Archive for the ‘iran retractions’ Category
PLOS ONE paper plagiarized from 17 articles — yes, 17
A PLOS ONE paper about chronic pain plagiarized from multiple sources — 17, in fact.
According to the retraction notice released by the journal last week, the paper contains “extensive verbatim use of text from other sources.”
How did this make it past the editors? The journal published the paper in 2012 — before it began screening papers for plagiarism, according to a spokesperson.
Here’s the retraction notice for “The Effect of Social Stress on Chronic Pain Perception in Female and Male Mice:”
Author threatens to sue Elsevier if paper remains retracted
An author is prepared to sue Elsevier if it doesn’t un-retract his paper.
Computational Materials Science published two papers by the same author just eight months apart; nearly four years later, the journal pulled one for duplication. Author Masoud Panjepour, affiliated with Isfahan University of Technology in Iran, told us that he is working with a lawyer to negotiate a solution. However, if the publisher does not un-retract the paper, he does “not rule out filing a lawsuit.”
Here’s the retraction notice for “The effect of temperature on the grain growth of nanocrystalline metals and its simulation by molecular dynamics method,” which appeared last November:
Materials journal breaks three papers from the same author
Metals and Materials International has retracted three papers from one author, due to suspicions of plagiarism and authorship issues.
The three papers have one thing in common — the same lead author, Reza Haghayeghi from the Islamic Azad University in Tehran, Iran.
The retraction notices — all released in March, 2016 — lead with the following:
Chapter pulled from conference proceedings after authors didn’t attend
One of the papers in a book of presentations from a computing conference has been pulled after the editors realized the authors never made it to the meeting.
The book was supposed to comprise papers that were presented at the 2nd International Conference on Harmony Search, an algorithm that finds a vector which optimizes a particular function, based on the way musicians harmonize. So, how did material that wasn’t actually presented at the meeting end up in the volume? A spokesperson for the publisher, Springer, explained:
Don’t perform heart surgery described in retracted paper, says editor
A journal is retracting a paper about a heart surgery technique after discovering the researchers did not have ethics approval to perform a the procedure on 130 patients. What’s more, the local cardiac surgical society had asked the first author to stop using the method in 2004, six years before the study was complete.
The patients in the study had atrial septal defects — a congenital hole in their hearts that allows blood to leak between chambers. The retraction note concludes with the editor in chief advising other surgeons to not use the method to close the hole described in the retracted article, “Long-term assay of off-pump atrial septal defect closure using vena caval inflow occlusion and minimally invasive approaches in 130 cases.”
A concern from a reader unraveled the paper. The retraction note explains how:
Authors used wrong dataset in study on shock therapy, exercise in depression
A psychiatric journal has pulled a 2014 paper that found electroconvulsive therapy and exercise helped people with depression, after the authors determined they had mistakenly analyzed the wrong data.
According to the retraction notice from the Journal of Psychiatric Research, the researchers had “erroneously analyzed” data from a previous study they had published the year before.
Here’s more from the note for “Electroconvulsive therapy and aerobic exercise training increased BDNF and ameliorated depressive symptoms in patients suffering from treatment-resistant major depressive disorder:” Read the rest of this entry »
“Significant errors in the data” stop Hurricane Isaac paper
This version of Hurricane Isaac — based on the force of nature that hit Louisiana in 2012 — didn’t get very far. Atmospheric Research has retracted a paper on a simulation of the hurricane just a few months after it was published.
The paper included two features that commonly get a paper retracted: erroneous data, and a dispute over authorship.
The 2014 paper only has one author: O. Alizadeh-Choobari, a climatologist at the University of Tehran.
Here’s the retraction note, which provides a few more details on what went wrong:
Genetics paper retracted for using material “without permission and/or proper reference”
A review article about a tool used to link genes to traits and behaviors has been retracted for including content “without permission and/or proper reference.”
Corresponding author Ali Masoudi-Nejad at the University of Tehran told us that the retraction occurred mostly because the paper included many figures and tables from other sources, and he didn’t realize they needed to seek permission from both the author and the copyright-holder (ie, the publisher). He added that he doubts he is the only one to make this mistake: Read the rest of this entry »
Food article pulled when authors can’t serve up data
An article about a dietary plan to help people lose weight has been retracted after other researchers raised concerns, and the authors failed to provide the data that supported their findings.
The retraction is accompanied by a Letter to the Editor by a group of outside researchers — including David Allison at the University of Alabama at Birmingham — who noticed “several substantial issues with data and calculations.” For instance, before the experiment even started, the two groups had very different weights: The control group averaged 96.5 kg, and the test group 91 kg. According to the letter, that difference is striking: Read the rest of this entry »
Surgery journal publishes — then retracts — response to letter that never appeared
How’s this for confusing: A surgery journal is retracting researchers’ response to a letter about their paper, because the letter was never actually published.
According to the managing editor of the Annals of Surgery, the letter — about a 2011 analysis of IV fluids in trauma patients — was accepted, prompting the journal to ask for a response from the authors of the 2011 paper. But the letter-writers never supplied required forms, such as conflict of interest. After spending two years trying to track them down, the journal decided not to publish the letter.
In the meantime, however, the authors’ response to the letter was “inadvertently published,” forcing the journal to retract it. Read the rest of this entry »
