Author: Adam Marcus

Authors dispute ethical lapse in case of double physics publication that wasn’t

Plasma Processes and Polymers has retracted a paper it published in March 2012 for what it describes as a “possible breach of ethics.”

That certainly sounds bad — if inconclusive — but the authors maintain the whole thing was a simple misunderstanding.

The article, “Plasma Acid: Water Treated by Dielectric Barrier Discharge,” came from the lab of Gary Friedman, a physicist at Drexel University in Philadelphia. The first, and corresponding, author was Natalie Shainsky, an award-winning graduate student at the school.

As the notice states: Continue reading Authors dispute ethical lapse in case of double physics publication that wasn’t

Psychological Science in the news again: CNN retracts story on hormone-voting link

It’s not often that wade into retractions in the mainstream media on this blog, but in this case, we’ll make an exception.

As Politico and Poynter — and probably others — have reported, CNN has retracted a story about a yet-to-be-published study in Psychological Science claiming to find a link between estrogen and elections (disclosure: Ivan’s wife works at CNN). Specifically, the researchers reported that the well-documented preference among single women for President Obama might be rooted in their sex hormones, while that of married women for Mitt Romney seems to reflect their own ovulatory cycle. Or something like that.

Here’s the money part of the piece, which can still be found floating around on the web: Continue reading Psychological Science in the news again: CNN retracts story on hormone-voting link

HIV paper retracted after authors recommend a colleague as a reviewer

Nothing like a little home cooking.

Genetic Vaccines and Therapy (GVT) has retracted a paper by a group of Pakistani authors who recommended one of their colleagues as a reviewer for their manuscript.

That’s not all: According to the journal, the researchers apparently also misappropriated data from a previous study.

The article in question, “Structure based sequence analysis & epitope prediction of gp41 HIV1 envelope glycoprotein isolated in Pakistan,” was published in June 2012. The first author is  Syyada Samra Jafri, who we see as being at the University of the Punjab in Lahore. According to the retraction notice: Continue reading HIV paper retracted after authors recommend a colleague as a reviewer

Another odd retraction for alcohol researcher, this time for lack of animal research committee approval

The journal Neuroscience has retracted a 2011 paper by an alcohol researcher from the United Arab Emirates, who apparently conducted some mouse studies without the blessing of his institution’s animal ethics officials. At least, that’s what the retraction notice would have us believe.

The paper in question, “The pre-synaptic metabotropic glutamate receptor 7 “mGluR7” is a critical modulator of ethanol sensitivity in mice,” by Amine Bahi, was published in December 2011 and cited three times (twice by the author), according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. But as the notice explains:

Continue reading Another odd retraction for alcohol researcher, this time for lack of animal research committee approval

“Major errors” lead to retraction of Nature Photonics paper on quantum dots

Maybe it’s an occupational hazard of dealing with quantum physics — uncertainty and all that — but a group of Swiss researchers has retracted their paper on quantum dots after discovering “major errors” that undermined their conclusions.

The article, published in 2010 as a research letter in Nature Photonics, was titled “Polarization-entangled photons produced with high-symmetry site-controlled quantum dots,” by Eli Kapon and colleagues.

According to the retraction notice: Continue reading “Major errors” lead to retraction of Nature Photonics paper on quantum dots

Pseudo amino acid paper pseudo new — and now retracted

The Journal of Computational Chemistry is retracting a 2011 paper by a group of Chinese researchers for duplication.

The article was titled “Predicting Protein Folding Rates Using the Concept of Chou’s Pseudo Amino Acid Composition.” According to the notice: Continue reading Pseudo amino acid paper pseudo new — and now retracted

Tomato, tomahto—let’s call the oral health thing off

The journal Gerodontology  has retracted a paper for overbite, er overlap.

The article, “Translation and validation of the Hindi version of the Geriatric Oral Health Assessment Index,” was first published in January of this year by Saee P. Deshmukh and Usha M. Radke, of the department of prosthodontics at VSPM’s Dental College and Hospital, in Nagpur, India.

According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Tomato, tomahto—let’s call the oral health thing off

Another retraction from chiropractic researchers for lack of ethics approval

Chiropractic & Manual Therapies — formerly known as Chiropractic & Osteopathy — has retracted a 2010 paper by a team of Australian researchers who failed to obtain institutional review board (IRB) approval for their studies.

As the notice for “A descriptive study of a manual therapy intervention within a randomised controlled trial for hamstring and lower limb injury prevention” explains: Continue reading Another retraction from chiropractic researchers for lack of ethics approval

Did a McLuhan moment lead to retraction in Chemistry — A European Journal?

The authors of a chemistry paper are retracting it after a Columbia University chemistry researcher pointed out a fatal misinterpretation of his own work in it.

Here’s the notice in Chemistry — A European Journal: Continue reading Did a McLuhan moment lead to retraction in Chemistry — A European Journal?

Correction for MD Anderson’s Bharat Aggarwal arches eyebrows for the right reasons

We’ve written about mega-corrections that allow scientists to retrace virtually all of their steps yet preserve their publications as supposedly legitimate. And we’ve seen plenty of corrections that allow authors to assert that their conclusions are correct when evidently important pieces of data are themselves unreliable.

Now comes a correction that seems to us to strike the right chords, given the fact that editors are to a large extent at the mercy of authors in these situations. Continue reading Correction for MD Anderson’s Bharat Aggarwal arches eyebrows for the right reasons