The Grain aims to tell the story behind research that’s made an immense impact on science. Inspired by the former series Citation Classics, The Grain features essays by authors with publications that have one thousand citations or more or a very high Altmetric score (the top 250). Read more
These essays should provide a brief background on the research itself and describe how it was conceived and undertaken. The Winnower wants authors to describe the story behind the research.
The impacts of the Great East Japan Earthquake on people living in the Tohoku and Kanto districts and on Japanese society in general were, in many ways, beyond description. The earthquake and the accompanying tsunami destroyed many cities along the east coast of the Tohoku and Kanto districts...
Read ItThe penis is, by definition, the male copulatory organ (e.g., New Oxford American Dictionary). Sex-specific features are not restricted to copulatory organs, and many examples of sex-specif...
Read ItHow is it that a paper that could not get published had the fourth highest reported Altmetric score for all scientific contributions in 2013 (Liu 2014)? This contribution to the Grain has t...
Read ItSHELX is simply a widely used set of crystallographic computer programs that I have spent most of the last 45 years, in my spare time from university teaching, writing and I am by no means ...
Read ItWe like to say that the idea for this research was hatched over the grill at a backyard barbeque. And that's the truth. It was. We were discussing the widespread use of cell phones acros...
Read ItThe Chaff aims to tell the story behind research that was retracted. In essays published in The Chaff, authors explain what went wrong with the work. Read more
Was it an innocent mistake or did someone commit fraud? What ultimately lead to the retraction of the paper and how can we learn from these faults?
We want to explicitly state that this series is not a forum for the shaming of authors, or a "shame list." The Chaff provides an opportunity for authors of retracted papers to tell their side of the story and to elaborate on retraction notices that are, by and large, quite uninformative.
Following the admonitory adage "publish or perish" scientists are eager to publish as often as they can. The more publications they have, the farther they advance professionally. In Comm...
Read ItScientific progress is accomplished by a process of elucidation through validated methods and repeated verification. Retraction of a scientific paper may, in some instances, be the most app...
Read ItEveryone agrees that cancer is an ugly beast of a disease, and when a child is diagnosed with cancer it is exceptionally unjust. The ultimate goal of the research described in this paper wa...
Read ItEarly September 2011. I still have time. I'm driving my car through the Netherlands to try and fix things. I like driving; always have. But I have no clue where I'm going. I'm trying to thi...
Read ItBrown and colleagues (2005) appeared to show a strong link between bodily symmetry (small fluctuating asymmetry or FA) and dance ability, with sex differences fitting predictions exactly....
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