Here’s another installment of PubPeer Selections: Continue reading PubPeer Selections: Was a Nature correction adequate?; Use of samples from patients with COPD questioned
Author: Ivan Oransky
Scientist threatening to sue PubPeer claims he lost a job offer because of comments
Last month, PubPeer announced that a scientist had threatened to sue the site for defamation. At the time, all PubPeer would say was that the “prospective plaintiff” is a US researcher” who was “aggrieved at the treatment his papers are getting on our site.”
Today, PubPeer revealed the that the prospective plaintiff was Fazlul Sarkar, a distinguished professor of pathology at Wayne State University in Detroit. Sarkar’s attorney, Nicholas Roumel, tells us that Sarkar had a job offer from the University of Mississippi, which rescinded it after seeing comments about his work on PubPeer.
We asked to see the letter rescinding the offer, but Roumel said he couldn’t send it because he and Sarkar are “in the process of making a claim against them.”
We also asked if there was an investigation into Sarkar’s work. Roumel told us:
As for any investigation, federal regulations make such things strictly confidential, so I can’t comment either way.
According to a post on PubPeer: Continue reading Scientist threatening to sue PubPeer claims he lost a job offer because of comments
Researcher who broke into lab up to nine retractions
Karel Bezouška, a researcher who broke into a lab refrigerator to tamper with an investigation into his work, has nine retractions.
Here’s the retraction notice in Biochemistry for 2010’s “Cooperation between Subunits Is Essential for High-Affinity Binding of N-Acetyl-d-hexosamines to Dimeric Soluble and Dimeric Cellular Forms of Human CD69:” Continue reading Researcher who broke into lab up to nine retractions
Weekend reads: Reading Nature and Science “very unpleasant,” how to spot fake journals
The week at Retraction Watch featured revelations about the backstory of an expression of concern, and Office of Research Integrity findings in a case that had its beginnings in Retraction Watch comments. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Is it time for a retraction penalty?
The title of this post is the headline of our most recent column in LabTimes, which begins:
As we write this in mid-August, Nature has already retracted seven papers in 2014. That’s not yet a record – for that, you’d have to go back to 2003’s ten retractions, in the midst of the Jan Hendrik Schön fiasco – but if you add up all of the citations to those seven papers, the figure is in excess of 500.
That’s an average of more than 70 citations per paper. What effect would removing those citations from calculations of Nature’s impact factor – currently 42 – have?
Science would lose 197 citations based on this year’s two retractions. And Cell would lose 315 citations to two now-retracted papers.
In other words, what if journals were penalised for retractions, putting their money where their mouth is when they talk about how good their peer review is? Clearly, if a paper is retracted, no matter what excuses journals make, peer review didn’t work as well as it could have.
We explore what this might mean for top journals. But there are some nuances here. We wouldn’t want to further discourage retractions of papers that deserved it. One solution: Continue reading Is it time for a retraction penalty?
Former UT-Southwestern cancer researchers faked data in 10 papers: ORI
The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has ruled in a case we’ve been following for nearly two years — and which seems to have been launched after Retraction Watch readers took a careful look at figures from what appeared to be an unrelated case.
Takao Takahashi and Makato Suzuki, both former postdocs at a cancer research center at UT-Southwestern, both “knowingly, intentionally, and recklessly falsified data” in a total of 10 papers, according to the ORI. Takahashi, now at Gifu University in Japan, was responsible for fakery in four papers, while Suzuki, now at Kumamoto University Hospital, also in Japan, falsified data in six.
We reported on the retraction of the four Takahashi papers, and one of the Suzuki papers, in November 2012. At that time, Adi Gazdar, the head of the lab where the researchers worked, told us that
Continue reading Former UT-Southwestern cancer researchers faked data in 10 papers: ORI
A PNAS expression of concern appears — and so does its revealing backstory
When retraction notices and expressions of concern appear, particularly those that are opaque, we try our best to find out what’s behind them, whether it’s better explanations or the steps that led to moves. Today, we have one story in which we’ve been able to learn a lot more than usual.
In April, Bas van Steensel, Wendy Bickmore, Thomas Cremer, and Kerstin Bystricky sent a letter to about 80 leading labs in nuclear organization and steroid receptor biology. It began (we’ve added some relevant links): Continue reading A PNAS expression of concern appears — and so does its revealing backstory
PubPeer Selections: “Meta-rant” about Science paper; posting raw data satisfies critics; was gel splicing ever OK?
Here’s another installment of PubPeer Selections:What should an ideal retraction notice look like? We (and COPE) want your input
Last week, we announced a new partnership with PRE (Peer Review Evaluation) “to improve access to information about retraction policies.” The first step, we and PRE said, was that Retraction Watch would create guidelines for retraction notices, to which PRE’s flagship product, PRE-val, would link.
Well, it turns out that great minds think alike, or along similar lines, anyway. Today we learned that next week, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) will be discussing a standard retraction form proposed by friend of Retraction Watch Hervé Maisonneuve, who has published several papers on retractions. According to a writeup: Continue reading What should an ideal retraction notice look like? We (and COPE) want your input
Hayabusa Science retraction made official, but behind a paywall
Science has published the retraction of a 2006 paper about an asteroid, following a report in its news pages that the study’s authors had requested the move.
Here’s the paywalled — tsk, tsk — notice: Continue reading Hayabusa Science retraction made official, but behind a paywall