Author: Ivan Oransky

RIP, Ed Rickards: Duke watchdog who covered Anil Potti case dies at 72

dukeIt’s unusual for us to post obituaries on Retraction Watch — we’ve published just one so far in three-and-a-half years — but we wanted to pause for a moment to note the passing of a tireless crusader for transparency and accountability whose electronic path crossed with ours a number of times since 2012 because of our shared interest in the case of Anil Potti.

We learned of the death of Ed Rickards this weekend while Ivan was attending ScienceOnline 2014. The Duke Chronicle, the university’s student newspaper, reported on February 5: Continue reading RIP, Ed Rickards: Duke watchdog who covered Anil Potti case dies at 72

Weekend reads: How much can one scientist publish? And more stem cell misconduct

booksAnother busy week at Retraction Watch, including a ScienceOnline 2014 session Ivan facilitated on post-publication peer review. Here’s a selection of what was happening elsewhere on the web: Continue reading Weekend reads: How much can one scientist publish? And more stem cell misconduct

“Unfortunately, scientific publishing is not immune to fraud and mistakes”: Springer responds to fake papers story

springerWe have an update on the story of 120 bogus papers being removed by IEEE and Springer. The latter posted a statement earlier today, which we include in its entirety below: Continue reading “Unfortunately, scientific publishing is not immune to fraud and mistakes”: Springer responds to fake papers story

Nature paper retracted following multiple failures to reproduce results

nature 2-27-14An international team of researchers from the NIH, Harvard, the University of Michigan, and two Chinese universities — Fourth Military Medical University and China Medical University — has retracted their 2012 paper in Nature after they — and a number of other groups — were unable to reproduce the key results.

The original abstract for “The NAD-dependent deacetylase SIRT2 is required for programmed necrosis” said that the findings

implicate SIRT2 as an important regulator of programmed necrosis and indicate that inhibitors of this deacetylase may constitute a novel approach to protect against necrotic injuries, including ischaemic stroke and myocardial infarction.

But here’s the notice, by corresponding author Toren Finkel and colleagues: Continue reading Nature paper retracted following multiple failures to reproduce results

Should readers get a refund when they pay to access seriously flawed papers?

Photo by Bilal Kamoon via flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/bilal-kamoon/
Photo by Bilal Kamoon via flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/bilal-kamoon/

Time for another installment of Ask Retraction Watch:

Let’s say I’m collecting relevant papers to write a review, or preparing a project, and I have rather limited time. I find a few interesting papers, bump into some paywalls, ask the authors for the .pdf without any response, and finally I decide to pay, say, $20 USD each for 8 papers. However, upon reading these papers I notice that two or three of them present serious irregularities — say, they’re 90% similar to some other published papers. Well, I’ve just spent $160 USD on these papers, trusting the publisher in the mumbo jumbo that all papers “meet high quality international standards,” are “peer-reviewed by experts,” “handled by selected editors,” etc., and yet they are clearly deeply flawed. Moreover, I investigate further online and I find that these and other issues in the papers had been already pointed out by readers online, e.g., in PubPeer or Retraction Watch comments, more than a year before.

Should I be entitled to a refund?

Take our poll, and leave a comment: Continue reading Should readers get a refund when they pay to access seriously flawed papers?

Utrecht University finds “violation of academic integrity” by former researcher

dhonukshe
Pankaj Dhonukshe

We have an update on the case of Pankaj Dhonukshe, a scientist about whom we reported in November. Utrecht University has found that Dhonukshe, a former researcher at the Dutch university, committed “a violation of academic integrity” in work that led to a number of papers, including one published in Nature and once since retracted from Cell.

Here’s the university’s statement: Continue reading Utrecht University finds “violation of academic integrity” by former researcher

“Inconsistent errors” and unknowing authors force retraction of microbiology paper

leeuwenhoekA 2013 article in Antonie van Leeuwenhoek Journal of Microbiology has been retracted for a few reasons.

Here’s the notice for “The effects of each beta-glucosidase gene deletion on cellulase gene regulation in Neurospora crassa:” Continue reading “Inconsistent errors” and unknowing authors force retraction of microbiology paper

Leading chemist notches two retractions in one journal, separated by 47 years

inorganica chimica actaA leading chemist at the University of Washington, Larry Dalton, has retracted a 2004 study in Inorganica Chimica Acta, marking his second retraction in the journal in 47 years.

Here’s the new notice: Continue reading Leading chemist notches two retractions in one journal, separated by 47 years

Nine-year-old plagiarism allegation leads to retraction of math paper

entropyIt is often said that science is self-correcting, but it is usually more accurate to add “in the long run” to that statement.

Take, for example, this retraction of a 10-year-old paper in Entropy that had been questioned since 2005. Here’s the notice for “Statistical Convergent Topological Sequence Entropy Maps of the Circle:”

The editors were made aware that a paper published in Entropy in 2004 [1] may have plagiarized an earlier paper by Roman Hric published in 2000 [2]. After checking with specialized plagiarism software, we found that this claim is indeed correct and almost the entire paper is a verbatim copy of the earlier one. After confirmation of this fact, the editors of Entropy have decided to retract the paper immediately.

We would like to apologize to the readers of the journal that it took so many years to notice this error and to retract the paper. Apparently there is a comment on MathSciNet (http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/) since 2005 that points out this case of possible plagiarism [3], however the editorial office was not aware of this until recently. We request readers of the journal to directly get in touch with the editorial office and the editors of the journal for similar cases in the future, so that they can be handled promptly.

References

1. Aydin, B. Statistical Convergent Topological Sequence Entropy Maps of the Circle. Entropy 2004, 6, 257–261.
2. Hric, R. Topological sequence entropy for maps of the circle. Comment. Math. Univ. Carolin. 2000, 41, 53–59.
3. MathSciNet, MR2082710 (2005f:37075), http://www.ams.org/mathscinet getitem?mr=2082710

The paper has yet to be cited, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Hat tip: William T.A. Harrison