Misconduct prompts most retractions

Two-thirds of scientific papers pulled from journals are for fraud, suspected fraud and plagiarism

Web edition : 5:52 pm

Scientific misconduct ? including fraud, suspected fraud and plagiarism ? is the reason behind most retractions of papers published in scientific journals, a new study shows.

Only 21.3 percent of biomedical and life sciences studies pulled from scientific journals were withdrawn because honest errors invalidated the findings, researchers report online October 1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Retraction notices often don?t explain why a study is being withdrawn, or they cover up the real reason for pulling a paper, says study coauthor Arturo Casadevall, a microbiologist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City and editor of the journal mBio.

To understand the scope of the problem, Casadevall and coauthors Ferric Fang and R. Grant Steen studied 2,047 retracted journal articles in the PubMed database, which references more than 25 million studies dating back to the 1940s. Of the retractions, 67.4 percent were due to scientific misconduct, the new study shows.

The study ?throws into high relief some trends we suspected were true,? says Ivan Oransky, a journalist and cofounder of the blog Retraction Watch, which digs into the reason for retractions and calls out particularly opaque and unhelpful notices. The researchers drew on Retraction Watch reports, investigations from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity and other sources to ferret out the real reasons papers are retracted.

One of those trends is that retractions are on the rise, in part because publishers have started using software to detect plagiarism and duplicate publication, resulting in papers being pulled for those reasons starting in 2005. Plagiarism accounted for 9.8 percent and duplicate publication for 14.2 percent of retractions. Journals also use computer programs to spot alterations to images submitted with scientists? manuscripts, but technology isn?t likely to prevent misconduct, says Casadevall. ?The better the filter, the better the fraud.?

If there is good news, it is that fraud doesn?t appear to be widespread, Casadevall says. Just 38 research groups were responsible for 43.9 percent of retractions for fraud or suspected fraud. But the repeat offenders often published multiple studies, building upon fraudulent data or simply republishing data multiple times.

?This kind of bursts the bubble that science is self-correcting, because fraudulent data won?t be repeated,? says Fang, who is chief editor of Infection and Immunity.

The culture of science may be to blame for a recent increase in fraud cases: Journal publications are widely used to gauge a scientist?s potential and success. ?Misconduct is a phenomenon similar to doping in sport: It is essentially about gaining an unfair advantage over competitors,? says Daniele Fanelli of the University of Edinburgh. But a rise in retractions doesn?t mean that fraud is also increasing. ?The fact that we went from zero retractions to 0.01 percent in a few decades is just an encouraging symptom of growing awareness of the problem.?

Pressure to publish in high-profile journals and bring in increasingly hard-to-get grant money breeds a climate ripe for wrongdoing. Such cut-throat competition is rife in countries fingered for fraud in the new study, including the United States, Germany, China and Japan, says Kalevi Korpela, a psychologist at the University of Tampere in Finland.

Although Fang and Casadevall say they worry that their study could be misused to erode public trust in science, sweeping misconduct under the rug would be even more harmful.

Recent high-profile cases of fraud show that ?when people make up stuff, it?s usually important,? Casadevall says. He cites the case of Andrew Wakefield, who published a study in 1998 in the Lancet linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism and intestinal disorders. That study was repeatedly discredited and found to be fraudulent, but nevertheless, that paper sparked an ongoing backlash against vaccination.

Found in: Science & Society

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/345465/title/Misconduct_prompts_most_retractions

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Star Snapshots: Family Fun

Liev Schreiber takes his sons for a bike ride! Plus, see more photos of celebs spending time with their loved ones!

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/star-snapshots-celebrity-kids-and-family-photos-2012/1-b-462723?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Astar-snapshots-celebrity-kids-and-family-photos-2012-462723

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British historian Eric Hobsbawm dies at 95

LONDON (AP) ? Eric Hobsbawm, a lifelong socialist and one of Britain's most eminent historians, has died at the age of 95, his daughter said Monday.

Julia Hobsbawm said her father died overnight at a London hospital. He had been suffering from pneumonia.

"He'd been quietly fighting leukemia for a number of years without fuss or fanfare," Julia Hobsbawm said. "Right up until the end he was keeping up what he did best, he was keeping up with current affairs, there was a stack of newspapers by his bed."

Hobsbawm was one of Britain's most distinguished historians, his works on the 20th century read by generations of students, despite an allegiance to the Communist Party that he retained long after many supporters left in shame and disgust.

