We have some updates on the case of more than 120 fake SCIgen conference proceedings papers that slipped into IEEE and Springer journals.
Author: Ivan Oransky
Retraction Watch is hiring an intern: Here’s how to apply
Retraction Watch readers: We need help.
As many of our loyal tipsters know, the list of retractions and related stories that we can’t get to just keeps getting longer. And as we grow, we want to groom a stable of paid freelance — and perhaps one day full-time — Retraction Watch contributors.
So with that in mind — and knowing that it can be difficult for early-career journalists to gain experience in accountability journalism — we’ve decided the an internship is the first investment we’ll make with funds our generous supporters have sent us.
Continue reading Retraction Watch is hiring an intern: Here’s how to apply
Brutal honesty: Author takes to PubPeer to announce retraction — and tells us she’ll lose PhD, professorship
Over the past week, there have been a number of comments on PubPeer — a site of which we’re big fans — about a 2007 paper in Oncogene.
The comments suggested that the figures in the paper had problems. Some bands seemed to be duplicated, and one of the images looked very much like that of another paper.
Then, today, first author Eriko Suzuki left this comment: Continue reading Brutal honesty: Author takes to PubPeer to announce retraction — and tells us she’ll lose PhD, professorship
Weekend reads: How to rescue science, what “censorship” really means, worst paper of the year?
Another very busy week at Retraction Watch. There were a lot of gems elsewhere. Here’s a sampling: Continue reading Weekend reads: How to rescue science, what “censorship” really means, worst paper of the year?
Authors retract study suggesting magnesium prevents Alzheimer’s in mice
The authors of a 2013 Journal of Neuroscience study suggesting that “elevation of brain magnesium…may have therapeutic potential for treating [Alzheimer’s disease] in humans” have retracted it after finding errors in the work.
Here’s the original abstract:
Continue reading Authors retract study suggesting magnesium prevents Alzheimer’s in mice
Doing the right thing: Physicists retract paper after becoming aware of “a fundamental error”
The authors of a paper in Physical Review Letters have retracted it, after another researcher pointed out a mistake.
F. Sattin and D.F. Escande write in the notice for “Alfvénic Propagation: A Key to Nonlocal Effects in Magnetized Plasmas” (which is behind a paywall) that after the paper was published, they “we became aware of a fundamental error in the normalization of our equations.” Excerpt: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Physicists retract paper after becoming aware of “a fundamental error”
Stem cell researcher in Korea up to half a dozen retractions
Almost two years ago, we brought you — with the help of Trevor Stokes — the story of a stem cell researcher in Korea whose publication record, and career, unraveled after evidence of image manipulation surfaced in her work.
We’ve reported on four retractions, all in Antioxidants & Redox Signaling, by Soo-Kyung Kang, formerly of Seoul National University resulting from the efforts of a whistleblower. There has been another in Human Gene Therapy: Continue reading Stem cell researcher in Korea up to half a dozen retractions
Publisher to pulp existing copies of science communication book because of plagiarism
The publisher Taylor & Francis has decided to pulp all existing copies of a 2012 book on science communication, and suspend electronic copies indefinitely, after it became clear that the text was plagiarized from the work of another author.
The book, Clear and Concise Communications for Scientists and Engineers, was written by energy and environmental consultant James G. Speight. According to Colin Purrington — the creator of a very popular poster tips site whose past attempts to protect his intellectual property may be familiar to Retraction Watch readers — pages 166-169 are “largely copied” from Purrington’s page on scientific poster design.
In a letter to Taylor & Francis, Purrington wrote:
How common is scientific misconduct in Nigeria?
We’ve only covered one retraction from Nigeria. But as we’ve often noted, retraction rates don’t necessarily correlate with rates of problematic research, so the low number doesn’t really answer the question in this post’s title.
Lucky for us, a group of authors have started publishing surveys of Nigerian scientists on the subject. In a new such survey published in BMC Medical Ethics, Patrick I. Okonta and Theresa Rossouw asked 150 researchers to fill out a questionnaire during a scientific conference in 2010. Most of them — 133 — complied. Their findings? Continue reading How common is scientific misconduct in Nigeria?
Anonymous blog comment suggests lack of confidentiality in peer review — and plays role in a new paper
A new paper in Intelligence is offering some, well, intel into the peer review process at one prestigious neuroscience journal.
The new paper is about another paper, a December 2012 study, “Fractionating Human Intelligence,” published in Neuron by Adam Hampshire and colleagues in December 2012. The Neuron study has been cited 16 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Richard Haier and colleagues write in Intelligence that Continue reading Anonymous blog comment suggests lack of confidentiality in peer review — and plays role in a new paper