Three physicists at Imperial College London have retracted a paper on Coulomb collisions, a kind of fender bender between two charged particles, after realizing their equations were written wrong.
The mistake resulted in an erroneous conclusion about the strength of the collisions.
Here’s the notice for “Effects of Large-Angle Coulomb Collisions on Inertial Confinement Fusion Plasmas”: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Particle physicists pull paper after equation collides with the truth
Journal publishers can be agonizingly slow when it comes to officially retracting a paper.
Here’s a prime example of the consequences of that bureaucratic foot-dragging: Ten months after being told that Fazlurrahman Khan had fabricated his data, and two months after announcing two of Khan’s papers would be retracted from two of its journals, Elsevier still has not retracted either paper.
Worse, at least one of the papers, “Degradation of 2,4-dinitroanisole (DNAN) by metabolic cooperative activity of Pseudomonas sp. strain FK357 and Rhodococcus imtechensis strain RKJ300,” in the journal Chemosphere, has been cited since the announcement was made. In fact, the paper was published in Journal of Hazardous Materials, the Elsevier journal that is dragging its feet retracting another of Khan’s papers, “Aerobic degradation of 4-nitroaniline (4-NA) via novel degradation intermediates by Rhodococcus sp. strain FK48.”
Jim Spain, in whose lab Khan worked at Georgia Tech, reached out to us to express his concerns with this timeline: Continue reading Oops: Elsevier journal publishes paper citing paper it promised to retract two months ago
Despite the claims of a widely circulated news report today, The Lancet has no plans to retract a controversial open letter to the people of Gaza that has drawn criticism since being published in August.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported this morning: Continue reading Contrary to reports, Lancet not retracting controversial letter to people of Gaza
Nature, as we and others have noticed, has had what Paul Knoepfler referred to as a “torrent” of retractions in the past two years. That torrent — 13 research papers — has prompted a welcome and soul-searching editorial, as it did in 2010 when the journal had what it called an “unusually large number” of 4.
As the editors write this week in “Retraction challenges:” Continue reading Nature, facing “considerable rise” in retractions, blames lawyers for opaque and delayed notices
The authors of a 1997 paper on macular degeneration have lost the article after readers noticed uncanny similarities with a 1996 publication from several of the same authors.
The retracted article, “Radiation therapy for macular degeneration: Technical considerations and preliminary results,” appeared in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics — otherwise known as the “Red Journal.” The first author, Luther W. Brady, is a leading U.S. oncologist.
According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Double dipping on trial data topples 17-year-old macular degeneration article
An architecture professor at the University of Arizona has been sanctioned — lightly — for plagiarizing from the thesis of one of her masters’ students.
According to a report in the Arizona Daily Star, the professor, Susannah Dickinson: Continue reading Arizona prof plagiarizes student’s thesis, gets reprimanded, but keeps her job
Here’s another installment of PubPeer Selections:
Continue reading PubPeer Selections: Sniffing at a dog poop paper; how grants should be distributed
The authors of a paper retracted for plagiarism of a popular website have decided not to take the charges — which they don’t contest — lying down.
Here’s the notice for “Alcohol consumption and hormonal alterations related to muscle hypertrophy: a review,” which appeared in Nutrition & Metabolism, a BioMed Central title: Continue reading Author of alcohol paper retracted for plagiarism defends copy-and-paste strategy
A pair of researchers who have been calling for the retraction of two papers by cardiology researcher Don Poldermans say the New England Journal of Medicine is “not justified” “disappointing” in its refusal to pull the articles.
A little background: Poldermans resigned from Erasmus University in 2011 after having been accused of misconduct. Last week, we reported that the European Heart Journal had issued an expression of concern for a 2001 article on which he was first author.
The New England Journal of Medicine added editor’s notes to two of Poldermans’ articles. But as Larry Husten at Forbes reports, the journal has no intention of retracting the papers: Continue reading Critics of Poldermans’ work baffled by NEJM stance on DECREASE papers
Although it shocks some observers every time, we’ve reported on the retractions of more than 100 papers pulled because authors managed to do their own peer review.
Apparently, it’s happened again.
Here’s a retraction notice in BMC Systems Biology for “Predicting new molecular targets for rhein using network pharmacology,” by Aihua Zhang, Hui Sun, Bo Yang and Xijun Wang:
Continue reading It’s happened again: Researcher appears to have peer reviewed his own paper