The U.S. Office of Research Integrity has found a former post-doc at the University of Massachusetts Medical School guilty of misconduct stemming from falsification of data. The finding comes more than two years after a retraction referred to an investigation at U Mass. The ORI said Ozgur Tataroglu, who worked as a neurobiologist at the … Continue reading Former UMass post-doc faked data, says federal watchdog
Kim Kardashian is known for many accomplishments. But now she can add another to her resume: First author of a paper in the Drug Designing & Intellectual Properties International Journal. What can we say? It’s international, and it’s a journal. We talked to Tomáš Pluskal, a post-doc at MIT and the last author of the paper … Continue reading Kim Kardashian pairs up with an MIT post-doc to publish a scientific paper
This week at Retraction Watch featured a hotly debated guest post from Leonid Schneider and two ORI findings. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
We reported last week on a Portuguese group that lost two papers over mislabeled image files. Now, we’ve learned that first author Christian Ramos has been fired after speaking to Retraction Watch and offering what seemed like a heartfelt apology (which you can read here).
The Journal of Neuroscience has retracted a 2011 paper by a group of UCLA researchers after the institution concluded that a post-doc at the institution had falsified data. The article, “Epigenetic Enhancement of BDNF Signaling Rescues Synaptic Plasticity in Aging,” came from the lab of Cui-Wei “Tracy” Xie, a behavioral scientist. It has been cited 42 … Continue reading UCLA probe ends in retraction for neuroscience post-doc
Shane Mayack, a former post-doc in Harvard lab of Amy Wagers, a rising star in the stem cell field, has been sanctioned by the Office of Research Integrity for misconduct. Mayack, who has defended her actions on this blog as honest error — albeit sloppiness — and has not admitted to wrongdoing, must undergo supervision … Continue reading ORI finds Harvard stem cell lab post-doc Mayack manipulated images
The Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Medicine has retracted a 2011 paper after it was determined that the first author, then a post-doc at the University of Michigan, had plagiarized from another publication. The first author of the retracted article, “Functionalization of titanium based metallic biomaterials for implant applications,” was the post-doc, Rahul Bhola, … Continue reading Materials paper retracted after post-doc’s plagiarism
More on the case of Savio Woo, the New York gene therapy researcher who, as Retraction Watch reported this week, had several papers pulled by noted journals. Two of Woo’s post-doctoral fellows at Mount Sinai School of Medicine were dismissed for “research misconduct,” said Ian Michaels, a spokesman for the institution. According to Michaels: When … Continue reading Update on gene therapy researcher Savio Woo retractions: Two post-docs dismissed for fraud
Worried about scarce research funding? Does the prospect of paying rent on that meager post-doc salary keep you up at night? Fear no more! Innoscience Research in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to the rescue. The company has launched an innovative (read: shady) scheme to pay researchers to cite studies from several journals it controls. How much … Continue reading Publisher offers cash for citations
A paper suggesting that smokers were significantly less likely than nonsmokers to contract Covid-19 has been retracted because the authors failed to disclose financial ties to … the tobacco industry. The article, which appeared as a preprint and then as an “early view” in the European Respiratory Journal last July, came from a group at … Continue reading ‘Unfair and unsubstantiated’: Journal retracts paper suggesting smoking is linked to lower COVID-19 risk