A group of neuroscientists has retracted a paper published earlier this last year in Diabetes after realizing that a figure that took up a whole page of the paper may not have been quite right.
Here’s the notice for “Blockade of receptor for advanced glycation end products in a model of type 1 diabetic leukoencephalopathy”: Continue reading Authors retract Diabetes paper after submitting it “without knowledge of inherent errors”
We have a few follow-ups from stories we’ve recently covered:
Terry Elton case initially chalked up to “disorganization,” not misconduct
Ohio State University (OSU), which along with the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) recently sanctioned a pharmacy professor for image manipulation, “failed at first to recognize his deception,” according to an investigation by The Columbus Dispatch based on university documents.
The piece, which quotes Ivan, reveals that OSU needed some prompting from the ORI before it concluded that Terry Elton was guilty of misconduct, and not just unintentional errors that he at one point blamed on a research technician who lost her job in October 2011: Continue reading Catching up: OSU “missed fraud,” Dipak Das lost tenured professorship, Ivan on NPR’s Science Friday
A Brazilian author whose attorneys were the first to send the now-shuttered Science Fraud site a cease-and-desist letter has now had a paper retracted.
As Retraction Watch readers may know, Science Fraud shut down earlier this week in response to legal threats. Those threats were preceded by a cease-and-desist letter last month from attorneys for Rui Curi, of the University of Sao Paulo.
Curi’s work had been scrutinized by Science Fraud in a number of posts, with allegations of duplicated bands and re-used Western blots. With a gnawing suspicion that some of our more erudite readers will take issue with our use of “irony” here, Continue reading Irony? Paper by author whose attorneys sent cease-and-desist letter to Science Fraud retracted
One of the owners of the whistleblower site Science Fraud, which went dark yesterday in response to legal threats, has identified himself, and explained what happened.
In a post on his personal blog (since removed)* — give the whole post a read if it reappears — Paul Brookes, a scientist at the University of Rochester, gives the history: Continue reading Owner of Science Fraud site, suspended for legal threats, identifies himself, talks about next steps
As regular Retraction Watch readers may have noticed, a number of sites have sprung up recently to examine — quite critically — papers that other scientists say are dodgy. There’s Abnormal Science, for example, which has not been updated since last February, and a Japanese whistleblower took to YouTube to demonstrate what was wrong with two dozen studies.
The people running these sites have provided a useful service, in that they often nudge journals along and lead to corrections and retractions. When they’ve pointed out issues with papers, we always try to link back to them for details.
But these sites can also have sharp elbows, particularly those that are anonymous, and one site launched last summer, Science Fraud, has drawn unwanted legal attention from scientists whose work has been questioned. Last month, the site earned its first cease-and-desist letter. Today, the site has suspended posts, and deactivated all of its older entries. Here’s the post announcing the move: Continue reading Facing legal threats, Science Fraud temporarily suspends posting
Last week was a busy one at the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI), at least judging by how many cases they posted. There were sanctions against researchers at Ohio State, Texas Tech, and the Gladstone Institutes, as we reported. And it turns out there was another case closed, of a former Harvard dental school research fellow, The Scientist reports.
According to the ORI, Martin Biosse-Duplan “engaged in research misconduct in research supported by National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), grant R01 AR054450.”
The misconduct involved a lab presentation and two published abstracts: Continue reading Former Harvard dental school researcher committed misconduct: ORI
Milena Penkowa, the former University of Copenhagen scientist found by her university to have embezzled grant funds and to have possibly committed misconduct in 15 papers, has another retraction.
An international panel released its findings in July, as Nature reported then: Continue reading Retraction three for Milena Penkowa, for diabetes-exercise study
A group of cancer researchers formerly centered at Johns Hopkins have retracted two more studies. The previous two retracted papers — one of which was the focus of a lawsuit — were about prostate cancer, while the new retractions are of papers about colon cancer.
Here’s the notice for one paper: Continue reading Retractions three and four for Hopkins cancer biomarker group
Paul Muchowski, a neuroscience researcher at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease in San Francisco, faked data in multiple grant applications, according to findings released today by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).
In a funded NIH grant, R01 NS054753-06A1, and two submitted grant applications, R01 NS054753-06 and R01 NS047237-06, ORI says that Muchowski “knowingly and intentionally” committed “research misconduct by falsifying and fabricating data” as follows:
The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has sanctioned a former Texas Tech postdoc for using data that had actually been generated before he joined the lab in a paper as if it were new.
Shuang-Qing Zhang, according to today’s announcement by the ORI, “engaged in research misconduct by the falsification and fabrication of plagiarized data” in a paper he claimed to have written with his supervisor, Reza Mehvar, “Determination of dextra-methylprednisolone conjugate with glycine linker in rat plasma and liver by high-performance liquid chromatography and its application in pharmacokinetics,” first published online in Biomedical Chromatography in 2009. [see update at end of post]
The work was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), grant R01 GM069869. The ORI found that Zhang had: Continue reading ORI sanctions former Texas Tech postdoc for falsification, fabrication, plagiarism