Author: Adam Marcus

Researchers in Iran have lost their 2019 paper on nanofluids after the journal learned that their list of authors included an engineer at the University of Texas who had nothing to do with the work. 

The article, “Numerical study on free convection in a U-shaped CuO/water nanofluid-filled cavity with different aspect ratios using double-MRT lattice Boltzmann,” was published in Thermal Science and Engineering Progress, an Elsevier journal. The first author was Ahmad Fard, of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at K.N. Toosi University of Technology, in Tehran.

Batting cleanup was David Ross, whose affiliation is given as the University of Texas at Austin. A David Ross — no, not the Cubs manager and former Major League Baseball catcher — was on the faculty of UT from 1966 until his retirement in 2003.

An Elsevier journal has retracted a 2020 paper on the heritability of temperament that a prominent critic derided as “transparently ridiculous,” after concluding that the peer review process — which it initially defended — was not up to snuff. 

The journal, Meta Gene, says it has changed that way it considers manuscripts to “ensure that this” — read, accept bullshit papers — won’t happen again. And, in a further and rather  endearing admission of culpability, it apologized to the authors for accepting their manuscript despite a complete lack of “scientific data.” 

Meanwhile, one of the authors of the paper tells Retraction Watch that he “would like to thank you and also Elsevier that all these discussions” have helped popularize the work.

The article, “Temperament gene inheritance,” by the husband-wife team of Azer Israfil, of Mikhwa General Hospital, in Saudi Arabia, and Natiga Israfil, of OsmanGazi University, in Turkey, appeared in September. 

As we reported back then, the authors claimed that: