Eric Smart, who as we reported in November was sanctioned by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) for faking dozens of images in ten papers and seven grants over the past decade, has had his first retraction.
Here’s the December 24 notice, from PNAS: Continue reading First retraction for Eric Smart, who faked dozens of images, appears in PNAS
A group of neuroscientists has retracted a paper published earlier this last year in Diabetes after realizing that a figure that took up a whole page of the paper may not have been quite right.
Here’s the notice for “Blockade of receptor for advanced glycation end products in a model of type 1 diabetic leukoencephalopathy”: Continue reading Authors retract Diabetes paper after submitting it “without knowledge of inherent errors”
We have a few follow-ups from stories we’ve recently covered:
Terry Elton case initially chalked up to “disorganization,” not misconduct
Ohio State University (OSU), which along with the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) recently sanctioned a pharmacy professor for image manipulation, “failed at first to recognize his deception,” according to an investigation by The Columbus Dispatch based on university documents.
The piece, which quotes Ivan, reveals that OSU needed some prompting from the ORI before it concluded that Terry Elton was guilty of misconduct, and not just unintentional errors that he at one point blamed on a research technician who lost her job in October 2011: Continue reading Catching up: OSU “missed fraud,” Dipak Das lost tenured professorship, Ivan on NPR’s Science Friday
A Brazilian author whose attorneys were the first to send the now-shuttered Science Fraud site a cease-and-desist letter has now had a paper retracted.
As Retraction Watch readers may know, Science Fraud shut down earlier this week in response to legal threats. Those threats were preceded by a cease-and-desist letter last month from attorneys for Rui Curi, of the University of Sao Paulo.
Curi’s work had been scrutinized by Science Fraud in a number of posts, with allegations of duplicated bands and re-used Western blots. With a gnawing suspicion that some of our more erudite readers will take issue with our use of “irony” here, Continue reading Irony? Paper by author whose attorneys sent cease-and-desist letter to Science Fraud retracted
Milena Penkowa, the former University of Copenhagen scientist found by her university to have embezzled grant funds and to have possibly committed misconduct in 15 papers, has another retraction.
An international panel released its findings in July, as Nature reported then: Continue reading Retraction three for Milena Penkowa, for diabetes-exercise study
A group of cancer researchers formerly centered at Johns Hopkins have retracted two more studies. The previous two retracted papers — one of which was the focus of a lawsuit — were about prostate cancer, while the new retractions are of papers about colon cancer.
Here’s the notice for one paper: Continue reading Retractions three and four for Hopkins cancer biomarker group
A group of smoking researchers — no, not scientists who are on fire; scientists who study the effects of tobacco smoke — has retracted a 2009 article after deciding that they were no longer “satisfied with the quality of the data.”
The paper, “Cigarette Smoke–induced Oxidative/Nitrosative Stress Impairs VEGF- and Fluid Shear Stress–Mediated Signaling in Endothelial Cells,” came from the lab of Irfan Rahman, a lung disease expert at the University of Rochester. It appeared online in 2009 in Antioxidants & Redox Signaling, which will be familiar to readers watching the case of Dipak Das.
As the notice explains: Continue reading Scientists retract paper because they’re “not satisfied with the quality of some of the data”
Alirio Melendez, a former National University of Singapore immunologist whose story we’ve been following here since a retraction in September of last year, committed misconduct on an “unprecedented” scale, according to the university, involving more than 20 papers.
Nature’s Richard van Noorden has the scoop:
After a 19-month investigation, the National University of Singapore (NUS) today says that it has determined that one of its former scientists, the immunologist Alirio Melendez, has committed “serious scientific misconduct”. The university found fabrication, falsification or plagiarism associated with 21 papers, and no evidence indicating that other co-authors were involved in the misconduct, it says.
Melendez has retracted five papers so far, as we’ve reported, but NUS wouldn’t give the whole list. They tell Nature: Continue reading NUS: Melendez committed “serious scientific misconduct,” but don’t expect to get any details
The Journal of the American College of Cardiology, or JACC, has issued expressions of concern for three papers by Don Poldermans, the Dutch cardiologist who was fired earlier this year amid allegations of misconduct.
Cardiobrief’s Larry Husten had the story first.
The, um, heart of the matter is that neither the investigators at Erasmus Medical Center, Poldermans’ former institution, nor the JACC editors, can say whether the researchers conduct rose to the level of fabricating data. As the Notice of Concern states: Continue reading Concern — in triplicate — arrives for Poldermans papers
Retraction Watch readers may recall the case of Silvia Bulfone-Paus, a researcher at Germany’s Research Center Borstel who was a frequent subject of posts in the early days of this blog. Bulfone-Paus has had to retract 13 papers amid investigations into allegations of image manipulation.
To briefly recap: In May 2010, several months after concerns had first been raised, Borstel let the DFG (German Research Foundation) know about the allegations, because they had funded the work. A November 2010 report from Borstel said that the allegations had merit, blaming two of Bulfone-Paus’s postdocs but criticizing how she supervised them. As the DFG notes in a summary of its findings on the case, posted late last week: Continue reading Funding agency sanctions Bulfone-Paus and former postdoc