Hobsbawm's reading of Karl Marx and his experience living in Germany in the 1930s formed his views. He joined the Communist Party in England in 1936 and stayed a member long after Soviet military force crushed the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and the liberal reforms of the Prague Spring in 1968, although he publicly opposed both interventions.

Hobsbawm is best known for three volumes, spanning the period from 1789 to 1914: "The Age of Revolution" (1962), "The Age of Capital" (1975) and "The Age of Empire" (1987). A later volume, "Age of Extremes," took the story forward from 1914 to 1991.

His last book, "How to Change the World," published in 2011, was not a revolutionary tract but a collection of essays dating back to the 1960s on Marx and Marxism.

The late British historian A.J.P. Taylor said Hobsbawm's work was distinguished by precise explanations of what happened and his interest in ordinary people.

"Most historians, by a sort of occupational disease, are interested only in the upper classes and assume that they themselves would have been numbered among the privileged if they had lived a century or two ago ? a most unlikely assumption," Taylor wrote. "Mr. Hobsbawm places his loyalty firmly on the other side of the barricades."

Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm was born June 9, 1917, in Alexandria, Egypt. His father was British, descended from artisans from Poland and Russia, and his mother's family were cultured, middle-class Viennese.

The family moved to Vienna when he was two. Following the deaths of his father and then his mother, he moved to Berlin in 1931 to live with relatives, and joined the Socialist Schoolboys.

"In Germany there wasn't any alternative left," he said in an interview with Maya Jaggi published in The Guardian newspaper in 2002.

"Liberalism was failing. If I'd been German and not a Jew, I could see I might have become a Nazi, a German nationalist. I could see how they'd become passionate about saving the nation. It was a time when you didn't believe there was a future unless the world was fundamentally transformed."

He once said he was "lucky ? yes, lucky enough ? to live in Berlin before Hitler came to power."

"And if you don't feel that you are part of world history at that time, you never will."

As a student in Berlin, Hobsbawm informed his schoolmaster that he was a communist and that a revolution was needed.

"He asked me a few questions and said, 'You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Kindly go to the school library and see what you can find,'" Hobsbawm said in an interview broadcast by the BBC in 2012. "And then I discovered The Communist Manifesto, and that was it."

In 1933, he moved to London, where he found life boring.

Britons "didn't grasp this extraordinary end of the world atmosphere, but in Berlin you had it, and you thought you had to do something about it," Hobsbawm said.

During World War II, Hobsbawm was assigned to an engineering unit which introduced him, for the first time, to the working class.

"I didn't know much about the British working class, in spite of being a communist. But actually to live and work among them, I thought they were good eggs," he said in a BBC radio interview in 1995.

He approved of their "solidarity, a very strong feeling of class, a very strong feeling of being together, a very strong feeling of not wanting anybody to put them down.

"But alas, they were not democrats. They did not believe they were as good as the next man," he said.

Hobsbawm's first book, "Social Bandits and Primitive Rebels," published in 1959, was a study of what he called "pre-political social agitators" including Sicilian peasant leagues, city mobs and bandits, an early example of his interest in the structural history of working-class organizations.

The same year he published "The Jazz Scene," using the pseudonym Francis Newton, and writing about jazz continued to be an outlet.

"He defined the term 'intellectual polymath,'" Julia Hobsbawm said, adding that she'd asked him last week what advice he would give his grandchildren.

"He said he would like them to be curious. Curiosity was the biggest asset anybody could have."

He also recommended three books: Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment," the poetry of W.H. Auden, and the "Communist Manifesto," a final recommendation she said he delivered "with a twinkle in his eye."

Hobsbawm defended his allegiance to the Communist Party as born of hope, of ignorance and a fear that leaving the party might be seen as an attempt to secure some advantage.

"I belonged to the generation tied by an unbreakable umbilical cord to hope of the world revolution and of its original home, the October Revolution, however skeptical or critical of the" Soviet Union, he wrote.

But in an interview on the BBC's "Desert Island Discs" in 1995, Hobsbawm said he had been disillusioned by a visit to the Soviet Union shortly after the death of Josef Stalin in 1953.

"I still believed in the movement, but I had stopped being a militant for a very long time. As it were, from about 1956 I carefully recycled myself as a sympathizer rather than a militant," he told the BBC.

Hobsbawm was appointed a lecturer at Birkbeck College in London, spending his entire career on the faculty and eventually being appointed president.

