Slippery slope? Data problems force retraction of landslide paper

The Mameyes Landslide, in Puerto Rico, buried more than 100 homes in 1985.  Source: USGS
The Mameyes Landslide, in Puerto Rico, buried more than 100 homes in 1985. Source: USGS

The authors of a 2014 paper in The Scientific World Journal on rock slopes have retracted their article for “erroneous” data.

The paper, “Slope Stability Analysis Using Limit Equilibrium Method in Nonlinear Criterion,” came from a group of researchers from institutions including the Changjiang River Scientific Research Institute in Wuhan, and the Key Laboratory of Transportation Tunnel Engineering at Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu. It’s about (we think) how to calculate the safety of rock slopes, and how vulnerable they are to landslides.

Here’s the notice, which as a pretty fair ratio of words to information:

This article has been retracted upon the authors’ request as it was found to include erroneous data. Its findings and conclusion cannot be relied on.

We emailed the first author for more information about the nature of the errors, and will update this post if we hear from him.

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