link.springer.com/article/10.1... - Big team science comes to fishes!

The U.S. Department of Justice has reached a $15 million NIH grant fraud settlement with Dana-Farber Cancer Center. This resolves a False Claims Act qui tam complaint that I filed on behalf of @sholtodavid.bsky.social in April 2024, with Gregg Shapiro as my co-counsel.

Jennifer Byrne, @jasonchin.bsky.social, and others weigh on on whether Australia's approach to regulating research misconduct needs reform. theconversation.com/should-austr...

🗣️ New ORCID Feature for Journal Editors: Editorial Service This new activity allows publishers, including journals or other research publication organizations, to add #TrustMarkers to #ORCID records via the validated #EditorialService data. More on the blog: https://wp.me/pcE4o3-9kO#TrustMarkers#ORCID#EditorialService#Researchsky

Following up from @drjbeaudry.bsky.social's wonderful recap email yesterday, here is the group photo from #AIMOS2025. If you couldn't make this this year, we hope to see you next year in beautiful Wellington!

Job opportunity — Junior Professorship in Psychological Metascience @zpid.bsky.social leibniz-psychology.onlyfy.jobs/job/10kku5n7 h/t @bethclarke.bsky.social

Last week, #AusHSI PhD student @alexdgibson.bsky.social presented at #AIMOS2025, highlighting a new global issue of unreliable data within #clinicalprediction model research and clinical practice, which has potential to influence patient outcomes and evidence-based decisions. @aimosinc.bsky.social

Hey folks! We're running a big repliCATS workshop in Melbourne on 16 Dec, evaluating of replicability of published papers. 🐈 metascience, psych, med, health, education, sociol, quant methods, stats ECRs welcome 💰 AU$200 🎫 + travel subsidies ℹ️ forms.gle/9JvoRBKCzYyY... Re-posts appreciated 🌈

...many leaders in the field are still seeking prestige from a few for-profit, rent-seeking journals. 

He then pointed us to better publication practices: - @peercommunityin.bsky.social 
- @unjournal.bsky.social 
- @metaror.bsky.social Post credits: @alexh.bsky.social, @jwastrachan.bsky.social

It has been an honour to partner with @rorinstitute.bsky.social in our mission to make peer review and curation of metascience more robust, transparent, and equitable.

More people need to know about MetaROR @metaror.bsky.social! If you are doing meta-research, then you get that the for-profit publishing system is a headache – you can help sideline journals by having your preprints handled by the MetaROR team for the peer review process. #AIMOS2025

That's a wrap on another AIMOS conference! See you all in Wellington next year. Thank you for the wonderful live-blogging @elisabethbik.bsky.social - you made my job very easy :)

NC: EPA released a draft review that looks great! Systematic review! But it is very flawed. They only included papers older<2019, excluded 100s of relevant studies, it was cherry picking data. www.epa.gov/assessing-an... We did a systematic review: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/... #AIMOS2025

NC: Another systematic review came to very different conclusions, but ... it was funded by the American Chemistry Council. We need more actual systematic reviews that do not have those conflicts of interest - LInks: prheucsf.blog/category/op-... www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/home/ #AIMOS2025

NC: TSCA: primary federal law regulation production/use of non-pesticide chemicals. But after Obama admin, industry people were put in power and chemical lobby were fighting regulation. EPA has failed to rely on science for their evaluation. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_S... #AIMOS2025

NC: We are more and more exposed to plastic - oil companies love to produce more as we move away from fossil fuels. We all have exposure signals in our blood. Pollution kills more people than drugs, alcohol, or smoking. Low-income people more exposed. #AIMOS2025

NC: Industry-funded papers underestimate the risk. We scientists need to shape the public narrative around the harms of their products - we should get out of our echo chambers. There is wide partisan support to have chemicals regulated by government. We need to move the needle. #AIMOS2025

NC: We know this is true, we have preclinical/animal data, but we are told to prove this through RCTs. US EPA released reports but Australian government still claims PFAS are not proven to be bad. We are exposed to 1000s of chemicals, yet we still evaluate one chemical at the time. #AIMOS2025

The talk starts with a video about PFAS (toxic chemicals) leakage from a chemical plant near Jervis Bay. More background: www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02... Leading organizations did not use a lot of systematic reviews about environmental hazards. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #AIMOS2025

We will end the @aimosinc.bsky.social conference with a plenary session by Nicholas Chartres, with "Corporate Vectors of Chronic Disease: Using Internal Industry Documents to Safeguard Environmental Health Research Integrity" #AIMOS2025

Good morning from Sydney, on day 3 of the @aimosinc.bsky.social conference. This morning I'll attend a workshop by the amazing @anniewham.bsky.social on: "Retrieving Scholarly Metadata with R: Introduction to Crossref and OpenAlex APIs" #AIMOS2025

Our current systems for research assessment are narrow and flawed - @ginnybarbour.bsky.social @aimosinc.bsky.social #AIMOS2025

Discussion about next steps for MetaROR @metaror.bsky.social A partnership between @aimosinc.bsky.social and @rorinstitute.bsky.social Led by @alexh.bsky.social and @aidybarnett.bsky.social #AIMOS2025

3. Inika Sharma: The landscape of randomised controlled trials in India: A mapping review. 11,932 studies were included, over 7M participants, Changes in guidelines caused dips or increases over time. #AIMOS2025

