Author: Alison McCook

Journal taking second look at paper on campus rape

violence and genderA journal is reviewing a paper about trends in rape at U.S. colleges after the author realized a mistake.

Although the journal Violence and Gender hasn’t issued any editorial notice about the paper, Inside Higher Ed published a correction July 14 to its original news story about the topic.

“Dangerous Colleges: Associations Between School-Level Factors and the Risk of Sexual Victimization of Female Students” found that the risk of rape was higher at large, public institutions, but after the author realized he had made a coding error, he contacted Inside Higher Ed to explain that the risk of rape was higher only at public universities, regardless of their size.

The paper appeared in the June, 2016 issue of the journal; Sophie Mohin, Assistant Managing Editor for publisher Mary Ann Liebert, told us the author alerted the journal to the mistake on July 12: Continue reading Journal taking second look at paper on campus rape

Doctor who blew whistle on defunded study speaks

steve williams
Steve Williams

It’s rare for the U.S. government to revoke grants – but it happened recently, according to a report this week by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting (KyCIR). As the report notes, in March the government revoked $914,000 in funding awarded to Susan Harkema at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, after discovering problems with a study that examined whether the muscle relaxant baclofen helps paralyzed patients move on treadmills. (The university has denied it lost any government funding; a representative of Louisville Public Media, which houses the KyCIR, is standing by the story.) All of this has not been news to Steve Williams, a physician now based at the University of Washington, who has been raising questions about the study for years.

Retraction Watch: What was your role in the study in question, that’s now been defunded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILIRR)?

Steve Williams: I was the study physician who evaluated patients for enrollment.

RW: According to the KyCIR, the study began recruiting patients in 2012. When did you start getting concerned about how it was being conducted? Continue reading Doctor who blew whistle on defunded study speaks

Broken windows, threats, and detention: Is whistleblowing worth it?

Wyn Ellis
Wyn Ellis

Several years ago, a UK academic living in Thailand for decades decided to expose the fact that a Thai official had plagiarized his PhD thesis. And he’s paid the price. Last year, Wyn Ellis was held in a Thai airport for five days, as officials claimed he was a “danger to Thai society.” As some new developments have emerged in the case, Ellis ponders the after-effects of his actions.

This month marks the 4th anniversary of the very public revocation by Chulalongkorn University of the PhD degree of Supachai Lorlowhakarn, the former director of Thailand’s National Innovation Agency (NIA), for ethical violations, and plagiarism of his thesis.

For me, as the original whistleblower who first alerted authorities to the problems with Lorlowhakarn’s PhD thesis, the knowledge that justice was eventually served is far from cause for celebration. Indeed, the Byzantine twists and turns, the lawsuits, surveillance, physical attacks, and even death threats over the past nine years have — without a doubt — taken their toll on my family and I, and should serve as a salutary lesson to anyone harboring naive notions of civic duty. This was certainly my own motivation back then, as an advocate and passionate supporter of Thai science and innovation.

Here are some of the threats I encountered: Continue reading Broken windows, threats, and detention: Is whistleblowing worth it?

Should a paper be retracted if an author omits a conflict of interest?

s-cover-yvs1606A JAMA journal has quickly issued a correction for a 2016 paper after the author failed to mention several relevant conflicts of interest. Normally, we’d see this as a run-of-the-mill correction notice, but since we reported last week that a journal retracted a paper for omitting pharma funding, we got to wondering: Is failure to disclose a conflict of interest a retractable offense?

Guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) do say that retractions are used for “failure to disclose a major competing interest likely to influence interpretations or recommendations.” But most of the time when we see corrections to the literature for such omissions, they’re corrections, not retractions.

On Friday, JAMA Ophthalmology issued a correction notice for an invited commentary published in April, which addressed two papers in the journal about melanoma of the eye (uveal melanoma). However, the original commentary failed to note that author Arun D. Singh at the Cleveland Clinic had some relevant conflicts to mention, as the notice explains: Continue reading Should a paper be retracted if an author omits a conflict of interest?

