Ivan Oransky

Weekend reads: Harvard group’s work under scrutiny; editorial board resigns en masse; a concussion study hits a brick wall

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Exclusive: Former Tufts researcher suspended from animal work after abuse
A professor found her name on an article she didn’t write. Then it got worse
Earthquake destroyed data, claims Japanese prof found to have faked results
Debate over whether video games ‘rot kids’ brains’ won’t be settled by this retraction
Guest post: What happened when we tried to get a book with misinformation about our field retracted

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to more than 300. There are more than 39,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Weekend reads: Plagiarism allegations swirl around superconductor scientist; the ice cream studies no one wants to talk about; when fraud doesn’t pay

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Author denies Chinese censorship prompted COVID-19 retraction

The corresponding author of a recently published – and then quickly retracted – letter in The Lancet decrying the failure of the Chinese Ministry of Health to pay doctors and other health care workers says authorities did not pressure him to withdraw the piece.

The letter begins:

As the COVID-19 pandemic comes to an end in China, medical personnel who have worked tirelessly to fight the omicron (B.1.1.529) variant are now facing a new challenge. Despite their heroic efforts, many of them are now struggling to receive the financial compensation they deserve.

The second sentence cites a blog post on Weixin.

Former Yale prof faked data, says Federal watchdog

A liver researcher who worked at Yale University for 15 years faked data in multiple papers and grant applications, according to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI).

Carlo Spirli, who rose to the rank of associate professor before leaving Yale in 2020, “engaged in research misconduct by knowingly, intentionally, or recklessly falsifying and/or fabricating data” in four published papers, two presentations, and three NIH grant applications, the ORI said in announcing its findings today.

Spirli, according to the ORI:

Weekend reads: Drug company loses defamation suit against journal; Canada a whistleblower wasteland?; UT-Austin can revoke degrees after all

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Weekend reads: Scientist suspended for 13 years; a fraud buster; editor home bias?

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Weekend reads: A bizarre shark story ends in a retraction; one scientist’s decades-long fight; the math wars

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

In unusual move, publishers remove authors victimized by forger

Three major publishers have removed several authors’ names from five papers, most published a decade ago, following correspondence from an attorney representing one of the individuals.

Three of the papers appeared in PLOS ONE in 2013, one appeared in Springer Nature’s Tumor Biology the same year, and one appeared in Elsevier’s Obesity Research & Clinical Practice in 2014. As we reported in 2016, the journals retracted the articles because one of the authors – Lishan Wang – had forged the rest of his co-authors’ names and manipulated the peer review process.

Years later, Yongyong Shi, a distinguished professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Bio-X Institutes and one of the authors whose name Wang forged, hired a lawyer named Joseph Lewin, a solicitor with Dorsey & Whitney (Europe) LLP. Lewin, in turn, requested that the three publishers remove Shi’s name from the original papers.