We’re pleased to announce that we now have a regular column in Lab Times, the bimonthly magazine for European life scientists.
The topic of our first piece is one that we hope resonates with Retraction Watch readers. Drawing on our experience chasing down retraction notices, we call for all such notices — as well as all corrections — to be open access: Continue reading Why all retraction notices should be open access: Our first LabTimes column
As many retractions as we cover here at Retraction Watch, there have been far more since we started blogging in August that we haven’t had the chance to report out fully. Some of those have been tips from our loyal readers — which we always appreciate, even if we can’t get to them immediately.
So rather than let all of these retractions molder on a list on our laptops, we’re starting an occasional series. In each post, we’ll highlight about five notices, adding whatever notes we have. If anyone has more information about any of these, we of course welcome it in the comments.
Here are the first five, several of which coincidentally have an environmental theme: Continue reading Retractions we haven’t had a chance to cover, part 1: Fishy fishery management, fluoride and kids’ IQ, and more
Last week, Retraction Watch readers will recall, we covered two retractions in Applied Mathematical Letters. They were both of papers that made many wonder just how they were published in the first place. One concluded that “Both science and spirituality came from space,” while the other claimed to have demonstrated violations of the second law of thermodynamics.
Given the attention to what we can reasonably conclude is a flawed peer review process at Applied Mathematical Letters, we hope that process will improve moving forward. That means one less outlet for questionable papers. So where might a researcher publish dodgy work?
We figured we’d start with Rejecta Mathematica, which describes itself as follows: Continue reading How to get dodgy math papers published: An algorithm
It’s an unusual move: Pediatric Allergy and Immunology has switched out the cover image in the online versions of its March issue, after realizing that likening allergies to a tsunami while Japan is struggling with the devastating effects of a real-life disaster could be “open to misinterpretation.” From an editor’s note: Continue reading Unfortunate timing: Journal retracts cover image, citing tsunami in Japan
Have you read yesterday’s post on a retraction in Applied Mathematics Letters yet? (If you haven’t, you’ve missed the explanation of how “Both science and spirituality came from space,” along with other oddities. We’ll wait while you go read it.) But for those of you who have, it turns out that this wasn’t the first retraction of a bizarre paper in the journal this year.
In January, Granville Sewell, of the University of Texas, El Paso’s math department, published a paper there called “A Second Look at The Second Law.” Its abstract: Continue reading More on Applied Mathematics Letters: Journal retracted paper questioning second law of thermodynamics
Sometimes, things just don’t add up. Take this retraction notice, from the March 2011 issue of Applied Mathematics Letters:
This article has been retracted at the request of the editor as the authors have falsified mathematical findings and have made unsubstantiated claims regarding Euclid’s parallel postulate (Appl. Math. Lett. 23 (2010) 1137–1139. doi:10.1016/j.aml.2010.05.003). This article represents a severe abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.
There’s actually only one author, an M. Sivasubramanian, of Dr. Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology, Pollachi, Tamil Nadu, India, but we’re not PhDs in math, so we figured we were missing something important. Fortunately, Ben Steinberg, a high school friend of one of ours — Ivan’s — is a bit of a math rock star and a professor at Carleton University. We asked him for his take:
I am not sure which is more amusing, the article or the retraction. I cannot understand how this could possibly be published anywhere. It seems like a practical joke to test whether articles are actually refereed. Not a single statement in the author’s “proof” makes sense. Continue reading Faked data, unsubstantiated claims, and spirituality add up to a math journal retraction
The final two retractions by Silvia Bulfone-Paus and colleagues, among the 12 promised by Research Centre Borstel following an investigation into scientific misconduct, have appeared. Both are in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), and read as follows:
This article has been withdrawn by the authors.
We find that near-complete lack of information frustrating, not to mention useless to the scientific community. Unfortunately, it’s par for the course when it comes to the JBC and Bulfone-Paus retractions. The other three said exactly the same thing.
With that in mind, we thought it would be worth looking at all 12 retraction notices, as a sort of case series in journals’ transparency. We often look at particular retractions in a vacuum, but here was a chance to look at 12 papers, all retracted for the same reason, to see how each journal reported the withdrawal.
Here are the 12, in rough order, worst to best, based on how useful they are to scientists coming across them: Continue reading As last of 12 promised Bulfone-Paus retractions appears, a (disappointing) report card on journal transparency
The tenth of 12 promised retractions by Silvia Bulfone-Paus and colleagues has appeared, in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC).
The paper, “Reverse signaling through membrane-bound Interleukin-15,” was published in 2004 and has been cited 31 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. The retraction notice, just like the other one for the team’s work that appeared in the JBC, was completely uninformative: Continue reading Tenth Bulfone-Paus retraction notice appears, in Journal of Biological Chemistry
About a month ago, the New England Journal of Medicine told us that they didn’t “have any plans” to retract a paper by Anil Potti. Apparently, they’ve changed their minds.
Today, they posted this retraction notice: Continue reading NEJM retracts Potti paper
If a paper is retracted, should papers that cite it get retracted, too? We’ve been on the lookout for this kind of move, which we figure is consistent with cleaning up the scientific record. Today, one appears in Nature.
The original paper, “Mediation of pathogen resistance by exudation of antimicrobials from roots,” purported to show how a particular bug evades the immune system of Arabidopsis, a plant commonly used in the lab. It has been cited 51 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
The retraction notice says that the paper’s conclusions could no longer be supported because one of the key references — a paper in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry by many of the same authors — had been retracted: Continue reading A Nature chain retraction for Arabidopsis paper, and some unanswered questions