It’s been another busy week at Retraction Watch. Here’s a sampling of scientific publishing and misconduct news from around the web: Continue reading Weekend reads: Stapel as an object lesson, peer review’s flaws, and salami slicing
Author: Ivan Oransky
Should scientific misconduct be handled by the police? It’s fraud week at Nature and Nature Medicine
It’s really hard to get papers retracted, police might be best-equipped to handle scientific misconduct investigations, and there’s finally software that will identify likely image manipulation.
Those are three highlights from a number of pieces that have appeared in Nature and Nature Medicine in the past few weeks. Not surprisingly, there are common threads, so join us as we follow the bouncing ball. Continue reading Should scientific misconduct be handled by the police? It’s fraud week at Nature and Nature Medicine
Former federal contractor faked data, says ORI
The Office of Research Integrity has found that Timothy Sheehy, formerly a scientist at a contractor for the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, committed misconduct in work paid for by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and a contract to his former company, SAIC-Frederick, Inc.
According to a notice in the Federal Register today, ORI found faked data in a 2010 paper, “Simultaneous Recovery of DNA and RNA from Formalin-Fixed Paraffin-Embedded Tissue and Application in Epidemiologic Studies,” that Sheehy and colleagues published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers, & Prevention: Continue reading Former federal contractor faked data, says ORI
“Why Growing Retractions Are (Mostly) a Good Sign”: New study makes the case
Retraction Watch readers will no doubt be familiar with the fact that retraction rates are rising, but one of the unanswered questions has been whether that increase is due to more misconduct, greater awareness, or some combination of the two.
In a new paper in PLOS Medicine, Daniele Fanelli, who has studied misconduct and related issues, tries to sift through the evidence. Noting that the number of corrections has stayed constant since 1980, Fanelli writes that: Continue reading “Why Growing Retractions Are (Mostly) a Good Sign”: New study makes the case
Melendez notches retraction 14, Lemus now stands at 12
Two researchers who have appeared frequently on Retraction Watch have racked up another retraction each.
This is the fourteenth retraction for Alirio Melendez, who was found guilty of misconduct by the National University of Singapore but denies the allegations. Here’s the notice in The International Journal of Biochemistry & Cell Biology for “Environmental toxicogenomics: A post-genomic approach to analysing biological responses to environmental toxins,” a paper published in Environmental Research and cited nine times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge: Continue reading Melendez notches retraction 14, Lemus now stands at 12
Drug withdrawal: St. Louis Krokodil paper disappears
On November 11, St. Louis’s KTVI reported that krokodil, a nasty opioid concoction with roots in Russia, had arrived in their town. They based that report on a case study published in the American Journal of Medicine, “Krokodil’—A Designer Drug From Across the Atlantic, with Serious Consequences,” and interviewed two of the paper’s authors, Dany Thekkemuriyil and Unnikrishnan Pillai.
The case study involved a 30-year-old man the Thekkemuriyil and Pillai said they had seen at St. Mary’s Health Center in Richmond Heights, Missouri. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported a few days later: Continue reading Drug withdrawal: St. Louis Krokodil paper disappears
Mathematicians have second paper retracted
A group of mathematicians in Iran have had a second paper retracted, and if we may, neither of the notices adds up.
Here’s the notice: for the new paper, in the Journal of Inequalities and Applications: Continue reading Mathematicians have second paper retracted
Lack of ethical clearance prompts expression of concern from bone journal
The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery has issued an expression of concern about a paper whose authors may not have obtained proper ethical clearance.
Here’s the notice, signed by editor in chief Vernon Tolo: Continue reading Lack of ethical clearance prompts expression of concern from bone journal
Weekend reads: China’s scientific publishing black market, how to blow the whistle, and more
It’s been a busy week here at Retraction Watch, with breaking news about hotly debated papers from Nature and about GMOs, but there have been interesting stories about retractions and scientific misconduct elsewhere, too. Here’s a sampling:
Continue reading Weekend reads: China’s scientific publishing black market, how to blow the whistle, and more
P values: Scientific journals’ top ten plagiarism euphemisms
The other day, we nominated a phrase in a retraction notice for the prize “of most-extra-syllables-used-to-say-the-word-plagiarism” because a journal decided to call the act “inclusion of significant passages of unattributed material from other authors.”
That lovely phrase can now be added to our list of best euphemisms for plagiarism, which we highlight in our most recent column for LabTimes. There, you’ll find such gems as “unattributed overlap,” “a significant originality issue,” an “approach,” and an “administrative error.”
As we write: Continue reading P values: Scientific journals’ top ten plagiarism euphemisms