Applied Surface Science has retracted a 2010 paper by a group of researchers from India and Brazil because one of the figures in the article was suspect.
The paper was titled “Effect of hydrogenation vs. re-heating on intrinsic magnetization of Co doped In2O3.”
According to the abstract:
Influence of Co doping for In in In2O3 matrix has been investigated to study the effect on magnetic vs. electronic properties. Rietveld refinement of X-ray diffraction patterns confirmed formation of single phase cubic bixbyite structure without any parasitic phase. Photoelectron spectroscopy and refinement results further revealed that dopant Co2+ ions are well incorporated at the In3+ sites in In2O3 lattice and also ruled out formation of cluster in the doped samples. Magnetization measurements infer that pure In2O3 is diamagnetic and turns to weak ferromagnetic upon Co doping. Hydrogenation further induces a huge ferromagnetism at 300 K that vanishes upon re-heating. Experimental findings confirm the induced ferromagnetism to be intrinsic, and the magnetic moments to be associated with the point defects (oxygen vacancies Vo) or bound magnetic polarons around the dopant ions.
The paper has been cited 24 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. But the retraction notice states that:
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief, because the Co 2p XPS spectra shown in Figure 3A is not corresponding to the described sample, as admitted by some of the authors. As a result the research and conclusions as described in this paper are not reliable.
What’s curious is whether “some” authors knew the spectra weren’t what they were stated to be before the fact, or whether they merely figured it out after and agreed.
In stands for indium, not for iodine. Let’s have some fun with a new title 🙂
Fixed, thanks!
Indium oxide, not indium.
Very interestingly I found a retraction (dated 18th of June 2014) in JAP [ http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4881079 ] seemingly from (partially?) the same group of authors for a similar reason -> problems with the XPS spectra.
Dear retractionwatch team, maybe you could be interested to investigate in depth? There seems to be more behind the case as this time a completely different material was investigated!
the DOI is not working (yet?), sorry. Here’s the reference in detail: J. Appl. Phys. 115, 239902 (2014).
As mentioned on
RetractionWatch.com/2014/06/24/physicists-with-retraction-for-a-pattern-that-was-unphysical-loses-another-for-manipulation/
, at least one of these people does seem to have fabricated graphs similarly to frauds by Jan Hendrik Schoen.