For the second time inside of a week, we come to praise scientists who did the right thing when they realized their lab equipment or reagents weren’t performing as expected.
Here’s the retraction of a 2011 paper in Cerebral Cortex: Continue reading Scientists doing the right thing: Malfunctioning lab equipment leads to retraction of neuroscience paper
Two more papers by Diederik Stapel — who was profiled by The New York Times Magazine this weekend — have been retracted, both in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
The notice for “Hardly thinking about close and distant others: On cognitive business and target closeness in social comparison effects,” by Stapel and David Marx, and cited six times: Continue reading “Unfinished business”: Diederik Stapel retraction count rises to 53
A group of researchers at the University of Minnesota have retracted a paper in Diabetes for image problems, but exactly what happened is still under investigation.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Diabetes paper retracted for “misgrouping errors” that remain under investigation
Rui Curi — the Brazilian scientist who threatened to sue the now-shuttered Science-Fraud.org site for criticizing his work — has rung up his second retraction, this one for a paper that he corrected earlier this year.
Here’s the Journal of Endocrinology notice, whose headers and language are a bit confusing, understandably, because it is retracting two things, a correction and the original paper: Continue reading Streisand Effect meets tough editors as journal retracts already-corrected paper by Rui Curi
Another paper by Milena Penkowa, who is being investigated for embezzlement as well as possible scientific misconduct, has been subject to an Expression of Concern:
Here’s the notice in Glia: Continue reading Another Expression of Concern for Milena Penkowa
The New York Times Magazine has a great profile — featuring an in-depth interview — of Diederik Stapel this weekend. Check it out. (Or, if you’re visiting us because the magazine was kind enough to include a link to Retraction Watch, welcome! And find all of our Stapel coverage here.)
One of a number of highlights in the piece by Yudhijit Battacharjee: Continue reading An illuminating profile of Diederik Stapel in the New York Times Magazine
They say that a poor workman blames his tools. If you’re a scientist and you discover your tools don’t do exactly what you thought they did, however, the right thing to do is let other scientists relying on your work know.
That’s what the University of Auckland’s Nigel Birch and colleagues did recently, after a 2012 study they published in the Journal of Neurochemistry didn’t hold up. Here’s the notice, which we’d consider a model for retractions everywhere: Continue reading A model retraction in the Journal of Neurochemistry for “unexpected effect” of a filter
A team of researchers in Ireland has retracted two papers from Cancer Letters after concerns were apparently raised about some of the studies’ figures.
Denise Egan, of the Institute of Technology Tallaght in Dublin, and colleagues published “In vitro anti-tumour and cyto-selective effects of coumarin-3-carboxylic acid and three of its hydroxylated derivatives, along with their silver-based complexes, using human epithelial carcinoma cell lines” and “A study of the role of apoptotic cell death and cell cycle events mediating the mechanism of action of 6-hydroxycoumarin-3-carboxylatosilver in human malignant hepatic cells” in 2007.
The two notices say the same thing: Continue reading Two cancer papers retracted because authors “are unable to guarantee the accuracy of some of the figures”
Martin Biosse-Duplan, a former Harvard dental school research fellow found by the Office of Research Integrity to have falsified results has had the two papers in question retracted.
From the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research: Continue reading Two retractions appear for former Harvard dental researcher found to have committed misconduct
Last month, we covered the retraction of a paper by A.M.K. El-Ghonemy, of Al-Jouf University in Saudi Arabia. The engineer now has a second retraction in the same journal, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.
Here’s the notice for “Waste energy recovery in sea water reverse osmosis desalination plants, Part-1: Review”: Continue reading Saudi engineer loses second fresh water paper for plagiarism