A researcher has pulled a paper about uranium oxide fuel pellets after notifying the journal the data had been falsified — and, what’s more, the publisher can’t verify the identities of the co-authors.
Originally, the Journal of the European Ceramic Society paper suggested a way to increase the compatibility of uranium oxide fuel pellets, which are usually used in nuclear reactors, at high temperatures.
Here’s the retraction notice:
This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).
This article has been retracted at the request of the author following disclosure by the corresponding author that data in the article has been falsified. The publisher has also been unable to verify the identities of the co-authors listed on the article.
It’s not clear from the notice who falsified the data. We’ve reached out to the study’s first and corresponding author, Hui Wang, who is based at the Nuclear Power Institute of China (NPIC) in Chengdu, Sichuan, to obtain more information. We couldn’t find contact information for last author Changgeng Yin.
The 2014 paper, “Research on preparation technology, sintering performance, microstructure of UO2−x fuel pellets,” has been cited once (by its retraction notice), according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science.
We’ve also contacted the journal and NPIC for more information. We’ll update the post with anything else we learn.
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