Climate science critic Wegman reprimanded by one university committee while another finds no misconduct

The author of a controversial and now-retracted paper questioning the science of climate change has been reprimanded by his university for plagiarism. According to USA Today’s Dan Vergano, who broke the news: [Edward] Wegman was the senior author of a 2006 report to Congress that criticized climate scientists as excessively collaborative, and found fault with … Continue reading Climate science critic Wegman reprimanded by one university committee while another finds no misconduct

Accusations of ”false claims” in anti-global warming paper unresolved after three years

Three years after receiving a complaint about extensive plagiarism and major errors in an anti-global warming paper, Elsevier says it’s still reviewing the allegations. In 2014, readers complained to the Elsevier journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews about plagiarism and technical flaws in a 2013 paper questioning mainstream climate change science. When we first began … Continue reading Accusations of ”false claims” in anti-global warming paper unresolved after three years

Weekend reads, part 2: Oldest-ever PhD; most embarrassing citation ever; blame the antibodies?

As we noted Saturday, there was so much happening around the web last week that it made sense to break up Weekend Reads, especially since this is a holiday weekend in the U.S. and elsewhere. Here’s part 2:

Nature, facing “considerable rise” in retractions, blames lawyers for opaque and delayed notices

Nature, as we and others have noticed, has had what Paul Knoepfler referred to as a “torrent” of retractions in the past two years. That torrent — 13 research papers — has prompted a welcome and soul-searching editorial, as it did in 2010 when the journal had what it called an “unusually large number” of … Continue reading Nature, facing “considerable rise” in retractions, blames lawyers for opaque and delayed notices

Near “word-to-word” similarities topple microflora paper

The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine has retracted a 2012 paper by a group of pediatric gut researchers in Naples, Italy, who seemed to have had a visceral reaction to using their own words. The paper, “Composition and roles of intestinal microbiota in children,” sought to provide an update of the advantages of new-generation … Continue reading Near “word-to-word” similarities topple microflora paper

Heart pulls sodium meta-analysis over duplicated, and now missing, data

The journal Heart has retracted a 2012 meta-analysis after learning that two of the six studies included in the review contained duplicated data.  Those studies, it so happens, were conducted by one of the co-authors. The article, “Low sodium versus normal sodium diets in systolic heart failure: systematic review and meta-analysis,” came from an eclectic … Continue reading Heart pulls sodium meta-analysis over duplicated, and now missing, data

Paper claiming hottest 60-year-span in 1,000 years put on hold after being published online

The authors of a study of Australasian temperatures over the past millennium have put the print publication of an online-first study on hold after errors were identified in the records they used. Here’s how RealClimate.org summarized the findings of the original paper, which was published in mid-May: The conclusion reached is that summer temperatures in … Continue reading Paper claiming hottest 60-year-span in 1,000 years put on hold after being published online

Controversial paper critiquing climate change science set to be retracted because of plagiarism

A controversial study of how relationships between climate change scientists may affect the field, and that has been dogged by charges of plagiarism, will be retracted, USA Today reports. The abstract of the 2008 paper in Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, by Edward Wegman and colleagues, concluded: We conjecture that certain styles of co-authorship lead … Continue reading Controversial paper critiquing climate change science set to be retracted because of plagiarism