Naoki Mori, of 16-retraction fame, believes he’s getting his job back at the University of the Ryukyus, which released him in August after learning that the cancer researcher had misused images in many of his publications.
According to a report in Science Insider, Mori’s penalty has been reduced to a 10-month suspension, and he will resume his professorship in June. Mori apparently also told Science that some journals “are considering accepting corrected papers,” although he didn’t name them.
That would certainly raise our collective eyebrows. Mori, as we’ve reported, received a 10-year publishing ban from the American Society of Microbiology for his handling of the images. We contacted Ferric Fang, editor of Infection and Immunity, an ASM title that in December retracted five Mori papers, to find out whether the publishing ban will remain in effect. We’ll update this post when we hear from him.
Update, 5:20 p.m. Eastern, 3/7/11: Fang tells us:
The 10 year ban is unaffected by the recent court decision. IAI has not been asked to consider accepting corrected papers, and I do not presently envisage a scenario in which we would do so.
Mori is probably better described as a microbiologist than a cancer researcher.
But for the rest: what is the University of the Ryukyus thinking!?
I’d like to know which journals are considering publishing corrected papers. Will there be a new peer-review process??
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2180/11/136