Circulation has retracted a 2012 study by a group of Harvard heart specialists over concerns of corrupt data, and the university is investigating. The group was led by Piero Anversa, a leading cardiologist, and Joseph Loscalzo — who will be familiar to readers of Circulation as the editor in chief of that journal. (Anversa’s also on the editorial board).
Continue reading Harvard and the Brigham investigating leading heart group for “compromised” data
Waseda University in Japan says it will be vetting every doctoral dissertation it awards its graduate-level students in Advanced Science & Engineering* for signs of plagiarism, according to a report in the Japan News, a site of the Yomiuri Shimbun. The paper reports that:
Back in January 2013, we wrote about the retraction of a paper in Diabetes that the authors had “submitted without knowledge of inherent errors or abnormalities that they recognized in retrospect after submission.”
Now, Molecular Pain has retracted a paper by the same authors, this time for data manipulation. The article, “Comparison of central versus peripheral delivery of pregabalin in neuropathic pain states,” was written by Cory Toth, a clinical neuroscientist at the University of Calgary, in Canada, and colleagues. It has been cited eight times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Toth said of the Diabetes article at the time:
Continue reading Pain study retracted for bogus data is second withdrawal for University of Calgary group
The International Journal of Cardiovascular Imaging has retracted a 2013 paper by a group of researchers from Italy. The reason: plagiarism.
The paper was titled “Diagnostic accuracy of 320-row computed tomography as compared with invasive coronary angiography in unselected, consecutive patients with suspected coronary artery disease,” and it came from scientists in Rome led by Francesco Pelliccia of the Department of Heart and Great Vessels at Sapienza University.
Continue reading Do you see what I see? Heart imaging journal yanks cardiac study for plagiarism
Last September we wrote about the case of Mart Bax, an anthropologist once of the Free University in Amsterdam who allegedly fabricated elements in some of his papers, and claimed to have written more than 60 that do not exist:
Bax, who studied an Irish town he called Patricksville, a Dutch pilgrimage site he called Neerdonk, and Medjugorje, a Bosnian pilgrimage site, retired from the Free University in 2002. The university began investigating Bax’s work last year after science journalist Frank van Kolfschooten published Ontspoorde Wetenschap (“Derailed science”). In that book, van Kolfschooten raised questions about Bax’s work into an alleged massacre at Medjugorje during the Bosnian War. Bax responded to those questions in April of this year.
Here’s the university’s 67-page report, in Dutch. The university will not take legal action against Bax. It is unclear from the translations we’ve seen whether any of the papers will be retracted, but we’ll update with anything we learn.
Well, at least part of that ambiguity has cleared, with the retraction of a 2000 paper by Bax in Ethnic and Racial Studies. The article was titled “Warlords, priests and the politics of ethnic cleansing: a case-study from rural Bosnia Hercegovina” and has been cited 20 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Here’s its abstract: Continue reading First retraction appears for Dutch anthropologist Mart Bax
Here’s a physics question: How is it possible to be in two places at the same time?
Answer: Submit the same manuscript twice and hope the editors forget to feed Schrödinger’s cat.
The journal Condensed Matter Physics is retracting a 2013 paper by a Ukrainian scientist who’d published essentially the same paper seven years earlier.The article was titled “On the origin of power-law distributions in systems with constrained phase space,” and was written by an E.V. Vakarin, of the Institute for Condensed Matter Physics, in Lviv UMR 7575 LECA ENSCP-UPMC-CNRS.
According to the abstract: Continue reading Duplication in physics journal questions key tenet of quantum mechanics
Developmental Biology has retracted a 2009 paper by an group of regenerative medicine specialists who, it seems, were regenerating more than just cells.
The article, titled “The human placenta is a hematopoietic organ during the embryonic and fetal periods of development,” was led by Susan Fisher, of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. It has been cited 32 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
According to the abstract: Continue reading Regenerative medicine, regenerative publishing
A group of Italian researchers has retracted their 2013 paper on colorectal cancer because one of the authors, they, say, was tinkering with the data.
The article, “PBOX-15 induces apoptosis and improves the efficacy of oxaliplatin in human colorectal cancer cell lines,” appeared in the European Journal of Pharmacology in August. The first author was Giuseppina Gangemi, of the University of Salerno.
The paper purported to find that:
Continue reading Bogus Western blots lead to retraction of cancer paper
A neurosurgeon in the UK has lost his 2013 paper on spinal surgery in the British Journal of Neurosurgery for doing what appears to have been an end-run around the folks that did the work.
The article, “The management of spinal dural fistulas: a 13-year retrospective analysis,” was written by Denosshan Sri, of Addenbrooke’s Hospital, in Cambridge.
Here’s the abstract:
Continue reading Neurosurgery journal retracts spine paper for lack of attribution
A suggestion: If you’re going to use the words “overestimated accuracy” in the title of your paper, you’d better make sure you aren’t guilty of the same yourself.
A group of authors in China has lost their June 2013 paper in the European Biophysics Journal because they appear to have misinterpreted their data. The paper, “Overestimated accuracy of circular dichroism in determining protein secondary structure,” came from chemists at Fudan University in Shanghai, and purported to find that:
Continue reading “Unable to dispel the doubts,” authors lose protein structure paper