A week after news that the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) would have a new interim director shortly comes news that the agency will also have a new director of its investigative division as of early next month.
Starting August 4, Alexander Runko will be the director of the ORI’s Division of Investigative Oversight (DIO). He is already working at the agency as an investigator.
According to the ORI:
Continue reading U.S. government watchdog names investigative director
On Sunday, May 5 of this year, Justin Pickett received an email from a “John Smith” with the subject line “Data irregularities and request for data.”
“There seem to be irregularities in the data and findings in five articles that you published together with two surveys,” the anonymous correspondent wrote. “This document outlines those irregularities.”
Pickett was a co-author on only one of the papers, “Ethnic threat and social control: Examining public support for judicial use of ethnicity in punishment,” which was published in 2011 — the year he earned his PhD from Florida State University (FSU) — in the journal Criminology. The other four papers were published from 2015 to 2019 in Criminology, Law & Society Review, and Social Problems. The only author common to all four was Eric A. Stewart, a professor at FSU.
Continue reading Criminologist posts 27-page article explaining why he asked for one of his papers to be retracted
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 retractions and expressions of concern for a prominent cancer researcher; retractions for a deceased star researcher at Stanford; and a new director for a U.S. government watchdog. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Continue reading Weekend reads: Researcher resigns following questions about ties to China; grad student’s suicide sparks misconduct investigation; study of chronic fatigue syndrome corrected
Ever wanted to hone your skills as a scientific sleuth? Now’s your chance.
Thanks to the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), which is committed to educating authors on best practices in publishing, figure preparation, and reproducibility, we’re presenting the eighth in a series, Forensics Friday.
Take a look at the image below, and then take our poll. After that, click on the link below to find out the right answer.
Continue reading Forensics Friday: Notice anything odd about this image?The U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has a new director.
Elisabeth (Lis) Handley, currently deputy operations director of the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) Center for Program Integrity, will become interim director of the ORI on August 26. (CMS and ORI are both part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)). Wanda Jones, formerly interim director and now deputy director, will remain at the agency in her current role.
Handley, according to an announcement sent to HHS employees,
Continue reading US government watchdog gets new director
The Journal of Biological Chemistry has retracted two papers by a Georgia State University researcher, as well as flagged eight more with expressions of concern, a move the scientist called “unfair and unjustified.”
Ming-Hui Zou, the common author on all ten papers — as well as on two more that have been corrected by the same journal — is, according to Georgia State,
an internationally recognized researcher in molecular and translational medicine and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Molecular Medicine and associate vice president for research at Georgia State University…
Zou was at the University of Oklahoma when the papers in question were published. He moved to Georgia State in 2015.
Here’s the retraction notice for “Reactive nitrogen species is required for the activation of the AMP-activated protein kinase by statin in vivo,” published in 2008 Zou as the last author:
Continue reading Georgia State researcher has two papers retracted, eight flagged. He’s not happy about it.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.
Retraction Watch came back online on Wednesday of this week, after a 10-day outage for technical issues that may have involved a DDOS attack. That meant there was no Weekend Reads for two weeks, so to catch up, we posted one yesterday, and are posting another today. Here’s what’s been happening elsewhere:
Continue reading Weekend reads: Questions swirl over kidney transplant papers from China; author apologizes for paper of whether women performed medical procedures as well as men; reports detail widespread fraud in UK labBefore 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.
Retraction Watch came back online on Wednesday of this week, after a 10-day outage for technical issues that may have involved a DDOS attack. That meant there was no Weekend Reads for two weeks, so to catch up, we’ll post one today, and one tomorrow. Here’s what’s been happening elsewhere:
Continue reading Weekend reads: Plagiarism and death threats; peer review by robot; a university apologizes for a job ad
The Pakistan Journal of Zoology got hoodwinked by a tall fishing tale. And they’re letting everyone know.
[Looking for Forensics Friday? They’ll resume as soon as we get through a backlog of posts we didn’t publish during our 10-day outage.]
The journal has retracted six papers that share a co-author who the editors say “exploited the peer-review process in the Journal of Zoology by generating fake reviewers[sic] email addresses.”
Some version of the fake peer review ruse has, as Retraction Watch readers may recall, been responsible for at least 700 retractions since 2012.
Here’s the notice, which isn’t playing catch-and-release:
Continue reading Journal editors “flabbergasted” by responses to author’s ruseEver wanted to hone your skills as a scientific sleuth? Now’s your chance.
Thanks to the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), which is committed to educating authors on best practices in publishing, figure preparation, and reproducibility, we’re presenting the seventh in a series, Forensics Friday.
Take a look at the image below, and then take our poll. After that, click on the link below to find out the right answer.
Continue reading Forensics Friday: Can you spot the issues with this image?