Year: 2014

“Super-surgeon” who created artificial tracheas facing new misconduct allegations

dr-paolo-macchiarini
Paolo Macchiarini

A one-time media favorite is being accused of serious misconduct in three cases where he inserted artificial windpipes into patients and treated them with stem cells. Two of the patients have died; one survives, but needs her airway cleaned every four hours by hospital staff to keep her alive.

A little over two years ago, thoracic surgeon Paolo Macchiarini soared to the top and then sunk to the bottom within days. First, his work implanting artificial tracheas hit the front page of the New York Times. Days later he was placed on house arrest for accusations of fraud and extortion.

We wrote about him a month later, when a paper of his was retracted for plagiarism.

Here’s Henry Fountain at the NYT writing about the new allegations: Continue reading “Super-surgeon” who created artificial tracheas facing new misconduct allegations

Publisher discovers 50 manuscripts involving fake peer reviewers

bmc logoBioMed Central has uncovered about fifty manuscripts in their editorial system that involved fake peer reviewers, Retraction Watch has learned.

Most of the cases were not published because they were discovered by a manuscript editor on a final pre-publication check. The five or so that have been published will go through some sort of re-review, which may result in expressions of concern or retraction.

The narrative seems similar to that in the growing number of cases of peer review manipulation we’ve seen recently. What tipped off the editor was minor spelling mistakes in the reviewers’ names, and odd non-institutional email addresses that were often changed once reviews had been submitted, in an apparent attempt to cover the fakers’ tracks. Those “reviewers” had turned in reports across several journals, spanning several subjects.

It would seem that a third party, perhaps marketing services helping authors have papers accepted, was involved.

The publisher has let all of its external editors in chief know about the situation. To prevent it from happening again, authors will not be able to recommend reviewers for their papers. Here’s a message from BioMed Central senior managing editor Diana Marshall that went out to a number of journal editors earlier today: Continue reading Publisher discovers 50 manuscripts involving fake peer reviewers

Controversial editor and patient safety expert had undisclosed COIs in 9 of 10 papers

denham
Charles Denham

A new editorial in the Journal of Patient Safety accuses former editor and patient safety expert Charles Denham of having undeclared conflicts of interest in nine out of ten articles he published in the journal.

Denham was at the center of massive controversy earlier this year, when the government accused him of taking more than $11 million in kickbacks from medical supply company CareFusion. Supposedly, he took the money to influence the National Quality Forum, where Denham was a co-chair of safe practices, to endorce ChloraPrep, a CareFusion antiseptic.

Cheryl Clark, at HealthLeaders Media, was first to report on the new editorial. Here’s what the editors wrote: Continue reading Controversial editor and patient safety expert had undisclosed COIs in 9 of 10 papers

Nanoparticle paper earns retraction for lack of reproducibility

issue 1 - RSC Advances_2012.inddA nanoparticle article published earlier this year has been retracted by RSC Advances for lack of reproducibility, although we haven’t been able to get more details about what happened.

Here’s the notice for “Sonochemical synthesis of poly(methyl methacrylate) core–surfactin shell nanoparticles for recyclable removal of heavy metal ions and its cytotoxicity” (freely available but requires sign-in): Continue reading Nanoparticle paper earns retraction for lack of reproducibility

“I’m so done with it”: Conservationist speaks out against sexism in science

Amanda Stanley
Amanda Stanley

Last week, we wrote about conservationist Stuart Pimm receiving criticism for casual sexism in a recent book review.

The journal did not retract the review, but it released an editor’s note condemning the language Pimm used, including quoting a movie scene in which a man told a woman “I don’t take whores in taxis.” Some readers have questioned whether this is really an instance of sexism, including here in the Retraction Watch comments.

So we reached out to Amanda Stanley, a conservation scientist who was so troubled by the book review that she wrote a letter to the editor, to be published soon in Biological Conservation. Here’s her powerful explanation of where this fits in the overall conversation about sexism in science:
Continue reading “I’m so done with it”: Conservationist speaks out against sexism in science

Are lawyers ruining science?

labtimes 6-14Regular Retraction Watch readers may have noticed that legal issues seem to be popping up more often in the cases we cover. There has been a lawsuit filed against PubPeer commenters, for example, and Nature last month blamed lawyers for delayed and opaque retraction notices.

It was those cases and others that prompted us to write our most recent column for Lab Times with a title mirrored in the headline of this post. As we note in our column, there are a lot of great lawyers out there, some of whom — for example, those at WordPress — have helped us

fight the good fight. We also believe strongly in the ability of prosecutors to punish – and, ideally, deter – scientific misconduct, particularly in cases involving fraud using taxpayer dollars.

Still, as we write: Continue reading Are lawyers ruining science?

Weekend reads: Novartis fires scientist for faking data; journal accepts F-bomb-laden spam paper

booksThe week at Retraction Watch began with a case of a South Korean engineer who had to retract ten studies at once. Here’s what was happening elsewhere, along with an update on a story we covered a few days ago:

Continue reading Weekend reads: Novartis fires scientist for faking data; journal accepts F-bomb-laden spam paper

‘‘I don’t take whores in taxis”: Casual sexism in scientific journal leads to editor’s note

Author Stuart Pimm.
Author Stuart Pimm

The Elsevier journal Biological Conservation has put out an apology, but not a retraction, after outcry over a bizarre, misogynistic non sequitur in a book review by Duke conservation biologist Stuart Pimm.

Here’s the introduction to Pimm’s review of Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth, which went online in October ahead of its December print publication: Continue reading ‘‘I don’t take whores in taxis”: Casual sexism in scientific journal leads to editor’s note

Can you hear me now? Neuroscience paper sunk by audio stimulus error

j neurophysHave you ever noticed that hearing something read aloud as you follow along helps you remember what you’re reading better?

Two bioengineers at Trinity College Dublin, Michael Crosse and Edmund Lalor, decided to investigate the underlying reason for the phenomenon. Unfortunately, after they published their findings in the Journal of Neurophysiology earlier this year, they tried to recreate the experiments and discovered that their equipment didn’t line up the audio and visual stimuli properly.

They did the right thing and contacted the journal for a retraction. Here’s the notice for “The cortical representation of the speech envelope is earlier for audiovisual speech than audio speech”: Continue reading Can you hear me now? Neuroscience paper sunk by audio stimulus error

Updated: Former Vanderbilt scientist faked nearly 70 images, will retract 6 papers: ORI

ori logoA former Vanderbilt University biomedical engineer committed fraud on a massive scale, according to a new Office of Research Integrity (ORI) report.

Igor Dzhura is banned from receiving federal funding for three years, and is retracting six papers, which have been cited more than 500 times. Since leaving Vanderbilt, he has worked at SUNY Upstate Medical University, and now works at Novartis.

According to the ORI, Dzhura was a busy boy at Vanderbilt, faking images and drastically inflating the number of experiments he conducted by duplicating computer files and saving them in nested folders. The total body count from his work includes: Continue reading Updated: Former Vanderbilt scientist faked nearly 70 images, will retract 6 papers: ORI