A Rutgers computer scientist is retracting conference proceedings via an unusual channel: his personal blog.
On April 7, Anand Sarwate wrote that he was retracting a mathematical proof from the proceedings from the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), after discovering errors that invalidated the result.
He explains in the blog post why the mistake occurred:
Continue reading Rutgers prof announces retraction on his blog
After issuing a retraction notice May 30 for a biomedical engineering paper, the journal has since pulled the notice, citing “a potential problem.”
After doing some digging, we’ve learned more about the “potential problem.”
Apparently, the retraction was requested by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. NTU has been investigating the first author for months, after it received an allegation about an unrelated manuscript. As a result, NTU terminated first author Hamidreza Namazi‘s contract as a research fellow earlier this year.
As part of the investigation, NTU began to look at Namazi’s other papers, and discovered several with potential problems — including this one, which NTU believes did not receive proper ethical approvals. So it contacted the journal to raise its concerns.
Namazi, however, told us that he and his colleague obtained approval from another organization, but didn’t make that clear in the paper — so the journal has retracted its retraction notice while it investigates Namazi’s claim.
In place of the original retraction notice, a notice now reads:
Continue reading A retraction gets retracted — but the first author’s contract is still terminated
The Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists has permanently banned a co-author of notorious fraudster Yoshitaka Fujii, after investigating many of his publications for alleged fraud.
According to the announcement last month (in Japanese), a committee investigated approximately 40 publications by Yuhji Saitoh of Yachiyo Medical Center and Tokyo Women’s Medical University in Japan. Saitoh resigned from the society once the investigation started; after the committee found evidence of data manipulation and fraud, the society decided it would permanently ban him as a member.
Saitoh was a frequent co-author of Yoshitaka Fujii, an anesthesia researcher with a record-breaking number of retractions (more than 180). Last year, anesthesia fraud sleuth John Carlisle and a co-author analyzed Saitoh’s papers — including many he didn’t co-author with Fujii — and concluded there was very low likelihood the sampling had been conducted randomly, among other potential concerns.
On May 9, the Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists issued the following statement, which we translated:
Past and present members of the editorial board of a public health journal have filed a formal complaint against the publisher after it appointed an editor with industry ties without consulting the board, and unilaterally retracted a paper by the former editor.
Meanwhile, the board and publisher of the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health continue to exchange letters about the issue; the latest from the publisher, Taylor & Francis, answers some of the board’s ongoing questions — and declines to answer others.
For instance, managing director Ian Bannerman previously told the board that the publisher “reached out to” editorial board member Jukka Takala of the Workplace Safety and Health Institute in Singapore (by phone and email) before contacting new editor Andrew Maier. Takala told us last month, however, he was “never consulted on Dr. Maier.” In a letter dated May 25, Bannerman told the board:
Continue reading Battle between public health journal and editorial board wages on
Plant scientists have issued two retractions after noticing several images had been duplicated within and across the papers.
The papers both appeared in March 2002 in The Plant Cell and The Plant Journal.
The last author on both papers — Jonathan Jones, a professor and group leader at The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, UK — took responsibility for the duplications. He told us:
As last author I was responsible for checking the papers but did not notice the similarities between figures in the different papers. I regret this and took action as soon as I realized there was an issue. Both papers went through peer review and the issue was not picked up at that point either.
Susana Rivas, the first author on both papers, has collaborated with beleaguered plant scientist Oliver Voinnet — and was a second author on one of his eight retractions (which we covered here).
The editor-in-chief of TPJ Christoph Benning said that, after the authors contacted them, the journals looked into the issue, confirmed the duplications and then retracted the papers: Continue reading Authors retract two plant biology papers over duplicated images
A sweeping analysis of more than 5,000 papers in eight leading medical journals has found compelling evidence of suspect data in roughly 2% of randomized controlled clinical trials in those journals.
Although the analysis, by John Carlisle, an anesthetist in the United Kingdom, could not determine whether the concerning data were tainted by misconduct or sloppiness, it suggests that editors of the journals have some investigating to do. Of the 98 studies identified by the method, only 16 have already been retracted. [See update at end.]
The types of studies analyzed — randomized controlled clinical trials — are considered the gold standard of medical evidence, and tend to be the basis for drug approvals and changes in clinical practice. Carlisle, according to an editorial by John Loadsman and Tim McCulloch accompanying the new study published today in Anesthesia, Continue reading Two in 100 clinical trials in eight major journals likely contain inaccurate data: Study
The week at Retraction Watch featured an unusual warning from the New England Journal of Medicine, and the withdrawal of a paper over a fear of legal threats. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: ‘Pile of dung’ republished; Diverging views on publishing negative results; Economists share regrets
Last week, Emily Putnam-Hornstein, an associate professor at the University of Southern California, was reading what seemed like a noteworthy new report from the RAND Corporation on the child welfare system. But then she realized that some of the key estimates were off. When she sent the report to some colleagues, they agreed.
Curious, Putnam-Hornstein and some of her colleagues tuned into a RAND webinar on Thursday, May 25, to discuss the report, Improving Child Welfare Outcomes: Balancing Investments in Prevention and Treatment, which had been released two days earlier. They asked the report’s lead author, Jeanne Ringel, about the numbers, and Ringel responded by saying they were on-target. (Ringel recalls acknowledging that the numbers were conservative, but that revised inputs would not change the overall results substantially.) The Pritzker Foundation, which had funded the study, also dismissed the concerns.
Ringel, however, contacted Putnam-Hornstein to suggest a phone call. The Memorial Day holiday weekend was just about underway, so the call was scheduled for Wednesday, the 31st. In the meantime, Putnam-Hornstein and other researchers drafted a letter explaining their concerns. A conference call happened on the 31st, during which the critics shared their concerns, and also said that they’d publish the letter online if the report was not retracted swiftly.
Apparently, the critics were persuasive:
Continue reading RAND withdraws report on child welfare reform for further analysis
The fallout continues for a study conducted at a local CrossFit gym by researchers at The Ohio State University. First it was corrected, now it’s been retracted, and it continues to be the basis of litigation against both the authors and the publisher.
Editors at the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research have decided to pull the 2013 study after learning that the research protocol had not been approved by Ohio State’s institutional review board (IRB).
Over the past few years, the study has spawned several lawsuits, including a defamation suit brought by gym owner Mitch Potterf against Ohio State that landed him a six-figure settlement, as well as an ongoing suit by Potterf against the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA, which publishes the journal). The CrossFit brand has also sued the NSCA. [See update at end of post for more on that case.]
An NSCA statement issued May 30 describes what happened: Continue reading Journal retracts Ohio State CrossFit study at center of lawsuits
File this under “not a surprise.” After the authors of a paper entitled “The conceptual penis as a social construct” confessed it was a hoax immediately after publication, the publisher has retracted it.
The notice is sparse:
This article has been retracted by the publisher. For more information please see the statement on this article.
In that statement, which we covered last week, the publisher said published the paper after choosing reviewers whose “expertise did not fully align with this subject matter.”
We asked co-author James Lindsay what he thought about that explanation:
Continue reading Publisher retracts “conceptual penis” hoax article