2. Gerben ter Riet & Anne de Jong (prerecorded): Four-Year Trends of Adherence to a Checklist for Responsible Research Practices. Do people adhere to guidelines? We looked at 23 studies, adherence went down over time, in particular those related to open science such as preregistration. #AIMOS2025

Good morning from Sydney! Today is Day 2 of the @aimosinc.bsky.social conference I am attending one of the discussion sessions: Addressing journal editors' failure to retract fraudulent and misleading publications Speaker/Chair -Jon Jureidini, Leemon McHenry & George (Skip) Murgatroyd #AIMOS2025

AW: Set of papers where the discussion sounded like a second introduction (background information) with many new references, much more than other control papers. Likely citation manipulation. This could help sleuths find more of such papers. * But be aware about ESL language issues. #AIMOS2025

1. James Heathers, @jamesheathers.bsky.social with: The evolving field of forensic metascience: ForMet: Modify trust by evaluating research accuracy of scientific documents by tools. It is not designed to find fraud. A lot of science is bad/wrong. #AIMOS2025

1. Madeleen van der Merwe: Statistical Errors in Health Journal Articles. A systematic review. We looked at 53 articles - identified 940 statistical errors #AIMOS2025

A key strategy of commercial actors is to influence and distort the evidence base relating to the harms of their products This is done through funding misleading industry-friendly science & through the active promotion of misinformation @markpetticrew.bsky.social @aimosinc.bsky.social #AIMOS2025

Discussions at #AIMOS2025 re: financial conflicts of expert witnesses, reminds me of this editorial from 1882 (!): “…the saying of a well-known judge that liars might be divided into three classes - liars, great liars, and scientific-witnesses - recommends itself to many.” [The Times, 4 April]

#AIMOS2025 Day 1 is well underway. I love seeing the enthusiasm from all attendees.

An insightful and informative session with Ivan Oransky from @retractionwatch.com for the #AIMOS2025 Public Talk.

Day 2 at #AIMOS2025 is underway with our mini-notes session on Commercial Determinants of Health. Karen Lee talks about the role of commercial influences on the number of publications in prevention research.

What leads some drivers to repeated dangerous road traffic behaviors? Research findings point to new directions for road safety interventions grounded in behavioral science. 🔗 Read open-access article here: psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202... #psychlaw #lawpsych #psychology #law

Day 1 is ending with Ivan Oransky's @retractionwatch.com public lecture. #aimos2025

Paulina Stehlik: Conduct of real-world studies of COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness: Lessons for open science. We looked at 85 global studies, consent/protocol statements often missing. Many were preprints. Generally, quality was high and dissemination was rapid. #AIMOS2025

Next: Eugenie Reich @eugenie-reich.bsky.social: From Scientific Error to Scientific Fraud: How To Tell The Difference. In your mind, do you think something is fraud? Flavors of intent: Negligent, reckless*, knowing, intentional, willful. * knowingly ignoring a risk of error. #AIMOS2025

Next: Kylie Hunter: The updated IPD Integrity Tool for assessing the trustworthiness of randomised controlled trials. We often can only detect integrity issues if we scrutinize the raw data. But often no access to raw data! Paper with the tool: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #AIMOS2025

After lunch, we are breaking up into three groups to attend Lightning talks. I - of course - chose the Integrity group. Speaker/Chair is Annie Whamond @anniewham.bsky.social . #AIMOS2025

Next, Phi-Yen (Phoebe) Nguyen: Reproducibility of meta-analytic results in systematic reviews of interventions: a meta-research study. Reproducibility: like trying to recreate a recipe from a master-chef - would you get the same results? #AIMOS2025

Next: Matthew Page @mjpages.bsky.social: Unified PRISMA statement: harmonising the PRISMA reporting guidelines for systematic reviews of interventions. There are too many PRISMA checklist! We extracted the recommendations and summarized and merged them into shorter texts. #AIMOS2025

Our next session, Mini-Notes 1, covers the topic of Systematic Review. Chaired by Kylie Hunter, with 4 short talks. First: David Nguyen: Approaches to dealing with missing data in individual participant data meta-analyses of randomised trials. Missing data is often a problem in RCTs #AIMOS2025

Lisa Bero on how we can combat commercial influence on our research

Lisa Bero with shocking admission of how the sponsor was involved in their studies. #AIMOS2025 But almost all article sponsor involvement says they werent involved, should ask her if these authors also wrote that in their articles. #metascience

"I'm not influenced." "My colleagues are influenced, but I'm not." "I have ties with all the, companies, so I'm not influenced by any.” Lisa Bero describing the ways people rationalise their conflicts of interest, opening the #AIMOS2025 conference @aimosinc.bsky.social

Our plenary speaker will be Lisa Bero, with 'Commercial influence on research: what, how and why' We do this work because health decision/policy should be based on evidence. I am particularly interested in the commercial determinants of health. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Bero #AIMOS2025

Spoiler alert - #AIMOS2025 will be in Wellington NZ from November 30 to December 2 2026

It's happening!

Jen Beaudry @drjbeaudry.bsky.social opens the conference, paying respect to the traditional land owners and elders, and giving a bit of history about @aimosinc.bsky.social and previous conferences. We have about 110 registered attendees (and more online!). #AIMOS2025