A journal has issued a dozen expressions of concern over articles that a group of data sleuths had flagged last year on PubPeer as showing signs of having been cranked out by a paper mill.
The 12 articles were published between 2017 and 2019 in the International Journal of Immunopathology and Pharmacology and were written by authors in China. They carry the same notice:
Continue reading Journal flags a dozen papers as likely paper mill products a year after sleuths identified them
A researcher in France has lost his fifth paper for plagiarism, this one a 2015 article on weakness in the elderly.
The study, “Identification of biological markers for better characterization of older subjects with physical frailty and sarcopenia,” appeared in Translational Neuroscience and came from a group in France led by Bertrand Fougère, of the Universitaire de Toulouse.
As we reported in 2019, Fougère had tallied previous retractions for plagiarism dating back to 2018. At the time, he told us:
Continue reading An author loses a fifth paper because it “bears the hallmarks of plagiarism”
A research group at the University of New Mexico has lost at least two papers after an inquiry found evidence of manipulated data.
One article, “Large-Area Semiconducting Graphene Nanomesh Tailored by Interferometric Lithography,” appeared in 2015 in Scientific Reports, a Springer Nature title, and has been cited 25 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.
The other, “Vertical Charge Transfer and Lateral Transport in Graphene/Germanium Heterostructures,” was published in 2017 in the American Chemical Society’s journal Applied Materials & Interfaces. It has been cited twice.
The senior author on both articles was Sanjay Krishna, who has since moved to the Ohio State University, where he is the George R. Smith Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering.
The retraction notice for the paper in Scientific Reports states:
Continue reading University of New Mexico investigation finds manipulated data and images, prompts retractions
Researchers in Australia have retracted a 2016 paper in Nature Chemical Biology after discovering a critical error in their research, bringing some closure to a gut-wrenching case for the scientists involved.
As we reported in January, Nicola Smith, the senior author of the article, titled “Orphan receptor ligand discovery by pickpocketing pharmacological neighbors,” described learning of the error as “the most horrific time” of her career.
Smith, then at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney (she’s now at the Orphan Receptor Laboratory at the University of New South Wales) told us that she briefly considered letting the flawed research — which has been cited 26 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science — go uncorrected.
After all, as one colleague told her, the subject of the studies was so arcane that
Continue reading “The right decision”: Group retracts Nature Chemical Biology paper after finding a key error
An integrative health journal has issued an expression of concern for an article it published two years ago last month about the “human biofield” and related topics after receiving complaints that the piece lacked scientific “validity.”
The article, “Energy Medicine: Current Status and Future Perspectives,” appeared in Global Advances in Health and Medicine, a SAGE title. The author was Christina Ross, of the Wake Forest Center for Integrative Medicine, in Winston-Salem, N.C. Which happens to be where the two top editors of the journal are based.
Ross also is the author of Etiology: How to Detect Disease in Your Energy Field Before It Manifests in Your Body, which is available on Amazon and elsewhere.
According to the abstract of the article:
Continue reading “I absolutely stand by the validity of the science” says author of energy field paper now flagged by journal
Nanotechnology researchers in Japan, who in November retracted a paper in Nature for lack of reproducibility, have retracted two more articles after what they said was a failure to replicate their findings.
As we reported previously, the authors, led by Kenichiro Itami of Nagoya University, called for an investigation into the problems with their work, the conclusions of which have yet to be made public.
The new retractions involve articles published in ACS Applied Nano Materials.
Here’s the notice for “Graphene Nanoribbon Dielectric Passivation Layers for Graphene Electronics,” a paper which appeared in July 2019 and has been cited 11 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science:
Continue reading Nanotech group that retracted Nature study pulls two more papers
A JAMA journal is retracting and replacing a 2020 paper which linked exposure to nonionizing radiation — think cellphones, Bluetooth devices and microwave ovens — during pregnancy to the risk for attention deficit disorder later in childhood after a reader pointed out a critical error in the study.
The paper, “Association Between Maternal Exposure to Magnetic Field Nonionizing Radiation During Pregnancy and Risk of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Offspring in a Longitudinal Birth Cohort,” appeared in JAMA Network Open and prompted a significant amount of media coverage, as well as activity on social media.
According to the authors:
Continue reading JAMA journal retracts, replaces paper linking nonionizing radiation to ADHD
A former researcher at the Cleveland Clinic who studied cardiac genetics has lost three papers for what an institutional investigation concluded was “more likely than not” a case image falsification.
As we reported last year, the work of Subha Sen, once a highly funded scientist at Cleveland Clinic but who left the institution in 2011, has come under scrutiny on PubPeer (note: a researcher with the same name, but at a different institution, also appears in these search results). With the latest papers, Sen now has nine seven retractions for issues including questions about the integrity of the data and the validity of the images.
The three newest removals involve studies published in the American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology between 2004 and 2009. The notices are very similar while referring to different images.
Here’s the statement for the 2005 article, “Inhibition of NF-κB induces regression of cardiac hypertrophy, independent of blood pressure control, in spontaneously hypertensive rats”:
Continue reading Former Cleveland Clinic researcher’s papers “more likely than not” included falsified images, says investigation
The authors of a paper in Science Advances on methanogens — archaea that produce methane — have retracted the work a week after its publication because they included genetic data that violated an embargo.
The article, published on February 10, was titled “A methylotrophic origin of methanogenesis and early divergence of anaerobic multicarbon alkane metabolism,” and included authors from China, Germany and the United Kingdom. The first author was Yinzhao Wang, of the State Key Laboratory of Microbial Metabolism at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
On February 11, Roland Hatzenpichler, of Montana State University in Bozeman, sounded the alarm:
Continue reading ‘No malicious intent’: Authors retract week-old Science Advances paper based on embargoed data
Burned by the offer of a special issue, a journal has retracted four papers after determining that the guest editors of the supplement were not legit.
Neuroscience Letters, an Elsevier title, published the special issue — “Special Issue on Clinical and Imaging Assessment of Cognitive Dysfunction in Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders” — last summer, but it’s no longer on the journal’s website. The guest editors were listed as “Dr. Kalemaki Katerina Kalemaki, Dr. Hailong Li and Prof. Wiesława Grajkowska.”
This case is the third we’ve seen lately involving journals and publishers scorched by rogue guest editors. For an insider’s look at how such scams can run, check out our 2019 Q&A with Jamie Trapp, whose journal, Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine (formerly the Australasian Physical & Engineering Sciences in Medicine), fell victim to one not long ago. A preview:
Continue reading Third journal scammed by rogue editors.jpg){kind=link}
