Based on theoretical reasoning it has been suggested that the reliability of findings published in the scientific literature decreases with the popularity of a research field. Here we provide empirical support for this prediction. We evaluate published statements on protein interactions with data from high-throughput experiments. We find evidence for two distinctive effects. First, with increasing popularity of the interaction partners, individual statements in the literature become more erroneous. Second, the overall evidence on an interaction becomes increasingly distorted by multiple independent testing.

I was on Friday at the Royal Society, speaking at the annual seminar for learned societies held by Wiley-Blackwell. There were a number of interesting presentations, not least that from Gavin Sharrock on publishing ethics. His theme was how ethics had risen to become a much more important issue for publishers than it had been only a few years ago, with increases in the number of cases of malpractice, and of retractions of journal articles. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) is doing valuable work in this area, and most publishers now have established procedures for dealing with such problems. But I had not realised that retractions at Wiley-Blackwell are now running at more than one a week. Publication ethics are a matter not just for publishers, of course, and they are at least mentioned in many of the codes of practice for research that are now proliferating (see for example the draft code recently issued by the UK Research Integrity Office). One of the points made in discussion by journal editors was that when problems of this kind arise, they can find themselves involved in many different sets of procedures, run by research funders or institutions, or in some parts of the world in formal legal proceedings. The relationships between these different sets of procedures can be highly complex, and also, of course, time cosuming. This is an issue that is going to have to be addressed if the number of cases conntinues to rise

A pooled weighted average of 1.97% (N = 7, 95%CI: 0.86–4.45) of scientists admitted to have fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once –a serious form of misconduct by any standard– and up to 33.7% admitted other questionable research practices. In surveys asking about the behaviour of colleagues, admission rates were 14.12% (N = 12, 95% CI: 9.91–19.72) for falsification, and up to 72% for other questionable research practices. Meta-regression showed that self reports surveys, surveys using the words “falsification” or “fabrication”, and mailed surveys yielded lower percentages of misconduct. When these factors were controlled for, misconduct was reported more frequently by medical/pharmacological researchers than others. Considering that these surveys ask sensitive questions and have other limitations, it appears likely that this is a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of scientific misconduct.

Music to my ears: "new responsibilities were announced for 'senior authors'. These responsibilities include ensuring that the original data described in the study are preserved and retrievable for reanalysis, confirming that the data presented in the manuscript are representative of the original data collected, and anticipating and minimizing any obstacles to the sharing of data, reagents, materials or algorithms described in the published work."

A frantic grant-writing effort that has consumed biomedical research scientists this spring came to an end last week, resulting in a huge pile of new applications—more than 10 times larger than expected—to be reviewed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). After this enthusiastic response, there will be many disappointed applicants: The rejection rate could run as high as 97%.