Month: March 2013

Smoking cessation paper pulled for “almost word-for-word” similarity to authors’ previous work

jmfnmThe Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine has retracted a 2008 article on smoking cessation by a group from Sweden which they had published not many months before in a different journal.

The retracted paper was titled “Quitting smoking is perceived to have an effect on somatic health among pregnant and non-pregnant women.” The authors, from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, had published a similar paper — “Perception of Smoking-Related Health Consequences among Pregnant and Non-Pregnant Women” — in the American Journal of Addictions in 2007.

How similar?

Continue reading Smoking cessation paper pulled for “almost word-for-word” similarity to authors’ previous work

Copy editor, stat! PNAS spells its editor-in-chief’s name wrong — on a piece he co-authored

pnas 3 5 13With apologies in advance to the good folks at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) for making a joke about something that could very well happen to any of us, we note the following correction: Continue reading Copy editor, stat! PNAS spells its editor-in-chief’s name wrong — on a piece he co-authored

IRB issues force retraction of ulcer bug bacteria paper

jpgnA group of Turkish researchers has had a paper retracted on how to treat the bacterium that cause ulcers after the journal’s editors found “issues related to the institutional review board approval” of the project.

Here’s the retraction notice from the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition: Continue reading IRB issues force retraction of ulcer bug bacteria paper

You plagiarized? No problem, says journal, we’ll retract so you can rewrite, and we’ll republish

mol cell biochemHere’s something we haven’t seen before: A group of researchers plagiarize, are called on it, and are then allowed to resubmit a new version that’s published, while their offending paper is retracted.

A reader  flagged the plagiarism in the original paper, “Protein domains, catalytic activity, and subcellular distribution of mouse NTE-related esterase,” by Ping’an Chang and colleagues, which led the research team to revise and resubmit the manuscript. After the journal Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry — a Springer title — published the plagiarism-scrubbed paper, the original paper required retraction.

The retraction refers to a dispute between labs, but not plagiarism: Continue reading You plagiarized? No problem, says journal, we’ll retract so you can rewrite, and we’ll republish

JAMA journal quietly replaces diabetes drug commentary after learning co-author is working for drugmaker

jama int medJAMA Internal Medicine has replaced a commentary they published last week on the risks of two diabetes drugs, but you wouldn’t know the new version was a replacement.

One change is a correction about whether Byetta and Januvia carry so-called “black box” warnings from the FDA. The original sentence:

Because both drugs already carry US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) black box warnings for the risk of pancreatitis, why is this study important?

It now reads: Continue reading JAMA journal quietly replaces diabetes drug commentary after learning co-author is working for drugmaker

Wash U psych researcher cited in ORI probe, faces multiple retractions

Adam Savine
Adam Savine

The Office of Research Integrity says Adam Savine, a former post-doc graduate student in psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, committed misconduct in work that tainted three papers and six abstracts he submitted to conferences.

One of Savine’s studies that drew some media attention involved Diederik Stapel-esque research showing which brain region lights up when people see money. He was quoted in this 2010 article on Medical News Today saying:

“We wanted to see what motivates us to pursue one goal in the world above all others,” Savine says. “You might think that these mechanisms would have been addressed a long time ago in psychology and neuroscience, but it’s not been until the advent of fMRI about 15-20 years ago that we’ve had the tools to address this question in humans, and any progress in this area has been very, very recent.”

Apparently, now we know. According to the notice, Savine engaged in misconduct in research funded by four grants: Continue reading Wash U psych researcher cited in ORI probe, faces multiple retractions

Scientist whose work is “not fully supported by the available laboratory records” to retract 8 more papers

SK Manna
SK Manna

Yesterday, we reported that Sunil Kumar Manna, the head of immunology at India’s Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, had retracted two papers for image problems.

Turns out Manna will be retracting eight more, he told us today. Here they are: Continue reading Scientist whose work is “not fully supported by the available laboratory records” to retract 8 more papers

Authors retract two papers on Remicade following legal battles

april_2009_ar_coverA group of Belgian researchers has retracted two decade-old papers in Arthritis & Rheumatism following an investigation and court case.

The papers involved the use of the drug infliximab — sold by Johnson & Johnson as Remicade  — to treat Sjögren’s syndrome, an auto-immune condition marked by the destruction of exocrine glands that secrete saliva and tears.

Infliximab is not approved for Sjögren’s. Although the two now-retracted studies suggested that it might be helpful, subsequent data did not support those findings.

Neither, apparently, did the studies themselves. Here’s the retraction notice (it’s a PDF): Continue reading Authors retract two papers on Remicade following legal battles

Retraction count for gynecologic cancer researcher Takai grows to seven

cancerlettersNoriyuki Takai, a gynecologic cancer researcher at Oita University in Japan who retracted three papers last October, has four more retractions, these in Cancer Letters.

All but one of the notices reads as follows: Continue reading Retraction count for gynecologic cancer researcher Takai grows to seven

And then there were eight: Three more retractions for Alirio Melendez, all in the Journal of Immunology

alirio_melendezAlirio Melendez, who has already retracted five papers and was found by one of his former universities to have committed misconduct on more than 20, has three more retractions.

Here’s the notice for “Antisense Knockdown of Sphingosine Kinase 1 in Human Macrophages Inhibits C5a Receptor-Dependent Signal Transduction, Ca2+ Signals, Enzyme Release, Cytokine Production, and Chemotaxis,” cited 68 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge: Continue reading And then there were eight: Three more retractions for Alirio Melendez, all in the Journal of Immunology