A researcher has retracted two 2016 papers after discovering problems with the data that negated the findings — and after one of his three listed affiliations denied the research was conducted there.
According to the retraction notices issued by Chemosphere, Hong-Wei Luo incorrectly claimed to be affiliated with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee in one of his three affiliations. His other institutions listed on the papers include universities in Singapore and China.
However, an official from the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, told us the work in the now-retracted papers was not carried out at the NTU either.
Here’s the first of the retraction notices, issued on August 8:
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief and Authors.
The authors wish to retract this article because they found errors in the data analysis. The authors performed additional experiments, and found that except thiol groups, other sulfur (S) species as products could be also observed in redox reactions between sulfide (as Na2S or H2S) and NOM. Thus, the results and conclusions in this research article are not significant. This was later concluded after substantial investigations. The research was not conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Hongwei Luo is not an employee at ORNL, and his published work was not performed at ORNL. The use of ORNL as a second affiliation for Hongwei Luo is incorrect. This has raised a number of issues including falsification of the affiliation and violation of ORNL publication policy (without ORNL agreement and approval).
The paper, which was published in March 2016, “Bioreduction and reoxidation of uranium enhanced by thiol functional groups in natural organic matter,” has been so far been cited once (by Luo’s other newly retracted paper), according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science.
And here’s the retraction notice for “Effect of thiols enrichment on Cr(VI) photo-reduction by natural organic matter (NOM),” also felled by data problems:
The author wishes to retract this article because he found errors in the data analysis. The author performed additional experiments, and found that except thiol groups, other sulfur (S) species as products could be also observed in redox reactions between sulfide (as Na2S or H2S) and NOM. Thus, the results and conclusions in this research article are not significant. This was later concluded after substantial investigations. The research was not conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Hongwei Luo is not an employee at ORNL, and his published work was not performed at ORNL. The use of ORNL as a second affiliation for Hongwei Luo is incorrect. This has raised a number of issues including falsification of the affiliation and violation of ORNL publication policy (without ORNL agreement and approval).
The paper, published in May 2016, is yet to be cited.
Luo told us:
We performed additional experiments, and found that the conclusions in original publications are not significant. I immediately sent a retraction request to the Editor-In-Chief of this journal. He suggested a corrigendum that can be linked to original publications. As substantial investigations in science are still needed for us, retraction might be a better choice at [this] time.
When asked about the issues with the listed affiliations, Luo added:
…I used to be a visiting scholar, working at ORNL. I have other papers published and affiliated with ORNL. However, these two papers were published unfortunately without ORNL agreement and approval, although ORNL was just listed as my second affiliation. Now, I realize that ORNL is a special institution with even more special publication policy.
An ORNL spokesperson told us that Luo was a visiting graduate student at ORNL for about a year. According to the spokesperson, Luo’s supervisor at ORNL noticed that the two papers had been published after he had returned to China.
The spokesperson added:
Our researcher contacted Luo’s advisor and Luo after seeing the ORNL affiliation listed on the two papers, since the work was not performed at ORNL and Luo does not have an ORNL affiliation. Luo chose to retract the articles. ORNL did not do an investigation into the articles or Luo’s work.
Tony Mayer, research integrity officer at NTU, told us:
Dr Luo’s work in these retracted papers was not carried out at NTU and we had no knowledge of these retractions…
As part of an unrelated case, the NTU recently revoked the PhD of a researcher who was then based at Harvard Medical School for falsifying data. The high-profile case resulted in his former boss being dismissed from his joint positions at the NTU and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (also in Singapore).
We’ve reached out the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei (the other institution listed on the papers), and will update the post with anything else we learn.
Hat tip: Jean-Claude Bollinger
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This is to affirm that none of the work for the two retracted papers was carried out at NTU
To link this case to another case in an unrelated field is quite wrong
As the first author, these works were not performed at NTU