The journal Clinical Research and Regulatory Affairs has retracted a 2012 article on over-the-counter drugs by a trio of pharmacy researchers in India who decided to “reproduce content to a high degree of similarity” from other sources.
Here’s how the retraction notice puts it: Continue reading Paper on over-the-counter drugs goes over the line in borrowing text
A group of dermatology researchers from Egypt who passed around a psoriasis paper like a bottle of sunscreen at the beach have been burned (sorry) by a journal that caught them in the act.
Acta Dermatovenerologica Alpina, Pannonica et Adriatica is retracting the 2009 article “Association of cytokine gene polymorphisms with psoriasis in cases from the Nile Delta of Egypt” after discovering that they were far from the first publication to print the paper.
Here’s the retraction notice (it’s a pdf): Continue reading Too much skin in the game, as duplications force retraction of psoriasis paper
The journal Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces has retracted a 2011 paper by a group of researchers in India who misappropriated — and then manhandled — a pair of images from a previously published article by other scientists.
The paper, “Synthesis and characterization of chitosan and grape polyphenols stabilized palladium nanoparticles and their antibacterial activity,” was written by authors from various institutions in Tamil Nadu, and appeared online in December 2011 and in print the following April. It has been cited three times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Here’s the abstract: Continue reading When two words colloid: “copied and manipulated” figures prompt retraction of nanoparticle paper
Synthesis and Reactivity in Inorganic, Metal-Organic, and Nano-Metal Chemistry is retracting three articles for duplication — redundancy the authors, chemical engineers at Islamic Azad University, in Shahreza, Iran, appear to have gotten around by reviewing their own manuscripts. But, if they did say so themselves, those papers were really something!
Here’s the retraction notice for two of the papers, both of which appeared in 2012 and which were cited seven times and once, respectively, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge:
Continue reading Chemistry papers retracted for “lack of objectivity:” The authors did their own peer review
The University of Queensland has decided to get out in front of a serious research misconduct scandal by issuing a press release about the item even before, well, we could get a hold of the story.
The affair involves Bruce Murdoch (all of his links at UQ are defunct), an expert in movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. Murdoch isn’t named in the release, but he is the corresponding author of the retracted paper, which is called out in the statement.
According to UQ, Murdoch seems to have published a paper in the European Journal of Neurology on research he never conducted — and on the basis of which he received a $20,000 grant. The paper has been cited six times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
UQ has called for a retraction of the paper, although that does not appear to have happened yet.
Here’s the release, from Peter Høj, president and vice chancellor of the institution, in its entirety: Continue reading Aussie university asks for retraction, investigates former neurology researcher for fraud
The author of a review article on diabetes has been forced to retract the paper after it emerged that he failed to properly credit some of the text — an omission we generally associate with the word plagiarism.
The article, “Colonic flora, probiotics, obesity and diabetes,” was written by Paul Marik, of Eastern Virginia Medical School, and appeared in July 2012 in Frontiers in Endocrinology. It has been cited once, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Here’s the retraction notice:
Continue reading Frontiers papers on GMO debate, diabetes retracted for improperly cited text
The humble chickpea has become one of the world’s most promising cash crops, so it’s no surprise that efforts are underway to make it even more humble, er, profitable, through genetic manipulation.
But one group of scientists made hummus out of their approach when they botched what evidently was a key element of a figure in their 2011 paper in Plant Cell Reports (PCR).
The article, “High-efficiency Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) and regeneration of insect-resistant transgenic plants,” came from researchers at the National Botanical Research Institute in Lucknow, India. Cited three times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, it purported to find that: Continue reading Figure error forces retraction of transgenic chickpea paper
The Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics has retracted a 2010 paper by a group of Iranian researchers after concluding that the authors may have misrepresented both the nature of the study and the originality of the work.
The article, “Can fresh embryo transfers be replaced by cryopreserved-thawed embryo transfers in assisted reproductive cycles? A randomized controlled trial,” came from Abbas Aflatoonian, Homa Oskouian, Shahnaz Ahmadi and Leila Oskouian at Yazd Research & Clinical Center for Infertility at Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Science. According to the abstract: Continue reading Journal retracts IVF paper over data concerns
The fifth of six expected retractions for copyright infringement has arrived for a group of sex researchers led by Willibrord Weijmar Schultz, this one in the International Journal of Gynecological Cancer of a 1992 article.
As we reported earlier this year, Schultz (whose 1999 paper on sex in an MRI won an Ig Nobel prize) and his colleague, Mels F. Van Driel, were found not to have committed plagiarism by investigators at the University of Groningen. Instead, they were found guilty of “unintended and unknowing breach of copyright.”
But they were asked to apologize formally to a litany of people — from the editors involved to the sponsors of the research — for what the institution described as “unintended and unknowing breach of copyright” of the work of one Diana Jeffrey, whose 1985 dissertation evidently was very much worth reading.
Here’s the latest retraction notice: Continue reading One more paper down for sex researcher Weijmar Schultz
A group of psychiatric researchers in Norway has lost their 2013 paper in BMC Research Notes on the effects of antipsychotic medications on the brain after discovering that they’d botched their imaging analyses.
The article, “Does changing from a first generation antipsychotic (perphenazin) to a second generation antipsychotic (risperidone) alter brain activation and motor activity? A case report,” came from a trio of scientists at the University of Bergen and Haukeland University Hospital, also in Bergen. According to the abstract of the paper, which was published last May:
Continue reading When 1 equals 2, the result is a retraction