Reflections

This post reproduces a write up in the Guardian newspaper of the UK. It was written by Adam Marcus who is the managing editor of Gastroenterology and Endoscopy News and Ivan Oransky who is the global editorial director of MedPage Today. They are the co-founders of Retraction Watch News that Peter Chen, an engineering researcher in Taiwan, managed to game the peer review system and sneak into print at least 60 publications in a single journal is certain to raise serious questions about the integrity of the process by which scientific publishers vet papers. Those doubts only get stronger when you consider that this wasn’t the first time a scientist attempted such a scheme. In 2012, a Korean plant chemist was caught cheating the peer review process and was forced to retract 28 articles. (He had already retracted seven others for different reasons, making a total of 35.) The publishing giant Elsevier retracted 11 papers the same year after what it called a “hack” of its editorial pub...

This article is sourced from The Gulf Times. Some more Calcutta nostalgia!! Once upon a time in Calcutta going to the pictures was a delightfully leisurely, pleasurable outing. Families packed food, left home well in time for a film, often got into an ambling tramcar and reached the theatre. Cinemas had beautiful lounges with finely crafted woodwork, richly upholstered sofas and sometimes cafeterias that served the choicest of eats. I remember Bijoli in the Bhowanipur area that dished out absolutely delicious cutlets. There were also some theatres that had a bar and one could down a few pegs before watching Gregory Peck in the Guns of Navarone or Cary Grant run for his life in North By North-West or Grace Kelly meet her lover in Rear Window. One among Calcutta’s legendary cinemas was the Metro in Chowringhee that was as great a landmark as the city’s impressive Victoria Memorial (housing British artefacts) or undulating greenery called the Maidan or imposing Howrah Bridge whi...