Rui Curi, the Brazilian scientist whose lawyers’ threats helped force the shutdown of Science-Fraud.org, has corrected another paper criticized by the site.
Here’s the correction for “Effects of moderate electrical stimulation on reactive species production by primary rat skeletal muscle cells: Cross-talk between superoxide and nitric oxide production,” in the Journal of Cellular Physiology: Continue reading Author whose lawyers threatened Science Fraud corrects another paper
A University of Minnesota social scientist who studies health disparities has retracted a study that apparently lacked ethical approval.
Here’s the notice for “Deservingness to state health services for South – South migrants: A preliminary study of Costa Rican providers’ views,” a paper in Social Science & Medicine by Kate Goldade and a colleague: Continue reading Social sciences paper retracted for lack of ethical approval
Earlier today, we reported on the withdrawal of a paper from Research Policy, an Elsevier journal. The notice didn’t give a reason, just that the “article has been withdrawn at the request of the authors and editor.”
We’ve seen a number of such opaque withdrawals from Elsevier journals, and thought it was worth some exploration. While Elsevier’s policy here on such withdrawals is clear, as it is in other matters, we take some issue with it: Continue reading Is an “article in press” “published?” A word about Elsevier’s withdrawal policy
A frequent co-author of Ulrich Lichtenthaler — the management professor who has retracted at least eight papers — has now withdrawn one of his own from Research Policy.
The original paper, “How to create commercial value from patents: The role of patent management,” by Holger Ernst and colleagues, went online on May 21, 2012. Here’s the notice: Continue reading Lichtenthaler co-author Ernst retracts paper that didn’t include Lichtenthaler
One of the two corrections recommended by a McGill committee for work by Maya Saleh and colleagues has appeared, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
As we reported last month, the committee found that
two figures in [a] Nature paper had been “intentionally contrived and falsified.” One of those figures was duplicated in a PNAS paper, which also contained an image that had incorrectly labeled some proteins.
The committee recommended that both of the papers be corrected, and the PNAS correction for “Confinement of caspase-12 proteolytic activity to autoprocessing” reads as follows: Continue reading Musical figures: PNAS paper corrected with version of “intentionally contrived and falsified” Nature figure
A German professor who claims to have developed “a self-consistent field theory which is used to derive at all known interactions of the potential vortex” will have at least two papers retracted, thanks to the scrutiny of a concerned economist.
The first retraction has already appeared, in DNA and Cell Biology, for a paper by Konstantin Meyl called “DNA and Cell Resonance: Magnetic Waves Enable Cell Communication.” The notice says nothing: Continue reading “Way out there” paper claiming to merge physics and biology retracted
As expected, ten Retraction Watch posts about Anil Potti that were mistakenly removed for a false Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice have been restored.
Automattic, which runs WordPress, notified us tonight of the move, which comes two weeks after the original notice. The claim against Retraction Watch was ridiculous, of course; a site in India plagiarized our posts, then claimed we had violated their copyright. That site, perhaps not surprisingly, has been taken down.
In the meantime, another site has been hit with a DMCA notice for a post about Potti, and Potti has told us that he had nothing to do with the takedown notice filed against us.
If you missed those posts — one of which is an accounting of Potti’s retraction record so far — here they are: Continue reading Anil Potti posts restored to Retraction Watch following false DMCA claim
The journal Proteomics has retracted a paper for a plagiarized figure — but how the authors came to possess the image in the first place remains a mystery.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Proteomics paper retracted for plagiarized figure of mysterious origin
If you wanted to minimize the real-life effects of misconduct, you might note that some of the retractions we cover are in tiny obscure journals hardly anyone reads. But a new meta-analysis and editorial in JAMA today suggests — as a study by Grant Steen did a few years ago — that the risk of patient harm due to scientific misconduct is not just theoretical.
As the editorialists note, hydroxyethyl starches (HES) are “synthetic fluid products used commonly in clinical practice worldwide:”
Synthetic colloids received market approval in the 1960s without evaluation of their efficacy and safety in large phase 3 clinical trials. Subsequent studies reported mixed evidence on their benefits and harms.
There has been controversy over the use of HES for decades, with the most recent high-level review showing “no significant mortality increase.” But one of the reasons for that review — by the prestigious Cochrane Collaboration — was to see if the dozens of now-retracted studies by Joachim Boldt Continue reading Does scientific misconduct cause patient harm? The case of Joachim Boldt
Would you hire someone found to have faked data on federal grant applications as a “grant services consultant?”
You may have been without knowing it, if you had gone to Washington, D.C.-based Strategic Health Care for help with your grants. There, you would have found Michael Miller — page removed today, more on that in a moment — whose bio described him as an “internationally known neuroscientist.”
He has more than 30 years of experience in obtaining federal support for his research and that of collaborators. This includes individual grants (R01′s and R03′s) and fellowships for himself and pre- and post-doctoral trainees from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), merit reviews and research career awards from the Department of Veterans Affairs, and support from private foundations. In addition, Dr. Miller successfully orchestrated and competed for a $9 million NIH center (P50) grant that coordinated research at five different institutions.
What Miller’s bio failed to mention Continue reading Neuroscientist found to have faked grant applications loses gig as grant services consultant