Author: Ivan Oransky

Science standing by for updates as university finds fraud in earthquake paper

Damage from the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake

A researcher at Kyoto University in Japan faked some of the data in a 2017 paper in Science about the deadly Kumamoto earthquake, the university said.

According to media reports about a press conference held today, Kyoto found that the paper’s first author, Aiming Lin, had committed misconduct, including falsification of data and plagiarism. They recommended that Lin retract the paper, and said he would face sanctions, while his co-authors were cleared of wrongdoing.

Science editor in chief Jeremy Berg tells us: Continue reading Science standing by for updates as university finds fraud in earthquake paper

Joseph Thomas just earned $33.8 million in a $112.5 million settlement with Duke. Here’s his story.

Joseph Thomas

Tomorrow is Joe Thomas’s 35th birthday. And earlier this week, he received quite a birthday present, even if it wasn’t intended that way: Thomas earned a $33.75 million payout from a lawsuit he filed against Duke University six years ago.

As Retraction Watch readers may recall, Thomas was the whistleblower in a case alleging scientific misconduct that Duke settled yesterday for $112.5 million. Our Ivan Oransky has an exclusive profile of him — including how he “celebrated” the settlement — at Medscape. Continue reading Joseph Thomas just earned $33.8 million in a $112.5 million settlement with Duke. Here’s his story.

Duke settles case alleging data doctoring for $112.5 million

Retraction Watch readers may recall the name Erin Potts-Kant. We’ve been reporting on retractions by Potts-Kant, a former lab tech at Duke, since 2013. (The count is now 17.) Along the way, we learned that she had been convicted of embezzlement, but that there was a bigger story: There was a False Claims Act case against Duke, Potts-Kant, and Michael Foster, in whose lab she worked, alleging that the university had known that faked data had been included in grant applications.

The case has now settled, for what Duke acknowledges is a “substantial” sum of $112.5 million. That means the whistleblower, another former lab tech, will earn more than $30 million. For details, head over to Ivan’s story on Medscape. Continue reading Duke settles case alleging data doctoring for $112.5 million

Weekend reads: Controversial paper on transgender teens revised; e-cigarette maker touts study in a questionable journal; Science warns readers about monkey HIV study

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 a researcher who faked earthquake data, an ambivalent co-author, and a call by statisticians to end black-and-white definitions of “statistical significance.” Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Controversial paper on transgender teens revised; e-cigarette maker touts study in a questionable journal; Science warns readers about monkey HIV study

Time to say goodbye to “statistically significant” and embrace uncertainty, say statisticians

Nicole Lazar

Three years ago, the American Statistical Association (ASA) expressed hope that the world would move to a “post-p-value era.” The statement in which they made that recommendation has been cited more than 1,700 times, and apparently, the organization has decided that era’s time has come. (At least one journal had already banned p values by 2016.) In an editorial in a special issue of The American Statistician out today, “Statistical Inference in the 21st Century: A World Beyond P<0.05,” the executive director of the ASA, Ron Wasserstein, along with two co-authors, recommends that when it comes to the term “statistically significant,” “don’t say it and don’t use it.” (More than 800 researchers signed onto a piece published in Nature yesterday calling for the same thing.) We asked Wasserstein’s co-author, Nicole Lazar of the University of Georgia, to answer a few questions about the move. Here are her responses, prepared in collaboration with Wasserstein and the editorial’s third co-author, Allen Schirm.

So the ASA wants to say goodbye to “statistically significant.” Why, and why now? Continue reading Time to say goodbye to “statistically significant” and embrace uncertainty, say statisticians

Group in China up to three retractions, ostensibly for three different reasons

A group of researchers at Harbin Medical University in China has had a third paper retracted, making for a tale of three notices.

The first retraction appeared in April 2017 as one of more than 100 from Tumor Biology for fake peer review.

The second, for “Functions as a Tumor Suppressor in Osteosarcoma by Targeting Sox2,” was from the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, an MDPI title, in 2018: Continue reading Group in China up to three retractions, ostensibly for three different reasons

Late researcher faked Kumamoto earthquake data, university finds

Damage from the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake, via Wikimedia

A researcher in Japan who published at least five papers about a deadly 2016 earthquake faked some of the data, Osaka University announced late last week.

Yoshiya Hata resigned his Osaka post and later died, according to media outlet NHK. He claimed to have studied the April 2016 Kumamoto earthquake, which killed at least 50 people, and injured thousands.

In October 2017, we reported that Hiroyuki Goto, of Kyoto University and one of Hata’s co-authors, had apologized because he said that the data contained “wide reaching errors.” One of the papers the two co-authored earned an editor’s note. Continue reading Late researcher faked Kumamoto earthquake data, university finds

Weekend reads: Lancet cardiac stem cell paper retracted; predatory journals pivot to video and get stung; reviews that cite retracted papers

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 a publisher error that led to eight withdrawals; a paper on the benefits of tea whose cup overflowed; and a paper that seemed to have everything wrong with it. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Continue reading Weekend reads: Lancet cardiac stem cell paper retracted; predatory journals pivot to video and get stung; reviews that cite retracted papers

“All very painful:” Two retractions to watch for, in eLife and PLOS ONE

We have news of two upcoming retractions, both following critiques on PubPeer.

PLOS ONE is retracting a 2012 paper by researchers at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità in Rome and the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, “Interferon-β Induces Cellular Senescence in Cutaneous Human Papilloma Virus-Transformed Human Keratinocytes by Affecting p53 Transactivating Activity.”

PubPeer commenters first left critiques of the paper on August 6 of last year, noting likely splicing and other manipulation of images. Several days later, pseudonymous whistleblower Claire Francis contacted the journal to flag similar issues. On Wednesday of this week, a journal representative emailed Francis to say the paper would be retracted: Continue reading “All very painful:” Two retractions to watch for, in eLife and PLOS ONE

Journal temporarily withdraws eight papers after publisher mistake

Publishers love their embargoes, whether they’re of papers that aren’t open access yet, or are available to the media before they’re published. Apparently, however, they also break embargoes, just like the journalists they sometimes sanction for the same sin.

Take Oxford University Press, which publishes the journal Physical Therapy for the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA). Late last month, the journal temporarily withdrew eight papers because, well, the publisher broke the journal’s embargo. Jan Reynolds, the APTA’s managing editor for the journal and director of scientific communications, explained to Retraction Watch that Continue reading Journal temporarily withdraws eight papers after publisher mistake