About a month ago, we reported on a retraction by Pamela Ronald, of the University of California, Davis, and colleagues. We noted then that this was a case of scientists doing the right thing. Ronald contacted us after that post ran, and let us know that there would be another retraction shortly. That retraction notice has now appeared, in Science: Continue reading Pamela Ronald does the right thing again, retracting a Science paper
Stem Cells and Development has retracted a paper it published earlier this year after the leader of the study reported that the data were unreliable.
The paper, “Derivation and Genetic Modification of Embryonic Stem Cells from Disease-Model Inbred Rat Strains,” came from the lab of Aron Geurts, of the Medical College of Wisconsin.
According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Embryonic stem cell paper retracted for fabrication
We have a fourth retraction in the Journal of Biochemistry for Naohito Aoki, a Japanese researcher and former postdoc in a German lab, whose images have been called into question but whose retraction notices were scant. In this case, however, the journal, while not exactly overbrimming with information about the article, at least gives us some sense of what’s going on.
Aoki worked in the lab of Axel Ullrich, of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, and appeared on two retracted articles in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) with his mentor, along with a third with a co-author from Japan, Tsukasa Matsuda. Although those notices don’t say anything about the reason for the retractions — this was before the JBC started providing such information — Ulrich told us that Aoki had been manipulating images. Continue reading Aoki notches fourth retraction for image problems
Like Howard Beale, the character in 1976’s “Network” who famously said “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!,” the editors of the journal Cortex have decided they’ve had enough when it comes to plagiarism.
From an editorial in the current issue:
We will treat academic plagiarism as a misdeed, not as a mistake, and a paper that plagiarizes others will be immediately rejected and may be reported to the author’s academic affiliation.
The editors explain how: Continue reading Neuroscience journal takes tough stance on plagiarism
A fight over who owns tuberculosis study data has led the Journal of Clinical Microbiology to publish an Expression of Concern.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading Spat over tuberculosis study data leads to Expression of Concern
Here’s a warning to would-be plagiarizers: Don’t submit to the journal Molecules unless you have no problem being called out by name when you’re busted.
Consider: The journal is retracting a paper it published earlier this year after learning that the article contained verbatim text — and lots of it — from previously published papers.
The article, “Cytotoxicity and Anti-Inflammatory Activity of ethylsulfanyltriazoloquinazolin,” was written by a group that included Amira M. Gamal-Eldeen, of the National Research Center in Cairo, Egypt. Why single out Dr. Gamal-Eldeen, you ask? Read for yourself: Continue reading Your bad: Journal yanks paper for plagiarism and duplication, and points fingers
As the bumper sticker says, “Regime change starts at home.” Seems to be the case with scientists these days.
This month we have seen commendable instances of researchers retracting papers after identifying flaws in their own data — an outbreak of integrity that has us here at Retraction Watch applauding. (We’ve even created a new category, “doing the right thing,” at the suggestion of a reader.)
Today’s feel-good story comes from the lab of Karl Svoboda, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm Research Campus, in Ashburn, Va. Back in June, Svoboda and his colleagues published “Whisker Dynamics Underlying Tactile Exploration,” in the Journal of Neuroscience. Here’s what the abstract had to say about the study:
Continue reading It’s an epidemic! Another group does the right thing, retracting neuroscience paper
MIT’s Robert Weinberg, a leading cancer researcher who retracted a Cancer Cell paper earlier this year for “inappropriate presentation” of figures, has corrected a different paper in the same journal.
Here’s the correction for “Species- and Cell Type-Specific Requirements for Cellular Transformation:”
We were apprised recently of errors made in the assembly of Figures 2B, 3A, 4A, 4B, and 5G, resulting in the incorporation of incorrect representative images in these figures. These errors occurred during the electronic assembly and have no bearing on the conclusions of the study. The corrected figures are shown below. The authors apologize for any possible confusion this might have caused.
Here’s the original Figure 2 and caption, followed by the new version (read all the way to the end of the post for more details on how this came to light): Continue reading A Cancer Cell mega-correction for highly cited researcher who retracted paper earlier this year
We’ll say it again: We like being able to point out when researchers stand up and do the right thing, even at personal cost.
In December 2011, Pamela C. Ronald, of the University of California, Davis, and colleagues published a paper in PLOS ONE,”Small Protein-Mediated Quorum Sensing in a Gram-Negative Bacterium.” Such quorum sensing research is a “hot topic” right now, so not surprisingly the paper caught the attention of other scientists, and the media, including the Western Farm Press. The study has been cited eight times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
One of those scientists who took notice was Ronald’s UC Davis colleague Jonathan Eisen, who posted about the paper on his blog. That was on January 9, 2012. But if you go to that post today, you’ll see that Eisen struck through most of it, and added this comment: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Researchers retract quorum sensing paper after public process
Earlier this week, in a story by Richard van Noorden, Nature revealed the hidden workings of a scheme referred to as “citation stacking” that has landed a number of journals in trouble. The story begins:
Mauricio Rocha-e-Silva thought that he had spotted an easy way to raise the profiles of Brazilian journals. From 2009, he and several other editors published articles containing hundreds of references to papers in each others’ journals — in order, he says, to elevate the journals’ impact factors.
As Nature reports, Rocha-e-Silva was apparently frustrated that Brazilian government agencies were relying heavily on impact factor to evaluate graduate programs. That meant few scientists were willing to publish in Brazilian journals, which had lower impact factors. Rocha-e-Silva describes some of these frustrations in an impassioned 2009 editorial (in Portuguese). Continue reading Journal retracts two papers after being caught manipulating citations