A psychology researcher at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management has left a tenure-track position there less than a year after she and a co-author retracted a paper whose methods had been questioned online, Retraction Watch has learned.
Ping Dong and Chen-bo Zhong, a professor at the University of Toronto, where Dong received her PhD, retracted a paper from Psychological Science in November 2018, six months after publishing it. As we reported at the time, the paper
SAGE Publishing is today retracting 22 articles by a materials science researcher who published in two of their journals — but the anonymous reader who brought the problems to their attention says the author’s duplication affects more than 100 articles.
Ali Nazari, now of Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, had five papers retracted earlier this year from an Elsevier journal. His total of now 27 retractions — the others from the International Journal of Damage Mechanics and the Journal of Composite Materials — came following emails in January of this year from an anonymous reader to several publishers raising concerns that Nazari had duplicated his work in more than 100 articles.
It’s no secret that retractions have a stigma, which is very likely part of why authors often resist the move — even when honest error is involved. There have been at least a few proposals to change the nomenclature for some retractions over the years, from turning them into “amendments” to a new taxonomy.
Erica Boxheimer, data integrity analyst at EMBO Press, and Bernd Pulverer, chief editor of The EMBO Journal and head of scientific publications for the Press, have suggested a related solution, which builds on a 2015 proposal:
We proposed to use the term “withdrawal” instead of the canonical “retraction” for an author‐initiated retraction based on “honest mistakes”. We are now using the terms “retraction” and “withdrawal” as formally distinct content types across EMBO Press in the hope that “withdrawal” attracts less stigma and encourages self‐correction.
In a move to add transparency in a more systematic manner, we have begun trialing a “process file” for corrections—similar to the “review process files” on our published papers, which capture the review and editorial process at the journal—for corrigenda and retractions.
Here’s one such “process file.” We asked Pulverer and Boxheimer to describe how the approach would work.
As we’ve noted before, “the wheels of scientific publishing turn slowly … but they do (sometimes) turn.”
More than six years after the first retraction for Erin Potts-Kant, who was part of a group at Duke whose work would unravel amid misconduct allegations and lead to a $112.5 million settlement earlier this year with the U.S. government — and two years after a journal says it first became aware of the issues — a retraction by the group has appeared in Pediatric Research, a Springer Nature title.
Here’s the retraction notice for “Intra-amniotic LPS amplifies hyperoxia-induced airway hyperreactivity in neonatal rats”:
Is it possible for just one researcher to perform a clinical trial of more than 200 participants?
According to the editorial board of the European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, an Elsevier title, the answer would seem to be no. The journal has decided to retract a 2016 paper in which the author claimed to have conducted such a large trial on their own.
Here’s the notice for “Calcium versus oral contraceptive pills containing drospirenone for the treatment of mild to moderate premenstrual syndrome: A double blind randomized placebo controlled trial:”
Take a look at the image below, and then take our poll. (We recommend using the Chrome browser.) After that, click on the link below to find out the right answer.
A former postdoc at the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) made up data for 59 experiments that never happened, according to new findings by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.
The ORI found that Rahul Agrawal “knowingly, intentionally, and/or recklessly falsified and/or fabricated:”
