A group of urologists in China has lost their 2012 paper in the Journal of Surgical Research because one of the authors was evidently rather naughty.
The article, “Is the impact of the extent of lymphadenectomy in radical prostatectomy related to the disease risk? A single center prospective study,” purported to show that: Continue reading Misconduct prompts retraction of prostatectomy paper
Retractions have arrived in the case of Peter Nijkamp, a leading Dutch economist accused of duplication and plagiarism. The Review of Economic Analysis has removed two of Nijkamp’s articles for self-plagiarism.
According to the NRC Handelsblad website (courtesy of Google translate):
The affair university economics professor Peter Nijkamp and his PhD student Karima Kourtit has escalated. The editors of the journal Review of Economic Analysis (RoEA) appears to have withdrawn because of self-plagiarism two scientific articles (reuse your own work earlier without acknowledgment), NRC Handelsblad discovered last week at the RoEA website.
The website reports that “significant parts” of the reclusive articles have appeared in other publications Nijkamp and Nijkamp / Kourtit, “without reference orderly” earlier. It involves work Nijkamp alone and work of VU economist Frank Bruinsma with Nijkamp and Kourtit.
Continue reading Retractions arrive in plagiarism scandal involving economist Nijkamp
Rehabilitation Research and Practice has retracted a 2012 review article on stiff big toes.
The article, “Therapeutic Management of the Hallux Rigidus,” came from a group in India. According to the abstract: Continue reading “Substantial flaws” trip up big toe paper
The editors of PLoS ONE have issued an Expression of Concern (which seems likely to become a retraction) for a 2014 paper by a group of researchers in China who claim to have been led astray by a contractor hired to “edit the language” of the report.
The article, “Arsenic Sulfide Promotes Apoptosis in Retinoid Acid Resistant Human Acute Promyelocytic Leukemic NB4-R1 Cells through Downregulation of SET Protein,” came from a group in the Department of Hematology at the First Affiliated Hospital at Xi’an Jiaotong University, and was led by Yuwang Tian, a pathologist at the General Hospital of Beijing Military Area of PLA.
Or at least that’s what the manuscript eventually said. According to the expression of concern, however, that’s not what it said initially: Continue reading Wayward “contractor” prompts expression of concern for PLoS ONE paper on cancer cells
Pro tip: If you’re going to write about stalking, it’s probably best if you don’t get too close to your material.
That’s a lesson a group of researchers in Italy was forced to learn the hard way. They lost their 2013 article in Medicine, Science and the Law for being too similar to a 2008 paper by different authors in another journal.
According to the abstract: Continue reading Don’t walk this way: Stalking paper halted for plagiarism
A review of past publications by the Japanese research institution RIKEN has produced three corrections of articles by a molecular geneticist, Haruhiko Koseki, The Scientist is reporting. The articles had appeared in Molecular and Cellular Biology between 2005 and 2010.
The review was triggered by the scandal involving Haruko Obokata, a former RIKEN scientist whose work on STAP stem cells has come under scrutiny. However, RIKEN officials said the corrections are unrelated to the Obokata case. Obokata has reportedly agreed to retract two of her articles in Nature. (RIKEN has released an English-language translation of its response to Obokata’s appeal against charges of research misconduct.)
According to The Scientist, Koseki was a member of a committee charged with investigating Obokata’s STAP results: Continue reading RIKEN inquiry prompted by STAP stem cell controversy generates three corrections
A group of authors in China has lost their 2011 paper in Bioresource Technology on pig poop because the journal detected a whiff of the familiar in a previously published article by other researchers in the same journal (a major tsk tsk and, well, oops).
The article, “Feasibility of biogas production from anaerobic co-digestion of herbal-extraction residues with swine manure,” came from a team at Nanchang University. Except, well, not really, as we’ll see. According to its abstract:
Continue reading If it smells like pig sh@#, it probably is pig sh@#: A stinky retraction
The Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology — now BioMed Research International — has retracted a 2012 paper by a group from China who seem really to have admired a related 2007 article by a team from the Scripps Research Institute — and evidently other work, as well.
Here’s the abstract of the now-retracted paper, titled “Stable Plastid Transformation for High-Level Recombinant Protein Expression: Promises and Challenges” (emphasis ours): Continue reading Recombinant protein paper retracted for recombining others’ work
BioMed Research International has retracted a 2013 paper after it became clear that it was lifted from another 2013 paper about the same subject by some of the same authors.
According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Duplication forces retraction of liver cancer paper
A group of physicists has retracted their preliminary report in the GCN Circular of a massive star-sized explosion after deciding that what they’d really observed was another phenomenon.
Although we could try to explain this, we’d rather leave it up to Giacomo Vianello, an experimental physicist at Stanford University, who was a member of the research team.
Vianello told us: Continue reading Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder where you went: Astronomy report retracted