In 1998, he was made a Companion of Honor, a rare award for a historian, placing him in the ranks of luminaries Stephen Hawking, Doris Lessing and Sir Ian McKellan. It is limited to 65 living people at any one time.

Hobsbawm was first married to Muriel Seaman in 1943; they divorced in 1951. In 1962 he married Marlene Schwarz.

He is survived by Marlene, two sons, a daughter, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

___

Associated Press writer Raphael Satter contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/british-historian-eric-hobsbawm-dies-95-112917004.html

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String of Iraq blasts kills at least 32

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Coordinated bomb attacks killed more than 32 people across Iraq on Sunday, the latest violence in an insurgency the government has failed to quell more than nine months after the last U.S. troops withdrew.

Violence in Iraq has eased since the carnage of 2006-2007, but Sunni Islamists still launch frequent attacks to undermine the Shi'ite-led government's claim to provide security and prove they remain a potent threat.

No group claimed responsibility for Sunday's string of attacks, but a local al Qaeda affiliate and other Sunni Islamist groups have carried out at least one major assault a month since the last American troops left in December.

In Taji, 20 km (12 miles) north of Baghdad, bombs in three parked cars went off separately, killing 11 people and wounding 24, including several policemen. Taji has one of Iraq's largest military airbases but the bombing hit a civilian neighborhood.

Reuters footage of the scene of one of the explosions showed the remains of an exploded car surrounded by several completely and partially destroyed houses and cars.

"A car bomb entered the area and no one ... noticed this. Why did that happen? All the houses were destroyed," said Khaidar Abas, owner of one of the damaged homes.

In Baghdad, three separate bombs killed eight people, including a police officer.

In the city of Kut, 150 km (95 miles) southeast of Baghdad, a suicide bomber driving a car blew himself up, killing four policemen, police and local officials said.

PILGRIMS

Another attack targeted a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims as it passed through the town of Madaen, about 30 km (20 miles) southeast of Baghdad. Two passers-by were killed.

Two more policemen were killed when a car bomb went off in the town of Balad Ruz, 90 km (55 miles) northeast of Baghdad, and bomb planted in a parked car in al Qaeda stronghold Mosul killed a civilian.

Further attacks around the country killed a further four people and left scores wounded.

The last major attacks occurred on September 9 when a series of bombs in mainly Shi'ite districts killed more than 100 people across the country.

Al Qaeda's local wing, the Islamic State of Iraq, recently said it was launching a new offensive against mainly Shi'ite targets.

The conflict in Syria has also helped inflame Sunni-Shi'ite tensions region wide, not least in Iraq, where a return to sectarian slaughter is a real risk.

Since the last U.S. troops left, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government has been politically deadlocked and insurgents have continued to strike, hoping to ignite the kind of sectarian tensions that drove Iraq close to civil war in 2006-2007.

Many Sunnis fear the Shi'ite-led government has marginalized them and Sunni politicians say Maliki is failing to live up to agreements to share power among the parties, a charge his backers dismiss, pointing to Sunnis in key posts.

Security was tightened in Baghdad and other provinces since dozens of inmates, including convicted members of al Qaeda, escaped from a prison in the northern city of Tikrit on Friday.

(Writing by Suadad al-Salhy; Editing by Sophie Hares)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/string-iraq-car-bomb-blasts-kill-least-17-070324488.html

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Evolutionary analysis improves ability to predict the spread of flu

ScienceDaily (Oct. 1, 2012) ? With flu season around the corner, getting a seasonal vaccine might be one of the best ways to prevent people from getting sick. These vaccines only work, however, if their developers have accurately predicted which strains of the virus are likely to be active in the coming season because vaccines must be developed in advance of the upcoming flu season. Recently, a team of scientists from Germany and the United Kingdom have improved the prediction methods used to determine which strains of the flu virus to include in the current season's vaccine.

The research describing this advance is published in the October 2012 issue of Genetics.

"Seasonal influenza kills about half a million people per year, but improved vaccines can curb this number," said Michael L?ssig, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Cologne in K?ln, Germany. "Although this study is some distance from direct applications, it is a necessary step toward improved prediction methods. We hope that it helps yield better vaccines against influenza," L?ssig added.

To make this advance, scientists analyzed the DNA sequences of thousands of influenza strains isolated from patients worldwide, dating to 1968. By analyzing this dataset, researchers were able to determine which strains were most successful at expanding into the entire population, and which mutations were least successful in spreading. Using a new statistical method, the researchers found that many more mutations than we thought initially succeed in replicating and surviving. These mutations compete; some make it into the entire population, others die out. This analysis of the virus enables prediction of trends which can help vaccine developers understand the rules of flu virus evolution. This knowledge, in turn, can be used to predict which strains of the virus are most likely to spread through a human population.

