Most scientific paper retractions due to misconduct

Raw Story reports that “When a biomedical study is retracted, most of the time it is because of misconduct rather than error, a report published Monday said. Two-thirds of all retractions around the world stem from acts like fraud, suspected fraud or plagiarism, it added.” The relevant paper is the Fang et al. (2012). Fang, […]

How to Prepare a Really Lousy Submission: Water Resources Research Editorial Team

Sent to me from colleagues at the University of Utah. [PDF]

How NOT to review a paper. The tools and techniques of the adversarial reviewer

A paper by Graham Cormode (2009) [PDF], sent to me by Rene Garreaud. The abstract gives you a flavor of how this paper reads…. There are several useful guides available for how to review a paper in Computer Science. These are soberly presented, carefully reasoned and sensibly argued. As a result, they are not much […]

“Utilize” versus “Use”

From The Telegraph (sent to me by Jamie Gilmour): When the American writer David Foster Wallace died four years ago, he left behind the following fragments: notes towards a dictionary all of his own. Utilize A noxious puff-word. Since it does nothing that good old use doesn’t do, its extra letters and syllables don’t make […]

Wanted: Copyeditor. Inquire with God.

(From slate.com)