Another paper by Milena Penkowa, who is being investigated for embezzlement as well as possible scientific misconduct, has been subject to an Expression of Concern:
Here’s the notice in Glia:
Glia has been informed by Juan Hidalgo, MD, DMSc, Professor, Institute of Neurosciences, at the Autonomous University of Barcelona Faculty of Sciences, Barcelona, Spain, of concerns about the validity of some of the data contained in an article published in the journal (Penkowa, M and Hidalgo, J. Metallothionein I + II expression and their role in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis. Glia 2000 DEC; 32(3), 247–263; published ahead of print Oct 25, 2000, DOI: 10.1002/1098-1136(200012)32:3 <247::AID-GLIA50>3.0.CO;2-T) In addition, Rector’s Office of the University of Copenhagen informs us that this matter, along with other related studies, is being investigated by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty. While awaiting the outcome of those investigations, the Editors-in-Chief wish to notify readers of our concerns regarding this article.
The study has been cited 75 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
This is Penkowa’s fourth Expression of Concern (one was a Notice of Concern). Two of those became retractions. She has one other retraction, in Diabetes.
For those with too much time on their hands, a funny excercise is to determine the self-citation rate for this particular paper.
The Hirsch Index is the metric they probably target. But to pull this off with self-citations, one needs to publish a lot which they apparently do. I have seen people using the Vanity Index which is the Hirsch Index calculated using self-citations only. To avoid being too obvious, they should engage in reciprocal citations of other people’s work. This would inflate the Hirsch Index without increasing the Vanity Index.
Well, Penkowa’s Vanity Index is likely pretty high. According to a comment in the Copenhagen University Post, she had a 50% self-citation rate…
http://universitypost.dk/article/comment-self-citations-and-case-milena-penkowa
Is there an online vanity index calculator anywhere? Would love to have a rummage around with it…
Just for the sake of completness, I think you have not commented on the last retraction-after-expression-of-concern from Román-Gómez in J Clinical Oncology of the article “Lack of CpG island methylator phenotype defines a clinical subtype of T-Cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia associated with good prognosis. Journal of Clinical Oncology 23(28):7043-7049.”. It was publixhed in the following page http://jco.ascopubs.org/content/31/7/979