A 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
Two major publishers will remove more than 120 papers created with random paper generator SCIgen, according to Nature.
Richard van Noorden, who has the scoop, reports:
Continue reading Springer, IEEE withdrawing more than 120 nonsense papers
It 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
An article in New Space, a journal about space travel, has been retracted because the results it presented weren’t ready for liftoff.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