Author: Adam Marcus

That sounds familiar! Education paper plagiarism caught — inadvertently — by author

The other day we wrote about a case of plagiarism in an education journal serving the Whole Schooling community. One of the questions we always ask editors and writers victimized by plagiarists is how they learned about the theft. The answer typically involves some version of “we were reading a new paper and saw some of our own words/figures/tables on the page.”

But in this instance, the story’s somewhat more interesting. We’ll let co-author Ana-Lisa Gonzalez tell it: Continue reading That sounds familiar! Education paper plagiarism caught — inadvertently — by author

Whole schooling paper retracted after discovering that it was largely lifted

The International Journal of Whole Schooling has retracted a 2007 article for what it calls “substantial” plagiarism.

The article, titled “The relations between parenting and adolescent motivation,” was written by Theiienhuong N. Hoang,  an education researcher at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona. The aim of the paper:

Parenting practices that influence or teach adaptive motivational and achievement outcomes are an aspect of a student’s success that are in need of consideration. This study will examine motivational outcomes, as predicted by parenting practices that may influence student behavior.

The purpose of this study is to expand upon the existing research on the relation between parenting practices and motivation.

By expand, it seems she meant restate.

According to the June 16 notice: Continue reading Whole schooling paper retracted after discovering that it was largely lifted

The new math: How to up your citations (hint: duplication). Plus a correction for Naoki Mori

Here’s a good way to increase the number of times your work is cited: Publish studies three times.

On second (or third) thought, maybe not: The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry & Molecular Biology has retracted a pair of articles by three Japanese researchers who apparently liked their own work so much they decided to submit it, and submit it—and submit it again.

Here’s the notice for the first paper, a 2004 publication titled “Vitamin D receptor (VDR) promoter targeting through a novel chromatin remodeling complex,” by Shigeaki Kato, Ryoji Fujiki and Hirochika Kitagawa, fairly well-known molecular endocrinologists at the University of Tokyo: Continue reading The new math: How to up your citations (hint: duplication). Plus a correction for Naoki Mori

No academic matter: Study links retractions to patient harm

Flawed research that leads to retractions is a problem for editors, publishers and the scientific community. But what about patients?

In a recent issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics, R. Grant Steen asks the question — and answers it in the affirmative.

We’ve heard from Steen before; he has written two recent papers on the scope of retractions, finding that the number of retractions seems to be rising faster than the number of publications on the shelves.

This time, Steen takes a crack at ferreting out what he calls “harm by influence,” the admittedly subtle effect that troubled studies have on downstream research. His findings certainly raise concerns. Continue reading No academic matter: Study links retractions to patient harm

Three more withdrawals for Naoki Mori, and a hint of the mother of retractions

Lest readers of Retraction Watch had forgotten about Naoki Mori, the cancer researcher who liked his Western blots so much he decided to reuse them — and reuse them some more — he’s back.

The British Journal of Haematology (BJH) has retracted two papers Mori published in that journal, and BMC Microbiology has retracted another, bringing the total of retractions involving his work to at least 19 by our count. [See update at end.]

The BJH issued both retractions online in the end of February, and they’ve since come out in print. Here’s the retraction notice for the first paper, in the BJH (first only because it was published first): Continue reading Three more withdrawals for Naoki Mori, and a hint of the mother of retractions

No confidence vote on sepsis paper data leads to Blood retraction

The journal Blood has retracted an article after the authors determined that they could not longer trust in the validity of the data.

The paper has been cited 22 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. From the retraction notice:

Niessen F, Furlan-Freguia C, Fernández JA, Mosnier LO, Castellino FJ, Weiler H, Rosen H, Griffin JH, Ruf W. Endogenous EPCR/aPC-PAR1 signaling prevents inflammation-induced vascular leakage and lethality.

Blood. 2009;113(12):2859-2866.

The authors retract the 19 March 2009, paper cited above. Recently, the authors discovered that some primary data presented in this paper could not be independently reproduced. All coauthors concur with the retraction of the paper and apologize to the readers, reviewers, and editors of Blood for publishing these invalid data.

The nature of the data problem isn’t clear from that passage. But Blood editor Cynthia Dunbar told us that her journal Continue reading No confidence vote on sepsis paper data leads to Blood retraction

Chemist: “corresponding author should answer” questions regarding retracted papers

We have an update to our coverage of the retractions involving papers from a group of researchers in Iran that were published in Computational and Theoretical Chemistry (formerly called the Journal of Molecular Structure: THEOCHEM)

Although we have not received a response from the first author of those studies, Siavash Riahi, one author, Mohammad Reza Ganjali, of the Center of Excellence in Electrochemistry at the University of Tehran, sent us a lengthy comment recently. We post his remarks in their entirety here, unedited: Continue reading Chemist: “corresponding author should answer” questions regarding retracted papers

U. Luxembourg official offers more detail — or tries to — on Carsten Carlberg case

We’re continuing to try to find out more about the developing story surrounding Carsten Carlberg. Carlberg, as we have reported, was senior author on two papers retracted last year because one of the authors, a graduate student in Carlberg’s lab at the University of Eastern Finland  (formerly Kuopio), fabricated data.

Carlberg holds a dual appointment with the University of Luxembourg, which recently announced the results of a months-long investigation into his behavior.

We have been relying on unofficial translations of a May 20th statement by university officials such as this one, by a generous Retraction Watch reader: Continue reading U. Luxembourg official offers more detail — or tries to — on Carsten Carlberg case

*Grad student’s misdeeds may cost prof Carsten Carlberg a job

In November, we reported on two retractions in Cell and the Journal of Molecular Biology involving misconduct in the lab of biochemist Carsten Carlberg, of the University of Eastern Finland, in Kuopio.

Carlberg also holds an appointment in computational biology at the University of Luxembourg, which last year launched an investigation — at his behest, he says — into the case. Well, the officials in Luxembourg finally have spoken, and Carlberg, it seems, may soon be out of his job there, the Tageblatt newspaper reports.

Carlberg, to our knowledge, has never been accused of ethical violations in the case, and the inquiry didn’t change that. Rather, the bad actor appears to be his former post-doc graduate student in Finland, Tatjana Degenhardt. But the University of Luxembourg may seek to dismiss Carlberg after concluding that, as the senior author of the two retracted articles, he bore responsibility for the validity of the results and, by implication, the deception.

Ironically, Carlberg says he asked the school to undertake the investigation even though none of Degenhardt’s research had been conducted using that school’s resources. In an email today to Retraction Watch, he writes: Continue reading *Grad student’s misdeeds may cost prof Carsten Carlberg a job

Three more chemistry papers fall to “serious errors” of unknown nature

Back in March, we reported that the journal Computational and Theoretical Chemistry (CTC) had retracted a pair of 2006 papers by a group of Iranian researchers. As the notices stated, the scientists had recalled their articles after detecting “serious errors” with the work post-publication.

At the time, the authors still had three other articles in good standing with CTC. No longer.

CTC has retracted the remaining three papers by the group, for the same “serious errors.” The articles appeared between 2007 and 2009, and were titled: Continue reading Three more chemistry papers fall to “serious errors” of unknown nature