Author: Adam Marcus

Saudi journal retracts paper on new chemicals for being, well, not new

JSaudChemIrony alert: If you’re going to publish a paper on purportedly new molecules, please try to make sure those substances are indeed novel. Here’s case were that wasn’t quite so.

The Journal of Saudi Chemical Society has retracted a 2011 paper by a researcher who lifted the entire article from a previously published paper by someone else.

The paper in question, “Synthesis and antimicrobial activity of some new quinazolin-4(3H)-one derivatives,” came from Adnan Kadi at Kind Saud University in Riyadh. But according to the retraction notice, only a few words in that title — “some” and “quinazolin” were accurate. “New,” certainly not. (We suppose “derivatives” hits the mark, but for the wrong reason.) Continue reading Saudi journal retracts paper on new chemicals for being, well, not new

Cardiac arrestees: Questions surface about Heart paper from Italian group that faces charges

heartcoverWe don’t usually cover “pretractions” (see #5 for why), but our friend Larry Husten over at Forbes has a story today about what appears to be a dead paper walking.

The article, in Heart, comes from a group of prominent researchers in Italy who have been arrested for possibly failing to adequately consent their patients, among other potential misdeeds.

According to Husten, the 2010 article in question, “A randomised trial of target-vessel versus multi-vessel revascularisation in ST-elevation myocardial infarction: major adverse cardiac events during long-term follow-up,” by Maria Grazia Modena (a past president of the Italian Society of Cardiology) and colleagues, may have been grossly misrepresented to the journal. Continue reading Cardiac arrestees: Questions surface about Heart paper from Italian group that faces charges

Virtually verbatim text earns retraction of neonate paper, gives authors a pass

jmfnmA pair of authors from Italy has retracted their 2012 article in the Journal of Maternal-Fetal and Neonatal Medicine for including chunks of text with a “high degree of similarity” from other published sources. But rest assured: the authors, we’re told, didn’t intend to do so.

The article, “Central venous catheterization and thrombosis in newborns: update on diagnosis and management,” appeared in a supplemental issue of the journal covering the proceedings of the XVIII Congress of the Italian Society of Neonatology.

According to the retraction notice (which, we’re told, was inadvertently behind a pay wall until we asked for it): Continue reading Virtually verbatim text earns retraction of neonate paper, gives authors a pass

Journal withdraws diabetes paper written by apparently bogus authors

BBRCTalk about a Trojan Horse.

Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications has withdrawn a paper it published earlier this year on metabolic proteins linked to diabetes, not because the article was bogus but because the authors appear to have been. The work itself is accurate — indeed, it likely belongs to a Harvard scientist, Bruce Spiegelman, who’d presented his data on the subject several times recently and was in the process of preparing his results for publication. We’ve written about researchers trying to punk journals with faked articles, and about a researcher who apparently made up a co-author, but here’s something new!

Nature has the story. According to Nature, in July Spiegelman: Continue reading Journal withdraws diabetes paper written by apparently bogus authors

Plant journals uproot duplicate publications that authors used as a hedge

pmbpA group of researchers in India has lost two articles in the plant literature for shenanigans with duplicate submission.

One article, “Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation and efficient regeneration of a timber yielding plant Dalbergia sissoo Roxb,” appeared online last June in the journal. The authors were from institutions in Orissa.

According to the retraction notice, the paper was a case of “thanks, but no thanks.” What’s worse, the researchers seem to be under the impression that they’ve done nothing wrong. Because they said so. Continue reading Plant journals uproot duplicate publications that authors used as a hedge

Dental journal pulls paper for duplicate publication

ccdContemporary Clinical Dentistry has yanked a 2012 article on “full-mouth rehabilitation” after learning that the article had already appeared in two other publications — making the journal, in effect, Contemporaneous Clinical Dentistry.

The article, “Full-mouth rehabilitation of a patient with severe attrition using the Hobo Twin-Stage Procedure,” came from a group at the Dr. R. Ahmed Dental College, in Kolkata, India. It described the following case: Continue reading Dental journal pulls paper for duplicate publication

Chutzpah: Authors blame PLOS ONE for failing to find plagiarism in paper on Botulinum toxin

plosonelogoHoly Chutzpah, Batman! A team of researchers in India has retracted their 2012 paper in PLoS One on botulinum toxin for plagiarism — while blaming the journal for failing to use its “soft wares” to catch the plagiarism.

The article, “Small-Molecule Quinolinol Inhibitor Identified Provides Protection against BoNT/A in Mice,” was written by a group from the Defence Research and Development Establishment, in Madhya Pradesh.

According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Chutzpah: Authors blame PLOS ONE for failing to find plagiarism in paper on Botulinum toxin

Journal retracts two chemistry papers for plagiarism

commnonlinscinumsimCommunications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation has retracted a pair of articles by a group of chemists from Iran and the United States after finding evidence of plagiarism in the papers.

The researcher team included authors from Islamic Azad University, Ferdowski University of Mashhad and, perhaps somewhat incongruously, Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.

The first paper, “An analytical approach to the stability of solitary solutions of cubic–quintic coupled non-linear Schrödinger equations,” appeared in 2009 and has been cited twice, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. (Question: is an article that will ultimately be retracted for plagiarism considered to exist in a state of un-retracted retractionness, such that by detecting the plagiarized text the article immediately ceases to be?):

Continue reading Journal retracts two chemistry papers for plagiarism

A Serbian Sokal? Authors spoof pub with Ron Jeremy and Michael Jackson references

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What do porn star Ron Jeremy, Max Weber and Michael Jackson have in common?  Very little — except the three names appear in the list of references for a recent hoax paper by a group of Serbian academics who, fed up with the poor state of their country’s research output, scammed a Romanian magazine by publishing a completely fabricated article.

The paper is replete with transparent gimmicks — obvious, that is, had anyone at the publication been paying attention — including a reference to the scholarship of Jackson, Weber, Jeremy and citations to new studies by Bernoulli and Laplace, both dead more than 180 years (Weber died in 1920). They also throw in references to the “Journal of Modern Illogical Studies,” which to the best of our knowledge does not and never has existed (although perhaps it should), and to a researcher named, dubiously, “A.S. Hole.” And, we hasten to add, the noted Kazakh polymath B. Sagdiyev, otherwise known as Borat. Continue reading A Serbian Sokal? Authors spoof pub with Ron Jeremy and Michael Jackson references

Study on douches and delivery retracted for authorship issue

jlgtdThe Journal of Lower Genital Tract Disease is retracting a paper it published online in April by a group of Egyptian researchers in the wake of a dispute they couldn’t resolve.

The article, “The Patterns and Criteria of Vaginal Douching and the Risk of Preterm Labor Among Upper Egypt Women,” came from a team at Assiut University. According to the abstract: Continue reading Study on douches and delivery retracted for authorship issue