Author: Ivan Oransky

India’s Kalasalingam University swiftly fires professor, kicks out six students after data manipulation scandal

Kalasalingam University in India has fired a professor who last month blamed unethical students for data manipulation that forced the retraction of three papers amid questions about five more.

As Krishna Pillai of the K2P blog reports, Sangiliyandi Gurunathan, head of Kalasalingam’s biotechnology department, was asked to resign, and did so on Friday, August 5. Kalasalingam also revoked the registrations of six graduate students who were co-authors on the retracted papers. Here’s the university press release with the details.

In comments to Retraction Watch for our earlier post, Gurunathan laid the blame on unethical students and journals, although his story didn’t quite hold together: Continue reading India’s Kalasalingam University swiftly fires professor, kicks out six students after data manipulation scandal

Tune in to Science Friday today to hear Retraction Watch

It’s a nice way to celebrate our first anniversary this week: Ivan will appear today on Science Friday, the nationally syndicated NPR program hosted by Ira Flatow.

The segment, “If Science Takes A Wrong Turn, Who Rights It,” is part of the show’s first hour, at 2 p.m. Eastern. It will also feature Grant Steen, whose work we’ve covered.

You can listen online, or find a station near you that carries it, if you’re in the U.S. It’s live, so call in — you know we love hearing from Retraction Watch readers. It will also be archived on the site, so you can listen later.

Update, 5:15 Eastern, 8/5/11: Here’s that archived audio (top left corner).

Happy anniversary, Retraction Watch: What we’ve learned, and what’s in store for year two

Adam and Ivan at Retraction Watch HQ, aka NYC's Market Diner

Today marks the 1-year anniversary of the launch of Retraction Watch. We’d like to thank our readers, tipsters, and fans for your support and feedback — and our helpful critics who have spurred us to do better.

Over the past 12 months we’ve written more than 250 posts about retractions ranging from the extraordinary — think Joachim Boldt and his 90-odd withdrawals, and the Byzantine case of Silvia Bulfone-Paus — to the trivial (much of the plagiarism, for instance); the laudable (a swift one in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, to pick one) to the ludicrous (the reason for that retraction is “none of your damn business,” one editor told us).

We haven’t done a careful count — more on more rigorous indexing later — but those posts cover something like 200 retractions, given that there are more than 120 between just Boldt, Bulfone-Paus, and Naoki Mori. That is unusually high activity for a 12-month period; the annual average for the previous 10 years was about 80. (Let us be the first to point out that any correlation between our founding and that high number does not imply causation.)

We made a rather presumptuous promise when we started this project. Continue reading Happy anniversary, Retraction Watch: What we’ve learned, and what’s in store for year two

Another retraction for Milena Penkowa, this one in Experimental Physiology

There’s another retraction in the the complicated case of Milena Penkowa, the former University of Copenhagen researcher being investigated for scientific misconduct and misuse of grant funds. The paper, in Experimental Physiology, was titled “Exercise-induced metallothionein expression in human skeletal muscle fibres” and was published online in January 2005.

It’s the second retraction for Penkowa, who did not sign either of them. According to the notice: Continue reading Another retraction for Milena Penkowa, this one in Experimental Physiology

Plagiarism forces retraction of mathematical modeling paper

A group of Turkish researchers has retracted a paper purporting to show a method of calculating the thermodynamic properties of certain transition metals, because it was plagiarized from another article. The withdrawn paper, “A simple analytical EAM model for some bcc metals,” was published in 2010 in Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation.

Here’s the notice (we added a link to the plagiarized paper): Continue reading Plagiarism forces retraction of mathematical modeling paper

Physics paper retracted “on ethical grounds” — aka the data had already been published

There was a curious retraction published online last month in Physica Scripta, an Institute of Physics journal. The notice, for “Response of Cu 0.5 (Tl 0.5-y Hg y)Ba 2 Ca 3 Zn 2 Cu 2 O 12-δ (y =0, 0.15, 0.25 and 0.35) superconductors in electric and magnetic fields,” reads as follows: Continue reading Physics paper retracted “on ethical grounds” — aka the data had already been published

Why do — and don’t — journal editors retract articles?

Liz Wager, the chair of the Committee on Publication Ethics, knows something about retractions. In April, she and University College London’s Peter Williams published a paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics showing that journal editors’ approaches to retractions aren’t uniform.

The pair is back with another paper, using the same dataset of retractions and published in Science and Engineering Ethics, in which they ask journal editors why they retract — or don’t. The findings — more on them below — informed COPE’s 2009 guidelines on retractions, as did those in the April paper.

From the introduction to the new paper (link added): Continue reading Why do — and don’t — journal editors retract articles?

Sebastiani group retracts genetics of aging study from Science

When a group of researchers last year claimed to have found a “genetic signature” to identify people likely to live to 100, they were questioned immediately. Now they’ve retracted the controversial paper —  but continue to stand behind their assertion.

The paper had been the subject of an “Expression of Concern” in November. The retraction notice in this week’s Science: Continue reading Sebastiani group retracts genetics of aging study from Science

Marc Hauser resigns from Harvard

Marc Hauser, the Harvard psychology professor who retracted a paper last year following a university investigation, has resigned his post. As the Boston Globe’s Carolyn Johnson, who broke the original Hauser retraction story, reports: Continue reading Marc Hauser resigns from Harvard

University of Louisville investigating work by team under review at Emory

On Tuesday, we reported that Emory University in Atlanta was looking into why a team of former researchers — now at the University of Louisville — had retracted three papers in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC).

Today, we learned that the researchers’ home institution since 2009 is now investigating the work. A spokesperson tells Retraction Watch: Continue reading University of Louisville investigating work by team under review at Emory