Year: 2019

OSU cancer researcher who has faced misconduct allegations sues to regain lost department chairmanship

Carlo Croce

Carlo Croce, the embattled cancer researcher at The Ohio State University (OSU), is suing the institution to reclaim the department chair he lost late last year for reasons that he says are unclear.

In a filing with the Franklin County civil court, Croce and his attorneys, from the Columbus firm of James E. Arnold and Associates, argue that the university failed to follow its own rules for demoting faculty members last year when it stripped Croce of his position of chair of the Department of Cancer Genetics and Biology. Croce had held the post for more than three consecutive four-year terms, starting in October 2004.

The nut of Croce’s claim centers on the alleged failure of K. Craig Kent, the university’s Dean of the College of Medicine, to consult with the college’s faculty members before demoting him in early November 2018 — a move Croce opposed. Continue reading OSU cancer researcher who has faced misconduct allegations sues to regain lost department chairmanship

Even potential participants of a research integrity conference commit plagiarism, organizers learn

One would hope that researchers submitting abstracts for a meeting on research integrity would be less likely to commit research misconduct. But if the experience of the 6th World Conference on Research Integrity is any indication, that may not be the case. Here, the co-organizers of the conference — Lex Bouter, Daniel Barr, and Mai Har Sham — explain.

Recently the 430 abstracts submitted for the 6th World Conference on Research Integrity (WCRI) were peer reviewed. After an alarming report of apparent plagiarism from one of the 30 reviewers, text similarity checking was conducted on all the abstracts received using Turnitin. This identified 12 suspected cases of plagiarism and 18 suspected cases of self-plagiarism. Abstracts with a Turnitin Similarity Index above 30% (ranging from 37% to 94%) were further assessed and labelled as potential self-plagiarism if overlapping texts had at least one author in common. Continue reading Even potential participants of a research integrity conference commit plagiarism, organizers learn

Oft-quoted paper on spread of fake news turns out to be…fake news

*See update at end of post

The authors of an much-ballyhooed 2017 paper about the spread of fake news on social media have retracted their article after finding that they’d botched their analysis.

The paper, “Limited individual attention and online virality of low-quality information,” presented an argument for why bogus facts seem to gain so much traction on sites such as Facebook. According to the researchers — — from Shanghai Institute of Technology, Indiana University and Yahoo — the key was in the sheer volume of bad information, which swamps the brain’s ability to discern the real from the merely plausible or even the downright ridiculous, competing with limited attention spans and time.

As they reported: Continue reading Oft-quoted paper on spread of fake news turns out to be…fake news

Cribbing from Kribbe: UK criminology prof loses four papers for plagiarism

Anthony Amatrudo

A professor of criminology at Middlesex University London has had four papers retracted because at least three of them cribbed significantly from a PhD thesis written by someone named Kribbe.

Three of the four retractions for the professor, Anthony Amatrudo, appear in International Journal of Law in Context. One of the notices reads: Continue reading Cribbing from Kribbe: UK criminology prof loses four papers for plagiarism

How to investigate allegations of research misconduct: A checklist

Do investigations into research misconduct allegations need better standards? The Association for the Promotion of Research Integrity (APRIN) in Japan, a group of volunteers who “commit themselves to the promotion of research of high integrity” and provide “e-learning material for research ethics education,” thinks so. Today, we present a guest post by Iekuni Ichikawa, who chaired an APRIN committee that recently came up with a new checklist for such investigations, about the effort.

The procedures currently employed by various institutions in Japan are highly variable; hence there is a risk that complainants or respondents might be treated unfairly and that the public might not be informed of the facts of the matters. We organized the Research Misconduct Investigation Standardization Committee of APRIN in July 2017 to propose standardized procedures for handling investigations of alleged research misconduct. Here, we present the “Checklist for Investigating Allegations of Research Misconduct,” the fruits of our discussions. Continue reading How to investigate allegations of research misconduct: A checklist

Former UAB natural products researcher up to a dozen retractions

Santosh Katiyar

A researcher who studied natural products for cancer at the University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB), had six papers retracted last month, bringing him to a total of 12.

Four of the recently retracted papers by Santosh Katiyar had appeared in PLOS ONE, and two had been published in Cancer Research. They have together been cited more than 250 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science, and are on subjects including compounds found in grape seeds and green tea.

Here’s an example, from PLOS ONE, for “Green Tea Catechins Reduce Invasive Potential of Human Melanoma Cells by Targeting COX-2, PGE2 Receptors and Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition:” Continue reading Former UAB natural products researcher up to a dozen retractions

Weekend reads: Conflict of interest debate roils on; fake peer review scams; amateur hour at journals

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 the retraction of a paper by a journalist in Australia whose work has prompted controversy; an energy researcher’s tally of retractions growing to 18; and a look at how journals are falling down on the job when it comes to duplication in their pages. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Conflict of interest debate roils on; fake peer review scams; amateur hour at journals

Japanese stem cell fraud leads to a new retraction

Last March, we reported on the retraction of a 2017 paper in Stem Cell Reports by Kohei Yamamizu and colleagues for widespread fabrication of figures. Turns out the problems were at least five years older than that.

Yamamizu had received a pink slip from his institution, the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), which had put the blame for the misconduct squarely on his shoulders. (The director of the institute, Nobel winner Shinya Yamanaka, also took some of the blame in a public statement in which he said he bore “a strong responsibility for not having prevented research misconduct at our institute.”)

Yamamizu has a new retraction, but this time’s a bit different. Here’s the notice for the paper, “Protein Kinase A Determines Timing of Early Differentiation through Epigenetic Regulation with G9,” which appeared in Cell Stem Cell in June 2012 (Yamanaka was not a co-author on either study).  Although the statement acknowledges the internal investigation, it doesn’t mention misconduct or name Yamamizu: Continue reading Japanese stem cell fraud leads to a new retraction

Wash U scientist admits to research misconduct, resigns post

A Washington University researcher has admitted to committing research misconduct in research involving eight U.S. government grants, according to a Federal watchdog, and resigned his position, according to the university.

Srikanth Santhanam, a staff scientist in the department of internal medicine’s division of gastroenterology at Washington University in St. Louis, “voluntarily admitted to engaging in research misconduct,” vice chancellor for research Jennifer Lodge told Retraction Watch. Santhanam resigned effective December 1, 2018, Lodge said. Continue reading Wash U scientist admits to research misconduct, resigns post

Journals are failing to address duplication in the literature, says a new study

Mario Malički

How seriously are journals taking duplicated work that they publish? That was the question Mario Malički and colleagues set out to answer six years ago. And last month, they published their findings in Biochemia Medica.

The upshot? Journals have a lot of work to do. Continue reading Journals are failing to address duplication in the literature, says a new study