Elisabeth Bik has made a simply extraordinary contribution to science worldwide, including in Australia - as this Sydney Morning Herald story reports.  Love your work Elisabeth!  This story highlights how dodgy research and research misconduct are becoming a serious public health issue in Australia.

Much has been written about the vile scourge of questionable publishers and their toxic pollution of the body of scholarly literature.  Warning HDR candidates and ECRs about their false claims and enticing lies.  Urging more experienced researchers away from the hollow and meaningless promises of shortcuts.  Little is said about the barrage of spam we endure. This move from the UK used to be congratulated.  We have included links to 9 related items.

A shocking story from the US.  For us, accounts like this raise a contentious question: Should clinical trials only be conducted by not-for-profit bodies?  Is the status-quo hampered by too compromised by surmountable conflicts of interest?  We have included links to 18 related items.

We know that Thanksgiving Day is a thoroughly US holiday, but this gave us a giggle, so we thought we'd share.  As we head towards the holidays we hope every institution will be planning social events with the members of their research ethics committees.  We also hope that you are acknowledging the stress and burden upon the wider network of people connected to research ethics reviews at your institution.  Be safe and happy over these holidays, but we will be around working over this period.  

This analysis by the Times Higher Education provides an interesting context to discussions about the profit margins of major publishers (given that they're charging about $2,000 for Open Access publishing), even after a shift to the Open Access publication of scientific work.  Especially given that the labours of authors and peer reviewers are unpaid.  This adds further weight to the premise that scholarly publications should not only be open, they should be not-for-profit as well.  We have includes links to 14 related items.

Some elements of the attitudes and approach to Indigenous knowledge appears to be at last improving.  An important component of this is having a good approach to citing and acknowledging First People traditional knowledge.  Coupled with a strong approach to Data Sovereignty.