Japan’s RIKEN research center has found misconduct in work that led to two controversial Nature papers, purporting to show an easy way to create stem cells, that have been dogged by criticism for months.
Here’s an excerpt from today’s statement about “six items [RIKEN] has been investigating:”
Continue reading RIKEN finds two “instances of research misconduct” in STAP stem cell work
Some authors of retracted studies persist in citing their retracted work, according to a new study in Science and Engineering Ethics that calls the trend “very concerning.”
Continue reading Some authors seem to cite their own retracted studies. Should we be concerned?
Another busy week at Retraction Watch. Here’s some of what was happening elsewhere on the web: Continue reading Weekend reads: Stem cell researchers falsifying data, neuroscience research forgets statistics tests
Dipak Das, the former University of Connecticut researcher found to have committed more than 100 counts of misconduct, and who passed away last year, has had another retraction appear.
Here’s the notice, for “Dynamic Action of Carotenoids in Cardioprotection and Maintenance of Cardiac Health,” from Molecules:
Continue reading Late resveratrol researcher Dipak Das up to 20 retractions
Here’s a suggestion: If you’re going to plagiarize someone else’s work, don’t draw attention to it by including “fiction” in your title.
That lesson was brought home to us by a recent retraction in the Italian Journal of Pediatrics for “Infantile colic, facts and fiction:”
Continue reading Pro tip: Don’t use “facts and fiction” in your title if you plan to plagiarize
The headline of this post is the title of a fascinating new paper in the Journal of Management suggesting that if the road to publication is paved with good intentions, it may also be paved with bad scientific practice.
Ernest Hugh O’Boyle and colleagues tracked 142 management and applied psychology PhD theses to publication, and looked for various questionable research practices — they abbreviate those “QRPs” — such as deleting or adding data after hypothesis tests, selectively adding or deleting variables, and adding or deleting hypotheses themselves.
Their findings?
Last month, we brought readers the story of a retraction in December from Psychiatric Times, of an essay by Richard Noll that included this passage:
Despite the discomfort it brings, we owe it to the current generation of clinicians to remember that an elite minority within the American psychiatric profession played a small but ultimately decisive role in the cultural validation, and then reduction, of the Satanism moral panic between 1988 and 1994. Indeed, what can we all learn from American psychiatry’s involvement in the moral panic?
That essay was republished on March 19, along with an editor’s note:
Continue reading Psychiatric Times reinstates retracted essay on “satanic ritual abuse”
The Journal of Biology and Life Science, published by the Macrothink Institute, has retracted a paper that claimed “fossil does not provides [sic] the convincing and direct evidences for evolution,” for reasons that they left to us to figure out.
The entire notice for “Fossils Evidences (Paleontology) Opposite to Darwin’s Theory,” allegedly written by Md. Abdul Ahad, of Hajee Mohamed Danesh Science and Technology University in Bangladesh, and Charles D. Michener, of the University of Kansas, reads:
The editorial board announced that this article has been retracted on February 25, 2014. If you have any further question, please contact us at: [email protected]
In a case whose irony is not lost on those involved, an article about publishing ethics has been retracted because one of the authors re-used material he’d written for an earlier piece. But the authors and the journal’s editors have turned the episode into a learning opportunity.
Here’s the notice for “Ethics and Integrity of the Publishing Process: Myths, Facts, and a Roadmap,” published in 2011 by Marshall Schminke and Maureen L. Ambrose: Continue reading Oh, the irony: Paper on “Ethics and Integrity of the Publishing Process” retracted for duplication
Another busy week at Retraction Watch, which we kicked off by asking for your support. Have you contributed yet? Here’s what was happening elsewhere on the web:
Continue reading Weekend reads: Impact factor mania, male scientists citing themselves, insecure careers in academia