Retraction count for resveratrol researcher Dipak Das rises to 12

Das, via UConn

Dipak Das, the UConn researcher whom the university earlier ths year found to have fabricated or falsified data more than 100 times, has four more retractions to his name.

The notices appear in the June 1, 2012 issue of the American Journal of Physiology: Heart and Circulatory Physiology, and suggest that Das was not all that cooperative: Continue reading Retraction count for resveratrol researcher Dipak Das rises to 12

Psychologists take a gamble on using data about risky behavior, and are forced to retract a paper

When the first sentence of a science paper reads like this, you might think you’re in for quite a ride:

Jumping out of an airplane may seem like a crazy and scary thing to do, but for a skydiver it is a fun and exciting experience.

Unfortunately for the authors of an earlier version of that paper comparing gamblers and skydivers, published in 2011 in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, the ride was short-lived, according to a retraction notice just published: Continue reading Psychologists take a gamble on using data about risky behavior, and are forced to retract a paper

Millennium Villages Project forced to correct Lancet paper on foreign aid as leader leaves team

A senior member of a high-profile foreign aid research team has left the project on the heels of a Lancet correction of a heavily criticized paper the team published earlier this month.

Paul Pronyk, who until last week was director of monitoring and evaluation at Columbia University’s Center for Global Health and Economic Development, which runs the Millennium Villages Project, wrote a letter to the Lancet acknowledging errors in the paper, “The effect of an integrated multisector model for achieving the Millennium Development Goals and improving child survival in rural sub-Saharan Africa: a non-randomised controlled assessment,” originally published May 8. That admission came after Jesse Bump, Michael Clemens, Gabriel Demombynes, and Lawrence Haddad wrote a letter criticizing the work, which was published this week accompanied by corrections to the paper: Continue reading Millennium Villages Project forced to correct Lancet paper on foreign aid as leader leaves team

An Immunity retraction for Luk van Parijs, three years after the ORI found evidence of fabrication in the paper

Earlier this month, we reported on a correction by Luk van Parijs, the biologist the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) fired in 2005 after he admitted to making up data.

Immunity has now run a retraction involving van Parijs, dated May 25, 2012, for 2003’s “Autoimmunity as the Consequence of a Spontaneous Mutation in Rasgrp1”: Continue reading An Immunity retraction for Luk van Parijs, three years after the ORI found evidence of fabrication in the paper

Three more retractions for Vietnamese physicists who plagiarized a plagiarized paper

Last week, we brought you the story of Thong Duc Le and his colleagues, physicists who were forced to retract four papers, including one that cited, as we noted “their own study that had already been retracted for plagiarism.”

The team has now retracted three more papers: Continue reading Three more retractions for Vietnamese physicists who plagiarized a plagiarized paper

Authors retract two Cell Metabolism papers after “data were inappropriately removed from the laboratory”

A group of researchers at the University of Utah has retracted two papers from Cell Metabolism after they realized that a dismissed employee had tossed out data that were the basis of some error-laden figures.

Here’s the notice for both papers: Continue reading Authors retract two Cell Metabolism papers after “data were inappropriately removed from the laboratory”

Leading cancer vaccines researcher retracts paper for figure “discrepancies” flagged by watchdog blog

Gerold Schuler, a German immunology researcher who shared the 2006 Deutscher Krebspreis — aka the German Cancer Prize — for his work that contributed to cancer vaccines has retracted a paper in International Immunology following concerns raised by a German science watchdog blog.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Leading cancer vaccines researcher retracts paper for figure “discrepancies” flagged by watchdog blog

Authors retract 2010 Archives of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery paper because of duplication

The authors of a 2010 paper in the Archives of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery have retracted it after realizing that their colleagues at other institutions had already published a paper based on the same findings.

Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading Authors retract 2010 Archives of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery paper because of duplication

JACS makes it official, retracting Breslow “space dinosaurs” paper for “similarity to his previously published reviews”

Last month, we (and others) reported that the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) had temporarily withdrawn a paper by a former president of the society after a number of chemists pointed out similarities between the March 25 article and previous ones by the author, Ronald Breslow.

The paper had drawn puzzled looks thanks to an April 11 press release — since deleted — headlined “Could ‘advanced’ dinosaurs rule other planets?” In its note last month, the journal said: Continue reading JACS makes it official, retracting Breslow “space dinosaurs” paper for “similarity to his previously published reviews”

Astrophysics retraction trail includes paper that plagiarized another already retracted for…plagiarism

Sometimes, the full story of scientific misdeeds isn’t clear until several retraction notices appear. Take the case of a group of Vietnamese astrophysicists led by Thong Duc Le.

If you were to read a Physics Letters B retraction notice about one of the group’s papers, “Search for cosmological time variation of the fine-structure constant using low-redshifts of quasar,” you wouldn’t have any idea why the paper was retracted, nor that the move was related to any other retractions: Continue reading Astrophysics retraction trail includes paper that plagiarized another already retracted for…plagiarism