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Science hasn’t retracted paper that university, NSF investigators wanted withdrawn

Stefan Franzen, via NCSU
Stefan Franzen, via NCSU

On Saturday, we highlighted a great two-part series by Joseph Neff of the News & Observer diving into the story of “Stefan Franzen, a chemistry professor at North Carolina State University who has been trying unsuccessfully to correct the scientific record.” Today, that series became a three-part series, with a new story revealing that an investigation by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) had found “reckless” falsification in the work in question.

One of the key papers in the controversy was published by Lina A. Gugliotti, Daniel L. Feldheim, and Bruce E. Eaton in Science in 2004 and cited 125 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. (Eaton is now at the University of Colorado at Boulder.) In 2011, Nature reported on the situation: Continue reading Science hasn’t retracted paper that university, NSF investigators wanted withdrawn

Neurology expresses concern over dementia study after authors report error in analysis

neurologyNeurology has issued an expression of concern over a 2013 article by a group of scientists in The Netherlands and the United States who found a potentially devastating error in their analysis.

The article, “Structural and functional brain connectivity in presymptomatic familial frontotemporal dementia,” came from the lab of John C. van Swieten, of Erasmus University in The Netherlands. According to the abstract of the article:  Continue reading Neurology expresses concern over dementia study after authors report error in analysis

Bath Magazine pulls issue with cover that closely mimics Boston Magazine Marathon tribute

bath marathon
via Luke O’Neil pic.twitter.com/TFGAJTFDZz

Some retraction news from outside of science: The Bath Magazine has pulled an issue whose running-centric cover was virtually identical to that of the Boston Magazine tribute to last year’s tragic marathon in that city.

According to the Bath Chronicle, the UK magazine was aware of the Boston Magazine cover art — a heart-shaped ring of running shoes — but decided to proceed with its version anyway. We’d call that an error in judgment.

From the Bath Chronicle: Continue reading Bath Magazine pulls issue with cover that closely mimics Boston Magazine Marathon tribute

Journal grounds paper on radiation exposure in air traffic controllers because it was “published inadvertently”

indjoccenvtmedThe Indian Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine has retracted a 2013 article by a pair of researchers who’d claimed to find that air traffic controllers suffer poor health from exposure to microwave radiation. But that turns out to have been an, um, flight of fancy.

The article, “Adverse health effects of occupational exposure to radiofrequency radiation in airport surveillance radar operators,” was written by Naser Dehghan and Shahram Taeb, both of Shiraz University in Iran. According to the abstract:

Heads up: “Borrowing” your student’s work will earn you a partial retraction — and a five-year publishing ban

jeailWe have a curious case for the “avoiding the p word” files from the Journal of East Asia & International Law.

The paper in question, “Border Enforcement of Plant Variety Rights: A Comparison between Japan and Taiwan,” was written by Shun-liang Hsu and appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of the journal. Here are the first two pages.

The notice is quite detailed. It begins with the allegations against Hsu: Continue reading Heads up: “Borrowing” your student’s work will earn you a partial retraction — and a five-year publishing ban

Film review by noted critic a rerun, retracted

french cinemaMany devotees of French film consider Jean Renoir’s 1939 La Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game) to be the best example of the genre, and indeed of movie making writ large.

Bad cut alert: One of the rules of the publishing game is, “ne pas plagier,” which we don’t think we need to translate here.

But that’s something that Robert Cardullo seems to have neglected. Cardullo, of Izmir University of Economics in Turkey, isn’t a nobody in the world of film criticism (you can say movie reviewing if you like, we won’t mind). Here’s a bio from Mellen Press: Continue reading Film review by noted critic a rerun, retracted

2 for 2: Fraud, plagiarism force retraction of Staph aureus paper

j food sciThe Journal of Food Science has retracted a 2012 paper by Chinese scientists, one of whom copped to having made up data in the paper — which also plagiarized from a 2009 article by other researchers — and forging his co-authors’ names on the manuscript.

The article, “A Multiplex PCR Assay for the Rapid and Sensitive detection of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Simultaneous Discrimination of Staphylococcus aureus from Coagulase-Negative Staphylococci,” appeared online in October 2012 and was written by a group from Northwest A & F University, in Yangling, and Tianshui Normal University.

It has been cited once, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. From the abstract: Continue reading 2 for 2: Fraud, plagiarism force retraction of Staph aureus paper

Where’s the line between scientific post-publication peer review critiques and libel?

Mann4
Michael Mann, via Wikimedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mann4.jpg

One of the issues that comes up frequently when we’re moderating comments here on Retraction Watch is the distinction between “I think these images look strange” and “this researcher committed fraud.” That’s a pretty important distinction, because potentially actionable cases of libel live somewhere in between, probably closer to the latter — as Paul Brookes found out the hard way last year when Science-Fraud.org was shuttered by legal threats.

We may have some new legal precedent to follow on the matter soon, it turns out. Climate scientist Michael Mann sued The National Review in 2012 after the conservative magazine published a Competitive Enterprise Institute statement as follows: Continue reading Where’s the line between scientific post-publication peer review critiques and libel?

Dental journal pulls article for “sufficient evidence” of plagiarism

ImageA group of dental researchers from India has lost their 2008 paper on the salubrious effects of coconut water on periodontal health.

The article, “Comparison of coconut water, propolis, HBSS, and milk on PDL cell survival,” appeared in the Journal of Endodontics, an Elsevier title. It has been cited 24 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Here’s the abstract: Continue reading Dental journal pulls article for “sufficient evidence” of plagiarism

A rating system for retractions? How various journals stack up

publications-logoHere at Retraction Watch, we judge retraction notices every day. We even have a category called “unhelpful retraction notices.”

But we haven’t systematically analyzed those notices, so lucky for us, a group of academics at Vanderbilt decided to. In a new paper published in a special issue of Publications — an issue whose editor, Grant Steen, put out a call for papers for here on Retraction Watch — Emma Bilbrey, Natalie O’Dell, and Jonathan Creamer explain: Continue reading A rating system for retractions? How various journals stack up