An article in New Space, a journal about space travel, has been retracted because the results it presented weren’t ready for liftoff.
The retraction notice appears as a letter from editor G. Scott Hubbard: Continue reading Failure to launch: “Inaccuracies,” “incomplete and incorrect references” ground space tourist paper
Yet another busy week at Retraction Watch, with one of us taking part in a symposium on the future of science journalism for a few days. (See if you can find Ivan in this picture.) Here’s what was happening elsewhere on the web in science publishing and related issues: Continue reading Weekend reads: A psychology researcher’s confession, a state senator’s plagiarism
A pair of researchers at the University of Maryland have retracted a paper in Cell Death & Differentiation after it became clear that one of the figures had been duplicated from an earlier paper.
Here’s the notice, dated December 13, 2013, for “INrf2 (Keap1) targets Bcl-2 degradation and controls cellular apoptosis,” by Suryakant Niture and Anil Jaiswal: Continue reading Figure duplication kills cell death paper
Xia Jiahong, an immunology researcher at Huazhong Science and Technology University in Wuhan, China, who had a paper subject to a fascinating Expression of Concern earlier this month, turns out to have had a few other entries in his retraction and correction record recently.
Here’s a retraction in the January 2014 issue of the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, for “Combined treatment with chemokine receptor 5 blocker and cyclosporine induces prolonged graft survival in a mouse model of cardiac transplantation,” a paper first published in 2010: Continue reading Immunology researcher with Expression of Concern has cluster of recent retractions, corrections
From time to time, we find online college syllabi among those sites referring us traffic, and some professors have told us that they use Retraction Watch in their classes. We’re pleased and humbled by that.
In a new paper published in the Journal of College Science Teaching, three professors at Clayton State University in Morrow, Georgia, discuss why retractions are good case studies for teaching ethics and examining the scientific process in class. Stephen Burnett, Richard H. Singiser, and Caroline Clower write: Continue reading Retractions are useful for teaching science, say college profs
A group of researchers at Emory has retracted a highly regarded paper after being unable to reproduce its key results.
Here’s the notice from Nature Chemical Biology: Continue reading Failure to reproduce leads to retraction of Nature Chemical Biology herbicide paper
Woo-Suk Hwang is having quite a comeback.
The cloning researcher’s fall from grace in 2005 and 2006 was covered worldwide, featuring two high-profile retractions from Science and convictions (now under appeal) on charges he embezzled government funds and broke South Korea’s bioethics law. But as Nature reported last month in a profile focusing on Hwang’s Biotech Research Foundation: Continue reading Fraud, retractions no barrier to US cloning patent for Woo-Suk Hwang
Another busy week at Retraction Watch, featuring lots of snow at HQ and a trip to take part in a conference in Davis, California. Here’s what was happening elsewhere on the web: Continue reading Weekend reads: MIT professor accused of fraud, biologist who retracted paper suspended, and more
Some Retraction Watch readers may recall this episode, recounted in a recent op-ed by Lew Powell:
During the 1980s and early ’90s a wave of nonexistent “satanic ritual abuse” claims shut down scores of day cares such as Little Rascals, McMartin in California and Fells Acres in Massachusetts. In virtually every instance the charges lacked any basis in fact. Today no reputable psychologist or other social scientist will argue otherwise. The defendants were innocent victims of a “moral panic” that bore striking similarities to the Salem witch hunts 300 years earlier.
Psychologist Richard Noll found the charges troubling too, so he wrote a piece last year for Psychiatric Times because: Continue reading Psychiatric Times retracts essay on “satanic ritual abuse”
If you know Prairie Home Companion, you that that in fictional Lake Wobegon, “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.”
That’s a bit like what Harvard’s Nir Eyal found when he was asked to review a paper for Dove Medical Press. Here’s what he saw when he looked at Dove’s peer reviewer form:
Continue reading No more scientific Lake Wobegon: After criticism, publisher adds a “reject” option for peer reviewers