Author: Adam Marcus

Seals of disapproval, as pinniped paper gets yanked for plagiarism

ImageJoseph Hoffman, an animal behavior researcher at the University of Bielefeld in Germany says he got a “kind of odd” feeling as he read a recent paper on the transcriptome of the spotted seal. Let’s just call it deja vu.

The article, “Characterization of the spotted seal Phoca largha transcriptome using Illumina paired-end sequencing and development of SSR markers,” which appeared in Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part D: Genomics and Proteomics:

Continue reading Seals of disapproval, as pinniped paper gets yanked for plagiarism

Post 982 — in which we find plagiarized bone graft paper that grafted from other papers

thesurgeonThe Surgeon has retracted a 2012 article by a group from the U.K. who took text from a previously published article. So, you say? Nu?

Well, we found — through relatively little effort — that the plagiarizees were themselves, shall we say, liberal in their use of material from other sources.

The retracted article was titled “Bone graft substitutes: What are the options?,” and it appeared in August 2012. One of the options, we guess, was to steal text.

According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Post 982 — in which we find plagiarized bone graft paper that grafted from other papers

Error scuppers paper on treatment for liver fibrosis

pharmbioPharmaceutical Biology has retracted a 2012 paper by a group of liver researchers from China after the discovery of an error that evidently invalidated the results in the paper.

The article, “Antifibrotic effects of protocatechuic aldehyde on experimental liver fibrosis,” purported to show that

protocatechuic aldehyde, the major degradation of phenolic acids … has potentially conferring antifibrogenic effects.

In other words, the compound appears to prevent the formation of liver fibroids.
But it doesn’t — at least, not according to the study — as the retraction notice explains: Continue reading Error scuppers paper on treatment for liver fibrosis

Charge of “scientific yellow journalism” has supervisor seeing red, leads to retraction

small gtpasesLast October, Anica Klockars, a neuroscience researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden, and a colleague published a controversial comment in the journal Small GTPases, a Landes Bioscience title.

The title of the letter was meant to provoke: “Scientific yellow journalism.”

As the authors wrote: Continue reading Charge of “scientific yellow journalism” has supervisor seeing red, leads to retraction

The “unintentionality” of being leads to nothingness for paper on protein’s role in cancer

empcoverA group of cancer researchers in Argentina has retracted a paper on the p300 protein in breast cancer that appeared in Experimental and Molecular Pathology.

The article, titled “Intracellular distribution of p300 and its differential recruitment to aggresomes in breast cancer,” was published in 2010 by Maria E. Fermento and colleagues. It has been cited 11 times since, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading The “unintentionality” of being leads to nothingness for paper on protein’s role in cancer

“Considerable overlap” leads to retraction of medical imaging paper

PRL cover313

We have poked fun at Pattern Recognition Letters before for failing to catch blatant plagiarism. We probably should have held off on those jokes for this post.

A group of IT researchers from India has suffered the retraction of a paper in PRL for heavily basing the piece on at least four previous papers written by one of the co-authors without proper attribution (not that such attribution likely would have absolved the sin).

The paper, titled “A robust kernelized intuitionistic fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm in segmentation of noisy medical images,” was published in January of this year by Prabhjot Kaur and colleagues.

Here’s the retraction notice:

Continue reading “Considerable overlap” leads to retraction of medical imaging paper

“Redundant in principle”: Blood retracts paper built on double-dipping of data by co-author

blood coverBlood has retracted a 2012 paper by a pair of Swedish authors, one of whom appears to have misappropriated data from his mentor.

The article, titled “Microparticles are the basic storage units for different proteins in platelet granules,” appeared online in July 2012 and was written by Chi Zhang and Yang Yang, of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

But as the retraction notice explains, there was a problem:

Continue reading “Redundant in principle”: Blood retracts paper built on double-dipping of data by co-author

Paper — with longest title ever? — retracted for lack of author approval

inorgchimactaThe journal Inorganica Chimica Acta has retracted a paper it published earlier this year over an authorship dispute involving the lead researcher and his colleagues in France.

The title of the paper — whose bulk alone gave us a headache  — was “Reaction of a bidentate ligands (4,4′-dimethyl 2,2′-bipyridine) with planar-chiral chloro-bridged ruthenium: Synthesis of cis-dicarbonyl[4,4′-dimethyl-2,2′-bipyridine- κO1,κO2]{2-[tricarbonyl(η6-phenylene- κC1)chromium]pyridine-κN}ruthenium hexafluorophosphate” — and it purportedly came from a lab in Beirut.

However, as the retraction notice indicates, that’s not quite so:

Continue reading Paper — with longest title ever? — retracted for lack of author approval

Could the sequester mean more business for Retraction Watch?

congressConsider this a bit of a thought experiment, but hear us out.

The National Institutes of Health earlier this month notified the scientists it funds that, thanks to the sequester, many may soon face cuts in those grants as the agency tries to deal with a reduction in its $30.9 billion budget. In her March 4 letter to grantees, NIH’s Sally Rockey, deputy director for extramural research, wrote:

At this time, the Department of Health and Human Services and NIH are taking every step to mitigate the effects of these cuts, but based on our initial analysis, it is possible that your grants or cooperative agreement awards may be affected.  Examples of this impact could include: not issuing continuation awards, or negotiating a reduction in the scope of your awards to meet the constraints imposed by sequestration.  Additionally, plans for new grants or cooperative agreements may be re-scoped, delayed, or canceled depending on the nature of the work and the availability of resources. Continue reading Could the sequester mean more business for Retraction Watch?

Findings of “greatly enhanced” optics turn out to be, well, greatly enhanced

nature photonicsThe authors of a paper in Nature Photonics have been forced to walk back their article after learning from another group of researchers that their conclusions likely were an, ahem, optical illusion.

The paper, “Greatly enhanced continuous-wave terahertz emission by nano-electrodes in a photoconductive photomixer,” appeared in January 2012 and came from a team led by that included Aaron Danner, an optics expert at the National University of Singapore. As the abstract of the paper explains (to physicists, anyway):

Continue reading Findings of “greatly enhanced” optics turn out to be, well, greatly enhanced