"Every year, new concerns emerge about 'super flus' that have the potential to kill many people," said Mark Johnston, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Genetics. "This research itself will not stop any people from getting sick, but it could give us a heads up to particularly dangerous strains that might be on the horizon. With that information, we may be able to develop increasingly effective vaccines."

This work was partially supported by the Wellcome Trust [080711/ Z/06] (N.S.) and by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft grant SFB 680 (to M.L.). This work was also supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant PHY05-51164 during a visit to the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics (University of California, Santa Barbara).

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Genetics Society of America, via Newswise.

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Journal Reference:

1. N. Strelkowa, M. Lassig. Clonal Interference in the Evolution of Influenza. Genetics, 2012; 192 (2): 671 DOI: 10.1534/genetics.112.143396

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/ndZTDeJhsuU/121001083206.htm

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Hate

It's a powerful thing, this Internet of ours. The greatest tool for the distribution of knowledge, the administration of compassion, and development of conversation ever created. And the events of this week have shown how it can be a platform for tolerance and understanding, for love and peace. Particularly touching was the story of a man who, with the assistance of friends and the Internet, was able to confront a tormentor with his misdeeds, bringing the young troll to heel and redeeming a child who surely knew not what he did. An example for the ages of gentleness and cooler minds prevailing over humanity's companion and adversary, hate. Yes, isn't it pretty to think so?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/YEWYqekb9Bs/

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Sierra Student Coalition launches chapter on campus - News - Daily ...

As the global warming debate continues, sensitivity to environmental issues is at an all-time high. Blue recycling bins grace alleyways behind local businesses and hybrid vehicles are more popular than ever. A campaign promoting clean energy?solar, wind powered and geothermal?is sweeping the state, and now SMU students are getting involved.

A new environmental group Emerged on campus with the commencement of fall classes: the Sierra Student Coalition (SSC).

The student-run chapter of the national Sierra Club envisions itself as a space for activism and promoting environmental and social change. The SSC pursues local, statewide and national environmental campaigns via the support of high school and college students.

At its kick-off meeting on Sept. 19, SSC discussed the statewide clean energy campaign that the organization will take on this fall. In partnership with multiple other environmental, labor and public health groups, the SSC will push the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) of Texas to fully implement a law passed in 2005 which mandates the use of renewable energy sources within the state.

Since the law was passed, Texas has become the national leader of wind energy manufacturing, but it has failed to implement other non-wind energy sources, such as geothermal and solar technologies, required by the law.

?In 2005, the law was passed, but not implemented,? SSC Campus Organizer Katie Siegner said. ?This is about accountability. We need to present a united front [to the PUC].?

Ten percent of Texas? electricity is provided by wind energy. By diversifying its clean energy supplies and implementing solar and geothermal sources, Texas could become a national leader in the use of clean energy, according to Siegner.

?I think that encouraging our Texas representatives to go through with these implementations is an easy but crucial stepping stone to making alternative energies more of a productive, practical and publicly accepted source of power,? SMU junior and SSC volunteer Leslie Hurley said.

SSC chose to set up camp at SMU because of the universities top research facilities for geothermal energy and commitment to sustainability. The group has already linked up with a number of professors and other environmental groups around campus.

Siegner contacted Keya Devani, president of SMU?s Environmental Society, at the beginning of the semester.

?As a fellow environmentalist, it?s good to support others who try to attain similar goals as you,? Devani said. ?Changing the way Texas views renewable energy is one of them.?

The SSC has already collected over 600 ?petitions?, or cards of interest, from SMU students since the onset of classes.

Word about the new group has made its way quickly around campus, as Siegner and other SSC volunteers have hit the ground running.

Most recently, the SSC hit the boulevard during family weekend to spread the word to students, parents and alumni. SSC volunteers chatted up tailgaters during the family barbeque and even snapped photos with a few Mustang fans sporting posters with slogans promoting clean energy.

?Our whole purpose is to get out there and try to get other people to see why [the clean energy campaign] is such a great idea,? SMU freshman and SSC volunteer Story Zanetti said.

?It?s all about connecting and joining together, and I think we could all use a little more of that.?

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Source: http://www.smudailycampus.com/news/sierra-student-coalition-launches-chapter-on-campus-1.2915342

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