The Karolinska Institutet has dismissed former rising star surgeon Paolo Macchiarini from his post, effective immediately.
A KI news release, dated today, states:
The Staff Disciplinary Board at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to relieve Paolo Macchiarini of his duties as a researcher at KI. He is to be informed immediately that his contract has been rescinded.
The former University of Tokyo endocrinologist recently earned another retraction, for a paper in Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics that contained image manipulation. As we’ve noted before, Kato resigned from the university in 2012 as it investigated his work for misconduct; in 2013 a Japanese newspaper reported that the investigation had found 43 papers from his lab contained “likely altered or forged materials.”
In addition to the new retraction, we’ve dug up four others for Kato from the past few years, plus one correction. Two of the retraction notices mention an investigation at the University of Tokyo.
Are individual scientists now more productive early in their careers than 100 years ago? No, according to a large analysis of publication records released by PLOS ONE today.
Despite concerns of rising “salami slicing” in research papers in line with the “publish or perish” philosophy of academic publishing, the study found that individual early career researchers’ productivity has not increased in the last century. The authors analyzed more than 760,000 papers of all disciplines published by 41,427 authors between 1900 and 2013, cataloged by Thomson Reuters Web of Science.
The authors summarize their conclusions in “Researchers’ individual publication rate has not increased in a century:”
Last week, The Lancet honored a co-author’s request to remove his name from Paolo Macchiarini’s seminal 2011 paper, which described the first transplant of an artificial trachea seeded with autologous stem cells but has since come under fire.
The Lancet has been contacted by Dr KH Grinnemo who was an author on the paper. Dr Grinnemo no longer wishes to be an author and asks for his name to be removed. This correction has been made to the online version as of March 3, 2016.
The paper has been cited 187 times, designating it “highly cited” by Thomson Reuters Web of Science.
A cancer researcher who recently retired from MD Anderson Cancer Center — and also recently lost seven papers from one journal following a multi-year investigation — is one of the world’s top scientists, according to a new ranking.
In Thomson Reuters Web of Science’s 2015 list of The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds, Bharat Aggarwal’s name tops the section for Pharmacology and Toxicology (see p. 89). In all fairness, the list is presented in alphabetical order, and seven of Aggarwal’s papers have each been cited at least 1,000 times. But in addition to his recent seven retractions, he has has six corrections, two unexplained withdrawals, and two Expressions of Concern.
After learning of concerns that two figures are “very similar” and “some of the error bars look unevenly positioned,” the rest of the authors were unable to locate the raw data, according to the note. The journal could not reach Obokata for comment before publishing the retraction.
High-profile social psychologist Jens Förster has earned two retractions following an investigation by his former workplace. He agreed to the retractions as part of a settlement with the German Society for Psychology (DGPs).
The papers are two of eight that were found to contain “strong statistical evidence for low veracity.” According to the report from an expert panel convened at the request of the board of the University of Amsterdam, following
an extensive statistical analysis, the experts conclude that many of the experiments described in the articles show an exceptionally linear link. This linearity is not only surprising, but often also too good to be true because it is at odds with the random variation within the experiments.
One of those eight papers was retracted in 2014. In November, the American Psychology Association received an appeal to keep two of the papers, and Förster agreed to the retractions of two more:
Former accounting professor James Hunton has added a 33rd retraction to his total, solidifying his position at #10 on our leaderboard.
Hunton’s official total is 33.5, since one journal retracted only one section of a paper, making it a “partial” retraction. Most of those retractions came last year, the fallout from an investigation at Bentley University which concluded that the accounting researcher had committed misconduct. Hunton resigned from the university in 2012 after his first retraction, citing family matters.
There’s more news to report on the story of surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, who’s been dogged by allegations of misconduct.
After the Karolinska Institutet (KI) announced it would not extend his contract and that he needed to “phase out” his research by November, it has now announced it may dismiss him.
An MD Anderson Cancer Center researcher who has been under investigation by the institution for at least several years has had seven papers retracted from a single journal.
This week, Biochemical Pharmacology retracted seven studies of which he is the only common author, noting the “data integrity has become questionable.” The papers have been cited a total of more than 500 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge; one has been designated as “highly cited.” Here are the seven retractions: Continue reading Journal retracts 7 papers by MD Anderson cancer researcher long under investigation
