Ivan Oransky

‘A travesty’: A researcher found guilty of misconduct by federal U.S. government responds

“These findings are unjustified.”

That’s how a biologist at the Jesse Brown Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Chicago described the conclusions of a federal investigation that found she had faked images and inflated sample sizes in published papers and a grant application. The biologist, Hee-Jeong Im Sampen, has been banned from conducting VA research.

Sampen, also a research professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, said that “any errors that occurred involved discrete erroneously-placed figures or images” that “in no way undermine our basic conclusions and findings.”

Calling the episode a “long and hard battle for me,” Sampen sent us these comments:

Weekend reads: Why one chemist hasn’t made tenure; retractions in neuroscience; ‘pay to publish trash’

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to over 375. There are more than 43,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains well over 200 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? Or The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Weekend reads: UK shadow chancellor accused of plagiarism; eLife editor fired; Elsevier editor resigns because publisher ignored likely paper mill activity

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to well over 350. There are more than 43,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains well over 200 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? Or The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Lancet retracts two more papers by convicted surgeon Paolo Macchiarini

The Lancet today retracted two papers by former Karolinska Institutet surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, whose professional and personal escapades have made headlines for more than a decade and who has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for causing bodily harm to his patients.

The move comes a month after Sweden’s National Board for Assessment of Misconduct (NPOF in Swedish) said it had found Macchiarini guilty of misconduct involving the two articles, eight months after the journal issued expressions of concern for the two papers, and five years after Macchiarini had already been found to have committed misconduct in related work.

As we reported in February:

Weekend reads: A Nobelist earns an expression of concern; India’s fake universities; shaking things up in psychology

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Weekend reads: ‘Egregious misconduct’ by biotech collaborator; an IVF doctor with allegedly fake credentials; ChatGPT not the problem in publishing

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Study of music by Mozart includes tunes “not necessarily music composed by Mozart”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy – famously writing music at an age when other children need lullabies to help them to fall asleep.

Despite how prolific he was, however, Mozart did not write an album called “Bedtime Mozart.” That has now created a headache for the authors of a study published in Pediatric Research in August that found the particular set of melodies helped soothe babies during a particular blood test.

Like many “Mozart Effect” studies before it, the new research prompted a press release referring to Mozart in its headline, and plenty of press coverage. But Hinnerk Feldwisch-Drentrup, a correspondent for Frankfurter Allgemeine, thought something was off-key: