Irish eyes definitely are not smiling at Trinity College in Dublin, where the campus paper, The University Times, has acknowledged that one of its editors seems to have been a serial plagiarist.
According to an editorial in the paper published on Friday: Continue reading Plagiarism scandal tarnishes student newspaper at Trinity College, Dublin
Ultramicroscopy has retracted a paper it published earlier this year after the corresponding author admitted to submitting the paper without the consent of his colleagues.
The article, “The post-peak spectra in electron energy loss near edge structure,” came from a group led by one Feng Tian, a materials scientist at Shanghai University for Science and Technology. The other authors were Peter Shattschneider and Micheal Stoger-Pollach, of the Vienna University of Technology. Except that they weren’t.
According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Phantom authorship forces retraction of electron paper
The Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology has retracted a 2011 paper on depersonalization disorder by a pair of authors in Azerbaijan who got a bit too familiar with their source material without proper attribution. And the journal has offered its readers a handy — if depressingly obvious — admonition about publication ethics.
The article, “Lamotrigine in the immediate treatment of outpatients with depersonalization disorder without psychiatric comorbidity. Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study,” by researchers at the Central Mental Clinic for Outpatients of Baku City, purported to find that: Continue reading Psych paper falls afoul of journal’s plagiarism policy (hint: don’t plagiarize)
The journal Chemical Science has issued an expression of concern over a 2012 article by a pair of Texas researchers whose “unclick reaction” work has been under scrutiny by their institution.
The article, “Homonuclear bond activation using a stable N,N-diamidocarbene,” was written by Kelly M. Wiggins and Christopher W. Bielawski, of UT Austin. It’s the second EoC that we know of for a paper by Wiggins and Bielawski. We covered a previous one, from Science, that appeared in June.
Here’s the notice (pdf): Continue reading Second expression of concern appears for chemistry group under institutional review
The Journal of International Oral Health has retracted a 2014 paper on dental pain by a group from India. Although the ostensible reason was plagiarism, we wonder if the offending authors might gone a bit further.
The article, “Sniffing out pain: An in vivo intranasal study of analgesic efficacy,” purported to be a study of 20 patients receiving different therapies for emergency oral pain. It has yet to be cited, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Here’s the abstract: Continue reading Plagiarism charge bites authors of oral pain paper
Diabetologia has retracted a 2011 meeting abstract from a group in Sweden, indicating that the second author has been found guilty of research misconduct — a charge the scientist denies.
The abstract, “Reduced syntaxin-5 in skeletal muscle of patients with type 2 diabetes is linked to increased diacylglycerol, activation of PKCtheta and impaired insulin signalling,” was presented at the annual meeting of the European Association of the Study of Diabetes. The first author was Kurt Højlund, who now is at the University of Southern Denmark. The second author was Pontus Boström, of the Karolinska Institutet.
According to the notice: Continue reading “Conscious fabrication” leads to retraction of diabetes study
The Leadership Quarterly has retracted a trio of papers by Frederick Walumbwa, an “ethical leadership” guru at Florida International University, whose work has come under scrutiny for flawed methodology. And another journal has pulled one of his articles for similar reasons. That brings his count – as far as we can tell — to seven retractions and a mega-correction.
Meanwhile, Arizona State University, Walumbwa’s former employer, has found
that the preponderance of evidence does not support the charge of research misconduct by Dr. Walumbwa…
but that he engaged in “poor research practice.”
The bottom line, according to the Leadership Quarterly, which first announced problems with the articles in February:
Maybe you can be a little bit pregnant after all.
At least, that’s what the editors of the Journal of Innovations in Pharmaceutical and Biological Sciences would have submitters believe.
In a rather ham-handed invitation to authors received by a friend of Retraction Watch, the open-access journal “cordially” solicits papers with a helpful illustrated timeline (our comments in parentheses): Continue reading Publisher sets high bar: Only articles “with lowest plagiarism” will be accepted
Lancet Respiratory Medicine has issued an expression of concern for a meta-analysis on tracheostomy in the intensive care unit that they published earlier this year.
The paper, “Effect of early versus late or no tracheostomy on mortality of critically ill patients receiving mechanical ventilation: a systematic review and meta-analysis“, came from a group at Harvard, Weill Cornell and the University of Athens. The authors purported to find that: Continue reading Lancet journal puts ICU paper on watch after authors acknowledge potentially fatal flaw
Interactive Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery has yanked a 2005 sternotomy paper by a group of researchers who plagiarized from an earlier article on the subject.
The article, “The complications of repeat median sternotomy in paediatrics: six-months follow-up of consecutive cases,” came from a team at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester, England, and has been cited eight times, according to Scopus.
Here’s the notice:
Continue reading “Significant” copying forces retraction of sternotomy paper