Retraction Watch readers may recall the case of William Hamman, the United Airlines pilot who claimed to be a cardiologist until the Associated Press uncovered him in late 2010. Hamman had published at least six papers, and since the revelations has had one retraction and one erratum, by our count.
Now comes another retraction, in the Journal of Patient Safety. Here’s the (paywalled) notice, signed by journal editor Charles Denham: Continue reading Paper by fake cardiologist retracted
Rui Curi, the Brazilian scientist whose lawyers’ threats helped force the shutdown of Science-Fraud.org, has corrected another paper criticized by the site.
Here’s the correction for “Effects of moderate electrical stimulation on reactive species production by primary rat skeletal muscle cells: Cross-talk between superoxide and nitric oxide production,” in the Journal of Cellular Physiology: Continue reading Author whose lawyers threatened Science Fraud corrects another paper
As expected, ten Retraction Watch posts about Anil Potti that were mistakenly removed for a false Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice have been restored.
Automattic, which runs WordPress, notified us tonight of the move, which comes two weeks after the original notice. The claim against Retraction Watch was ridiculous, of course; a site in India plagiarized our posts, then claimed we had violated their copyright. That site, perhaps not surprisingly, has been taken down.
In the meantime, another site has been hit with a DMCA notice for a post about Potti, and Potti has told us that he had nothing to do with the takedown notice filed against us.
If you missed those posts — one of which is an accounting of Potti’s retraction record so far — here they are: Continue reading Anil Potti posts restored to Retraction Watch following false DMCA claim
If you wanted to minimize the real-life effects of misconduct, you might note that some of the retractions we cover are in tiny obscure journals hardly anyone reads. But a new meta-analysis and editorial in JAMA today suggests — as a study by Grant Steen did a few years ago — that the risk of patient harm due to scientific misconduct is not just theoretical.
As the editorialists note, hydroxyethyl starches (HES) are “synthetic fluid products used commonly in clinical practice worldwide:”
Synthetic colloids received market approval in the 1960s without evaluation of their efficacy and safety in large phase 3 clinical trials. Subsequent studies reported mixed evidence on their benefits and harms.
There has been controversy over the use of HES for decades, with the most recent high-level review showing “no significant mortality increase.” But one of the reasons for that review — by the prestigious Cochrane Collaboration — was to see if the dozens of now-retracted studies by Joachim Boldt Continue reading Does scientific misconduct cause patient harm? The case of Joachim Boldt
Would you hire someone found to have faked data on federal grant applications as a “grant services consultant?”
You may have been without knowing it, if you had gone to Washington, D.C.-based Strategic Health Care for help with your grants. There, you would have found Michael Miller — page removed today, more on that in a moment — whose bio described him as an “internationally known neuroscientist.”
He has more than 30 years of experience in obtaining federal support for his research and that of collaborators. This includes individual grants (R01′s and R03′s) and fellowships for himself and pre- and post-doctoral trainees from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), merit reviews and research career awards from the Department of Veterans Affairs, and support from private foundations. In addition, Dr. Miller successfully orchestrated and competed for a $9 million NIH center (P50) grant that coordinated research at five different institutions.
What Miller’s bio failed to mention Continue reading Neuroscientist found to have faked grant applications loses gig as grant services consultant
We have an update on an evolving and puzzling story involving our posts about Anil Potti that have been temporarily removed from Retraction Watch.
Someone claiming to be Anil Potti — and whom we have good reason to believe is actually him, for reasons we’ll get into — emailed us tonight to say that he had “no part whatsoever” in the takedown of Retraction Watch posts about him: Continue reading Anil Potti tells Retraction Watch he wasn’t behind DMCA takedown notices of posts about him
Retraction Watch readers may recall that earlier this month, WordPress removed ten of our posts about Anil Potti — the former Duke oncology researcher who has retracted or corrected 19 papers — after a false DMCA copyright claim against us. The site which claimed the copyright violations — and which no longer exists — actually plagiarized our posts, not the other way around.
We’re still waiting for those posts to be reinstated; our understanding is that they’ll be back later this week. In the meantime, Nanopolitan, another site that wrote about Potti has been hit with what looks like a false DMCA claim.
Blogger, Nanopolitan’s host, has taken down one post. One of the owners of Nanopolitan, Abi, writes: Continue reading Another site hit with DMCA takedown notice for post about Anil Potti
Today brings two journal editorials about misconduct and retractions. They take, if we may, a bit of an optimistic and perhaps even blindered approach.
In an editorial titled “Scientific misconduct occurs, but is rare,” Boston University’s Richard Primack, editor of Biological Conservation, highlights a Corrigendum of a paper by Jesus Angel Lemus, the veterinary researcher who has retracted seven papers: Continue reading Not in my journal: Two editors take stock of misconduct in their fields — and don’t find much
Diederik Stapel is up to 49 retractions.
Here are the latest three, from Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin: Continue reading “When we wonder what it all means”: Stapel retraction count rises to 49
If you went looking for ten of our posts about Anil Potti today, you would have seen error messages instead. That’s because someone claiming to be from a news site in India alleged we violated their copyright with those ten posts about the former Duke University cancer researcher who has had 19 papers retracted, corrected, or partially retracted.
The truth of the matter, as is often the case, is exactly the opposite of the allegations. Here’s the email we received from Automattic — which owns WordPress, our blog host — earlier today: Continue reading WordPress removes Anil Potti posts from Retraction Watch in error after false DMCA copyright claim