In what appears to be a first, two papers have been retracted for including citations designed to help another journal improve its impact factor rankings. The articles in The Scientific World Journal cited papers in Cell Transplantation, which in turn appears to have cited to a high degree other journals with shared board members.
An unusual note went out to reporters on the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) press list yesterday:
Please disregard this MTM, which was sent out on Friday June 29, 2012. The data in the study changed so we are no longer putting out a press release for the study.
The original release was headlined:
Percent Density May Be As Strong a Risk Factor as Variation in Breast Density for Breast Cancer
MTM stands for “memo to the media.” What wasn’t clear was whether the new notice meant the release was being pulled back, or the study itself, but the JNCI press office said it was just the release.
The Journal of Neuroscience is retracting a paper by researchers at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada, after a university investigation found “substantial data misrepresentation” in the work, which was funded by two major federal agencies.
A paper looking at the use of transcendental meditation to reduce the risk of heart disease, and that was put on hold just 12 minutes before its scheduled publication time, is still under review a year later.
The U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has found that a neuroscientist who studied the effects of pesticides on a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease made up data.
On May 8, PLoS Medicine published a paper by Rajaie Batniji and Eran Bendavid of Stanford University, about “whether development assistance for health provided to developing country governments increases health expenditures.”
There’s been a lively discussion at Jeff Perkel’s guest post from this morning, “Should Linus Pauling’s erroneous 1953 model of DNA be retracted?” Most of our commenters say “no.” Some of those “nos” are quite emphatic, suggesting that Retraction Watch should brush up on epistemology, or that this was a silly question to begin with.
We appreciate all the feedback, of course, and thought this would be a good opportunity to expand the answers a bit from “yes” and “no” — which a few commenters have begun doing. So we’re posting this poll about what should happen to papers such as Pauling’s that are proven to be wrong, knowing that they continue to be cited as if they had no significant flaws. (Pauling’s, as Perkel pointed out, was actually wrong about at least one thing even when it was published, but leave that aside for these purposes.) Vote here: Continue reading So what should happen to scientific papers that are proven wrong?
Sebastian Schuchmann, a neuroscience researcher whose duplication errors led to a Cell correction last year, has retracted a 12-year-old paper in the Journal of Neurochemistry whose figures were copied from two of his earlier papers.
The social psychology community, already rocked last year by the Diederik Stapel scandal, now has another set of allegations to dissect. Dirk Smeesters, a professor of consumer behavior and society at the Rotterdam School of Management, part of Erasmus University, has resigned amid serious questions about his work.
According to an Erasmus press release, a scientific integrity committee found that the results in two of Smeesters’ papers were statistically highly unlikely. Smeesters could not produce the raw data behind the findings, and told the committee that he cherry-picked the data to produce a statistically significant result. Those two papers are being retracted, and the university accepted Smeesters’ resignation on June 21.
The release also takes pains to say that the university has no reason to doubt the work of his co-authors. You can read the complete report in Dutch, with Smeesters’ co-authors’ names blacked out, in an NRC Handelsblad story.
In what appears to be a first, two papers have been retracted for including citations designed to help another journal improve its impact factor rankings. The articles in The Scientific World Journal cited papers in Cell Transplantation, which in turn appears to have cited to a high degree other journals with shared board members.
