The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) plans to lift sanctions it placed on Duke University more than 1.5 years ago following concerns about how the school responded to recent cases of misconduct.
In a memo today to faculty and staff obtained by Retraction Watch, Lawrence Carin, Duke vice president for research wrote:
Continue reading NIH to lift Duke sanctions stemming from misconduct
A criminology professor at Florida State University whose work has been under the microscope for six months will have four papers retracted, Retraction Watch has learned.
We first reported on the case of Eric Stewart, the FSU professor, in July, after Justin Pickett, one of the co-authors on one of the papers, posted a 27-page explanation of why he thought the article should be retracted. That followed a May 5 letter from a “John Smith” outlining problems with five papers by Stewart. Four of those papers are being retracted.
The paper Pickett co-authored, which was first published in 2011, is now being retracted by Criminology. The notice will read:
Continue reading Criminologist to have four papers retracted following months of scrutinyRetraction Watch readers are no doubt familiar with one of the most consequential retractions of this century, namely that of the 1998 paper in The Lancet by Andrew Wakefield and others claiming a link between vaccines and autism. What they may also know is that the paper remains one of the most highly cited retracted articles of all time, as demonstrated by our leaderboard of such papers.
With that in mind, six librarians from institutions in Wisconsin had a question: ” What are the characteristics of citations of the retracted 1998 article by Wakefield et al that purported to show an association between the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and autism?” A paper describing their findings was published on Friday in JAMA Network Open.
We asked corresponding author Elizabeth Suelzer, of the Medical College of Wisconsin, to answer several questions about the paper.
Retraction Watch (RW): Why did you decide to focus on the Wakefield paper, and what were your findings?
Continue reading Andrew Wakefield’s fraudulent paper on vaccines and autism has been cited more than a thousand times. These researchers tried to figure out why.
Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Continue reading Weekend reads: Falsified authorship; allegations about more than 200 papers; honoring an exploitative scientist
In what the editor of a psychiatry journal says in an unusual case, the authors of a paper on treatments for depression have retracted it after being alerted to “inconsistencies” stemming from a change to their study design that the peer reviewers had requested.
Here’s the retraction notice, in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease:
Continue reading Reviewers asked authors to change their study design. It apparently didn’t go well.
In May of this year, François-Xavier Coudert, a chemist at PSL University in Paris, had a question about a paper in Chemistry: A European Journal.
Several days later, he had an answer — sort of — along with an apology for readers from Haymo Ross, the journal’s editor in chief.
Continue reading After ten years of being in limbo, a chemistry paper is retracted
A paper by a Russian researcher who has been dogged by allegations of fraud has been retracted, 30 years to the month after its publication, and 25 years after the journal published a strongly critical letter to the editor.
The 1989 paper on the genetics of wild timber voles by Dmitrii A. Kuznetsov in the International Journal of Neuroscience was, according to Dan Larhammar, a professor of molecular cell biology at Uppsala University in Sweden and now president of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, being used by creationists as evidence for their beliefs. Larhammar published a letter to the editor about the paper in 1994 that concluded:
Continue reading Thirty years after publication, a paper cited by creationists is retractedBefore we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Continue reading Weekend reads: Is nutrition science the worst-performing science?; gender bias in peer review; the Sherlock Holmes of science fraud
King’s College London (KCL) found evidence of poor research practices by three of its faculty, but “no intention to deceive” and no misconduct, according to documents obtained by Retraction Watch.
One case involves work by cancer biologists Farzin Farzaneh and Ghulam Mufti, while the other involves work by Mahvash Tavassoli, also a cancer researcher. Both involve problems with images and were brought to the attention of KCL in January of this year by pseudonymous whistleblower Claire Francis.
In the Farzaneh and Mufti case, writes Tim Newton, KCL’s dean of research governance, ethics and integrity in an October 31 letter:
Continue reading Exclusive: King’s College London finds “poor research practices” but no misconduct in two recent casesBefore we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Continue reading Weekend reads: Grad student who alleged discrimination dismissed; academics who play dumb; when papers cite predatory works