A paper by Maggie Simpson and Edna Krabappel was accepted by two scientific journals
Of course, none of these fictional characters actually wrote the paper, titled "Fuzzy, Homogeneous Configurations." Rather, it's a nonsensical text, submitted by engineer Alex Smolyanitsky in an effort to expose a pair of scientific journals — the Journal of Computational Intelligence and Electronic Systems and the comic sans-loving Aperto Journal of NanoScience Technology..
http://www.vox.com/2014/12/7/7339587/simpsons-science-paper
PLOS One has retracted a paper that links the most commonly used herbicide to ADHD, after it was “published in error.”
ReplyDeleteAccording to the note, the paper was “editorially rejected following peer review and consultation with the Editorial Board,” but ended up going through the production process anyway...
Then, apparently to everyone’s surprise, the paper was published anyway on August 19. “Glyphosate Use Predicts ADHD Hospital Discharges in the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Net (HCUPnet): A Two-Way Fixed-Effects Analysis” found that: Glyphosate use is a significant predictor of state hospitalizations for all-listed ADHD hospital discharges, with the effect concentrated in urban U.S. counties.
The retraction note went up just three days later, on the 21st. Here it is in full: The publisher wishes to retract this paper because it was published in error. This paper was editorially rejected following peer review and consultation with the Editorial Board. Unfortunately, the production process was erroneously completed on this paper resulting in publication, and the publisher apologizes for this mistake.
Senior Editor Eric Martens sent us this statement on behalf of the journal, and the paper’s academic editor:We routinely check editorial decisions to ensure they are in accordance with our publication criteria. In this case, upon consultation with the Academic Editor and another member of the Editorial Board, we decided to rescind the accept decision and reject the manuscript. Unfortunately, a glitch in our system resulted in the paper publishing in error, as outlined in the retraction notice. PLOS apologizes for the error in publication and will work to improve processes to prevent this unfortunate situation from occurring in the future.
The authors stand behind their work, Keith Fluegge told us:…the editors made a hasty, yet purposeful, last-minute decision born out of a complete disregard of the peer review process and their own prior judgment in the months that preceded peer review. Furthermore, the editors did not engage with the authors regarding their erroneous and uninformed rejection comments. Since retraction, the authors were seriously dismayed upon receiving notice from PLOS One editors that they preferred to let the retraction notice stand as is, which is a completely false account of the actual events. Needless to say, the authors will not submit work to PLOS One again, as the internal editors are secretive, clearly not truthful, and do not honor the external peer review process and or even their own protocols.
In addition to the positive comments from peer reviewers, the authors have received praise from other esteemed researchers. The authors, therefore, strongly disagree with the final PLOS One internal editorial decision. The work deserves to be a part of the scientific record.
http://retractionwatch.com/2015/08/26/a-mess-plos-mistakenly-publishes-rejected-adhd-herbicide-paper-retracts-it/
Courtesy of: http://www.medpagetoday.com/OBGYN/GeneralOBGYN/53259?isalert=1&uun=g906366d4481R5793688u&xid=NL_breakingnews_2015-08-27