Category: authorship issues

Who deserves to be an author on a scientific paper?

labtimes 2-2013Although authorship issues are not the most common reason we see for retractions, they’re one of the most vexing. We’ve seen multiple cases in which papers are retracted because colleagues say authors didn’t have a right to publish data, for example. In other cases, authors who didn’t know about a paper are surprised when it comes out.

So for our most recent column in LabTimes, we decided to look at these situations and try to answer some questions: Continue reading Who deserves to be an author on a scientific paper?

“Redundant in principle”: Blood retracts paper built on double-dipping of data by co-author

blood coverBlood has retracted a 2012 paper by a pair of Swedish authors, one of whom appears to have misappropriated data from his mentor.

The article, titled “Microparticles are the basic storage units for different proteins in platelet granules,” appeared online in July 2012 and was written by Chi Zhang and Yang Yang, of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

But as the retraction notice explains, there was a problem:

Continue reading “Redundant in principle”: Blood retracts paper built on double-dipping of data by co-author

Jesús Lemus notches his eighth retraction

animal conservationThe carcasses are piling up.

Jesús A. Lemus now has eight retractions. Here’s the notice for the most recent: Continue reading Jesús Lemus notches his eighth retraction

Med student loses paper when former boss claims right to data

jnsAs a first-year medical student at the University of California, San Diego, Jessica Tang already has an impressive CV. Her name has appeared on ten papers in the medical literature, including three in the Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine. On one of these she was the sole author.

Except that one doesn’t exist anymore. But the reason for the retraction does not appear to involve shoddy work by the researcher. Rather, Tang failed to appreciate the politics of the lab in which she worked — and it cost her.

Continue reading Med student loses paper when former boss claims right to data

Chemical engineer apologizes for “deliberate lapse,” retracts two papers from Croatian journal

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering QuarterlyA professor of chemical engineering in India has retracted two papers after what he called a “deliberate lapse” of submitting the work without the knowledge of his co-author.

The two papers by Kailas L. Wasewar, then an associate professor in the Chemical Engineering department of Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology in Nagpur, India — he appears to be at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee now — appeared in 2006 in consecutive issues of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Quarterly, the official journal of the Croatian Society of Chemical Engineers, Slovenian Chemical Society and Austrian Association of Bioprocess Technology.

The retraction notice appeared in the December issue, following a 27 November letter to the editor: Continue reading Chemical engineer apologizes for “deliberate lapse,” retracts two papers from Croatian journal

University of La Laguna ethics committee finds evidence of misconduct in chemists’ papers

jacsat_v134i049.inddA committee at the University of La Laguna (ULL), in Spain’s Canary Islands, has found evidence of misconduct by two chemists in at least two papers. One of those authors had already been forced to retract a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS).

The story is complicated. Here’s a try at telling it: Continue reading University of La Laguna ethics committee finds evidence of misconduct in chemists’ papers

Environmental engineer loses paper after co-authors say he didn’t have permission to publish it

j chem tech biotechAn environmental engineer at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University has been forced to retract a paper amid an ethics committee investigation into whether he had the right to publish it.

The Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology retracted a study from the Vitaly Gitis lab just months after its publication: Continue reading Environmental engineer loses paper after co-authors say he didn’t have permission to publish it

“Additionally, the authors were unable to identify” co-author: Another retraction for Lemus

env microWe’ve been following the case of Jesús A. Lemus, the Spanish veterinary researcher with five retractions and two expressions of concern under his belt so far for suspected data fabrication and including a fake author on his papers.

Yes, a fake author. When this story first broke, El Pais called Javier Grande a ” ghost with a good academic background with at least six scientific publications in international journals.”

Grande’s — and Lemus’s — publication count declined by one more yesterday, as Environmental Microbiology retracted a 2007 paper: Continue reading “Additionally, the authors were unable to identify” co-author: Another retraction for Lemus

“This publication should be ignored”: Authorship issues, flawed data fell neuro-oncology paper

Neon 2009 regular volume.inddThe Journal of Neuro-Oncology wants you to ignore the following paper: “A single chain (scFv425):sTRAIL fusion protein with specificity for the EGF receptor is effective in vitro but not in an in vivo brain tumor animal model.”

The 2007 article, from a group in The Netherlands, suffered from two fatal problems. According to the retraction notice: Continue reading “This publication should be ignored”: Authorship issues, flawed data fell neuro-oncology paper