Jonathan Pruitt
Jonathan Pruitt is a Canadian professor studying the personalities of spiders and a Canada Research Chair at McMaster University.[1]
Pruitt worked at UC Santa Barbara before joining the faculty at McMaster in 2018.[2] His research was previously funded by the National Science Foundation.[2]
As of February 7, 2020, seven papers authored by Pruitt have been retracted.[3] McMaster University announced that it was reviewing 17 of his publications.[3] Pruitt responded to the allegations by stating that the irregularities in his data are mistakes.[4] Twenty-three journals are reviewing publications from Pruitt.[2]
Pruitt has been compared to Diederik Stapel and Jan Hendrik Schön, who were also considered rising stars in their fields before the discovery of their fraudulent publications.[5]
| Paper title | Year Originally Published | Journal | Link to paper retraction notice or statement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Linking levels of personality: personalities of the ‘average’ and ‘most extreme’ group members predict colony-level personality | 2013 | Animal Behaviour | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2013.05.030 |
| The Achilles’ heel hypothesis: misinformed keystone individuals impair collective learning and reduce group success | 2016 | Proceedings B | https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.0255 |
| Individual differences in personality and behavioural plasticity facilitate division of labour in social spider colonies | 2014 | Animal Behaviour | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2014.09.015 |
| Individual and Group Performance Suffers from Social Niche Disruption | 2016 | The American Naturalist | https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/708066 |
| Evidence of social niche construction: persistent and repeated social interactions generate stronger personalities in a social spider | 2014 | Proceedings B | https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.0077 |
| Persistent social interactions beget more pronounced personalities in a desert-dwelling social spider | 2014 | Biology Letters | https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0062 |
References
- ^ Marcus, Author Adam (29 January 2020). "Authors questioning papers at nearly two dozen journals in wake of spider paper retraction". Retraction Watch. Retrieved 19 February 2020.
{{cite web}}:|first1=has generic name (help) - ^ a b c Pennisi, Elizabeth (31 January 2020). "Spider biologist denies suspicions of widespread data fraud in his animal personality research". Science. Archived from the original on 3 February 2020. Retrieved 19 February 2020.
- ^ a b Viglione, Giuliana (7 February 2020). "'Avalanche' of spider-paper retractions shakes behavioural-ecology community". Nature. 578 (7794): 199–200. Bibcode:2020Natur.578..199V. doi:10.1038/d41586-020-00287-y. PMID 32047306.
- ^ "Top Spider Biologist's Research Under Fire". The Scientist Magazine®. Retrieved 19 February 2020.
- ^ "Social Spiders and Science Fraud". Discover Magazine. Retrieved 8 March 2020.