "MalariaWorld Journal." Topics covered include the reward provided to every published paper, the incentives available for African researchers who successfully publish an article in the journal, and waived author fees from authors from the poorest countries.

Last year scientists created a stir with a report in the periodical 'Science,' suggesting that people who use the party drug ecstasy may damage their dopamine neurons, raising their risk of Parkinson's disease. This week they published a retraction. Owing to a mislabeled bottle, they used the wrong drug in their experiments. Toxic effects that they ascribed to ecstasy were caused by a sister drug, methamphetamine, which is known to be toxic to dopamine neurons.

The article discusses research about climate consensus among scientist, with reference to a study published in the issue of the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences." Findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) show that the convinced group of scientists had an average of 172 citations of the word climate in their published papers while the unconvinced group had 105 citations. Criticism on the study argued over the grouping of researchers and the selection of scientists to study.

A Danish government committee has ruled that one of the world's leading evolutionary biologists, Anders Pape Møller, is responsible for data fabricated in connection with an article that he co-authored in 1998 and subsequently retracted as of January 28, 2004. Møller has denied that his data were fabricated and has told "Science" that he plans to sue his chief accuser, Jørgen Rabøl, or the panel that issued the ruling, the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD), for defamation. Møller, a professor at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, is a towering figure in the field. Møller and Florentino de Lope of the Universidad de Extremadura in Badajoz, Spain, published their findings in the June 1998 issue of the journal "Oikos." In 1999, Andersen and Rabøl, then an associate professor at the Zoological Institute at the University of Copenhagen, alleged in an "opinion" sent to Oikos that the paper was based on fabricated data rather than on Andersen's data.

After a 7-month investigation, Great Britain's House of Commons Science and Technology Committee urges that papers produced by publicly funded research be put in free repositories soon after publication. And in a surprise move, a U.S. House committee has recommended that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) post its grantees' papers on a free Internet site. Scientific societies and for-profit publishers were stunned by the language, which they say would drive traditional journals out of business. As the appropriations bill heads for a possible House vote this week, Representative Ernest J. Istook, who wrote the language, and House Labor/Health and Human Services subcommittee chairman Ralph Regula are preparing to issue a statement on the House floor that would modify the directive.

The article reports that stem cell researcher Haruko Obokata of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan agrees to retract her paper on the technique called stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) as of late May 2014. The research was published in the January 29, 2014 online issue of "Nature." Only Charles Vacanti of Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) did not agree to retract the paper among the co-authors of Obokata.

The article presents an update on an internal investigation about two high-profile papers by scientist Tae Kook Kim conducted by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Taejon, South Korea. According to Lee Gyun Min, chair of KAIST's Department of Biological Sciences and head of the internal investigation committee, their initial investigative results are strong enough to convince them that the papers do not contain any scientific truth. The school suspended Kim on February 28, 2008.

Focuses on controversy over research papers under review at a scientific journal. Celera Genomics' submission of a report on the human genome sequence to 'Science' journal; Geneticist Michael Ashburner's criticism of 'Science' for considering Celera's paper; Possible fragmentation of genetic data resources.

Birds do it, bees do it. Fermionic particles, however, tend not to get cozy with one another. In a paper published online 22 July by Science, physicists report the latest evidence for the formation of Cooper pairs of fermions in the laboratory. Achieving Cooper pairing in fermion condensates would enable scientists to examine the properties of Cooper pairs with unprecedented flexibility and would help unravel the enduring mysteries of the physics behind superconductors. Now, a group led by Rudolf Grimm of the University of Innsbruck, Austria, has announced another line of evidence for Cooper pairing.

Although researchers have seemingly cloned the whole barnyard, the ubiquitous laboratory rat has proved remarkably hard to duplicate. But in a paper published online by Science, a team led by Jean-Paul Renard of the National Institute of Agronomy Research in Jouy en Josas, France, report that they have finally managed to clone rats, a significant step toward producing genetically modified versions of the animals. Laboratory rats are bigger than mice, making them a favorite tool for researchers who study the brain and the circulatory system.

Focuses on the controversy of the published scientific studies on physics. Context of the papers; Impact of the investigation on Bell Laboratories Inc., research arm of Lucent Technology; Duplication of data from several published studies.

The article reports on Mark2Cure, a crowdsourcing curation campaign launched by a group of researchers on May 21, 2015, that aims to harness efforts of lay volunteers who will scan research papers for key terms to help in the creation of a powerful searchable database. Topics discussed include initial target of reaching community of people affected by newly discovered genetic disorder NGLY1 deficiency, and collaboration between Scripps Research Institute with glycosylation expert Hudson Freeze.

The article describes the nondestructive approach implemented by physicists at the Netherlands' Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter, led by Aneta Stodolna, as indicated in a paper published in the May 2013 issue of "Physical Review Letters." Based on a 1981 proposal by several Russian theorists, the team first fired two lasers at hydrogen atoms inside a chamber, kicking off electrons at speeds and directions that depended on their underlying wave functions.

The article discusses a research study referencing a paper published in PLoS ONE online that found the startled response of Actinia equina anemones to squirts showing their consistency for personality tests of animals in the wild similar to spiders and octopuses.