Month: December 2018

Energy researcher up to 18 retractions

A researcher in Malaysia is up to 18 retractions, for faked peer review and a host of other sins.

We first wrote about Shahaboddin Shamshirband, of the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, in early 2017, because Elsevier had pulled, or planned to pull, nine of his papers. Jeffrey Beall, known for his list of possible predatory publishers, had raised questions about duplication by Shamshirband in 2016 on his now-defunct blog, ScholarlyOA.

The most recent retraction for Shamshirband was for “Soft computing methodologies for estimation of energy consumption in buildings with different envelope parameters,” a 2016 paper in Energy Efficiency. Here’s the notice: Continue reading Energy researcher up to 18 retractions

Journal retracts paper by controversial Australian journalist

Maryanne Demasi

The Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) has retracted a 2003 paper that resulted from the PhD thesis of Maryanne Demasi, an Australian journalist whose reporting on statins and the risks of cancer from cell phones has been a lightning rod.

The move, for what the journal says was attempts to reuse images to represent different experiments, follows an investigation by the University of Adelaide into allegations of image manipulation in Demasi’s thesis. In the investigation, Demasi

Continue reading Journal retracts paper by controversial Australian journalist

Weekend reads: Why more papers should be retracted; predictors of “grateful” acknowledgements; multi-million dollar settlement for fake rankings data

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured a new entry on our leaderboard; a third retraction for a prominent Cornell psychology researcher; and a former postdoc banned from Federal funding after lying about the extent of his misconduct. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Why more papers should be retracted; predictors of “grateful” acknowledgements; multi-million dollar settlement for fake rankings data

The Year In Retractions, 2018: What 18,000+ retractions (and counting) told us

Another year in the books — or journals — already?

2018 was another  productive year for Retraction Watch. Topping our own leaderboard of achievements was the launch of our database of retractions, along with an analysis published in Science. With more than 18,000 entries, the repository is the largest of its kind. We are grateful to all of those who helped make it happen, including the MacArthur Foundation and Arnold Foundation, our generous funders for the project over the years, as well as individual donors. And we would like to thank our researcher, Alison Abritis, without whose efforts the project would never have come to fruition. 

But that wasn’t all we did in 2018. We continued to break stories and write in-depth analyses of research misconduct cases and other misadventures in science publishing. Some of these articles include: Continue reading The Year In Retractions, 2018: What 18,000+ retractions (and counting) told us

Former UMich postdoc earns five-year ban on Federal funding, after admitting to misconduct and then lying

A former postdoc at the University of Michigan admitted to research misconduct, but lied about how extensive it was, according to a new finding by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI).

The ORI doesn’t describe Venkata Sudheer Kumar Ramadugu‘s misconduct — that detail will likely come later in the Federal Register, according to their relatively new practice [see update below] — but says that as a postdoc in Michigan’s department of chemistry he “engaged in research misconduct” in work supported by two NIH grants.

Ramadugu agreed to a five-year ban on Federal funding. The penalty was that severe, according to ORI’s annoucement, because Ramadugu Continue reading Former UMich postdoc earns five-year ban on Federal funding, after admitting to misconduct and then lying

The Top 10 Retractions of 2018: From Anversa to Wansink, with a Kardashian along the way

2018 was a busy year in retractions. (OK, they’ve all been busy for a while.) In what has become an annual tradition, our friends at The Scientist asked us to round up what we thought were the biggest retractions of the last 12 months.

Head on over to see our picks. Continue reading The Top 10 Retractions of 2018: From Anversa to Wansink, with a Kardashian along the way

Cornell psychology researcher sees “A model for ethical reasoning” retracted

Robert Sternberg

A Cornell researcher whose work came under scrutiny earlier this year for text recycling has had a third paper retracted.

The latest retraction for Robert Sternberg — whose work was the subject of  allegations by Brendan O’Connor and Nick Brown — appears in the Review of General Psychology.

Here’s the retraction notice for “A model of ethical reasoning:” Continue reading Cornell psychology researcher sees “A model for ethical reasoning” retracted

Alfredo Fusco, facing misconduct charges in Italy, up to 21 retractions

Cancer Research

Alfredo Fusco, a researcher in Italy who has faced criminal charges for research misconduct for more than five years, has had six more papers retracted, for a total of 21.

The latest six retractions are all from Cancer Research. An example, for “Haploinsufficiency of the Hmga1 Gene Causes Cardiac Hypertrophy and Myelo-Lymphoproliferative Disorders in Mice,” a paper first published in 2006: Continue reading Alfredo Fusco, facing misconduct charges in Italy, up to 21 retractions

Weekend reads: How one scientist polluted the literature; a dog earns an authorship; poisoning in the lab

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured a retraction that took three years even after the university and corresponding author requested it; a story of misconduct in a paper about preservatives and obesity; and more about that image of Donald Trump in baboon poop. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: How one scientist polluted the literature; a dog earns an authorship; poisoning in the lab

“Unusual aspects” of a figure — aka a cartoon of Trump’s face in baboon feces — disappear from a journal

“In the original version of this Article, there were unusual aspects to the ‘Extract fecal DNA’ illustration in figure 1. These features have been removed.”

With those 25 words, “one of the greatest scientific Easter eggs in a long time” or an image that was “highly unethical,” depending on your point of view, disappeared from a paper from Scientific Reports. Continue reading “Unusual aspects” of a figure — aka a cartoon of Trump’s face in baboon feces — disappear from a journal