Have 1 in 5 UK academics fabricated data?

logoA small survey of UK academics suggests misconduct such as faking data and plagiarism is occurring surprisingly often.

The survey — of 215 UK academics — estimated that 1 in 7 had plagiarized from someone else’s work, and nearly 1 in 5 had fabricated data. Here’s how Joanna Williams and David Roberts at the University of Kent summarize the results in their full report, published by the Society for Research into Higher Education: Continue reading Have 1 in 5 UK academics fabricated data?

Should fraudsters be criminally prosecuted?

Michael Hadjiargyrou
Michael Hadjiargyrou

After an AIDS vaccine researcher was sentenced to five years in prison for spiking samples, our co-founders Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus raised an important question: Should we criminally prosecute researchers who commit misconduct? (So has Richard Smith.) In last fall’s special issue of the Journal of Information Ethics, Michael Hadjiargyrou at New York Institute of Technology, said: yes. Tell us what you think in a poll at the end of our discussion.

Retraction Watch: Did any particular event prompt this article? Continue reading Should fraudsters be criminally prosecuted?

Sixth retraction appears for bone researcher due to “extensive self-plagiarism”

cov150hA bone researcher in Japan has logged his sixth retraction, after acknowledging he duplicated substantial portions of a 2011 paper and added “honorary” co-authors.

The retraction, in Parkinsonism & Related Disorders, follows five others for Yoshihiro Sato, including one from JAMA, some of which were pulled over concerns regarding authorship and data integrity. The latest retraction duplicated text from another 2005 paper that was itself retracted last year, both for duplicating from this newly retracted paper and for “concerns about the underlying data.”

Sato — who is listed at Mitate Hospital on the paper — told the journal he takes full responsibility.

Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading Sixth retraction appears for bone researcher due to “extensive self-plagiarism”

Genotyping mistake costs lab two papers and year of work

PNASResearchers are retracting two papers about molecular signalling in plants — including one from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) — after discovering some inadvertent genotyping errors. But that was only after they used the problematic plants for an entire year without realizing they’d made a mistake.

In a pair of refreshingly transparent and detailed notices, the authors explain that the transgenic plants used in the papers included genotyping errors, which invalidated their findings. According to the notices, first author Man-Ho Oh generated the problematic transgenic plants, while corresponding author Steven C. Huber, based at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), took responsibility for omitting some critical oversight.

Huber told us that there were only two papers that used the transgenic plants in question, so no other retractions will be forthcoming.

Here’s the notice in PNAS for “Autophosphorylation of Tyr-610 in the receptor kinase BAK1 plays a role in brassinosteroid signaling and basal defense gene expression:”  Continue reading Genotyping mistake costs lab two papers and year of work

Publishing needs more science, fewer stories: Q&A with founders of ScienceMatters

rajendran460
Lawrence Rajendran

Ever wish you could just publish an exciting result, without having to wait for the entire string of data that follows in order to tell an entire story, which then gets held up for months by peer review at traditional journals? So do a lot of other researchers, who are working on ways to sidestep those barriers. One new project: ScienceMatters, a publishing platform where scientists can submit single, robust results for relatively quick peer review. We spoke with co-founders Lawrence Rajendran and Mirko Bischofberger about how this new next-generation journal platform works, and why it’s important.

Retraction Watch: You accept “only single observations, properly conducted and robustly validated.” Why did you want to restrict your publications to something so specific, and relatively narrow? Continue reading Publishing needs more science, fewer stories: Q&A with founders of ScienceMatters

Join our team: Retraction Watch needs a part-time editor

RW logoWe’re so inundated with story ideas and projects, we need some extra help! Specifically, we’re looking for a part-time editor who can be available during specific hours when we need an extra pair of hands.

During that time, you would review tips and write up breaking stories if they arise, as well as edit guest posts and other stories we couldn’t get to during the day. We’re specifically looking for someone who can be available for a fixed block of time, for a total of 12 hours per week.

The specific hours are Continue reading Join our team: Retraction Watch needs a part-time editor