The University of Luxembourg has fired researcher Carsten Carlberg after concluding that his name was a drag on the institution.
Here’s an English translation of an article about the firing, which many readers were kind enough to forward to us: Continue reading Carsten Carlberg out at University of Luxembourg
Readers of this blog by now know that if there’s one thing that really gets us going, it’s obfuscation. So it shouldn’t be surprising that the following retraction notice from the journal Psychopharmacology, made us particularly batty:
This paper has been retracted by the author because of legal issues.
The notice refers to “Selective activation of the metabotropic glutamate receptor subtype 7 “mGluR7” attenuates acquisition, expression, and reinstatement of ethanol place preference,” was published online in late June by Amine Bahi under the heading “Original Investigation.”
Bahi is in the department of anatomy at United Arab Emirates University. He has also held positions at Yale and the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. Among his publications is one that involved a collaborator from Novartis (more on that in a moment). Continue reading Cryptic “legal issues” lead to retraction of paper about potential Novartis alcohol abuse drug
On Tuesday, we reported that Emory University in Atlanta was looking into why a team of former researchers — now at the University of Louisville — had retracted three papers in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC).
Today, we learned that the researchers’ home institution since 2009 is now investigating the work. A spokesperson tells Retraction Watch: Continue reading University of Louisville investigating work by team under review at Emory
Jatinder Ahluwalia, whose story Retraction Watch has been following since last fall, is no longer working at the University of East London, according to a report in today’s Times Higher Education.
Ahluwalia, Retraction Watch readers may recall, came to our attention in the fall after he and his colleagues were forced to retract a paper in Nature. A University College London (UCL) investigation revealed that Ahluwalia had faked results, and probably sabotaged his colleagues’ work. We then learned, from a source, that Ahluwalia had been dismissed from Cambridge University’s graduate program — his first attempt to get a PhD — in 1998.
Given all of these revelations, the University of East London — where Ahluwalia had been a faculty member since leaving UCL — and Imperial College London, where he earned his PhD, both began investigations into his work. Last week, we reported that Imperial had finishing re-running all of his experiments, and was reviewing the results.
Today, as the Times Higher Education reported, his faculty page has been removed: Continue reading Jatinder Ahluwalia out at University of East London: report
Emory University is looking into why the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) has retracted three papers published by Emory faculty from 2005 to 2007, Retraction Watch has learned. The papers were: Continue reading Emory looking into circumstances of three new retractions in the JBC
If you’ve been wondering what’s happening in the case of Jatinder Ahluwalia, the University of East London researcher who has been found guilty of faking data as a graduate student at Cambridge and of misconduct at University College London, so have we.
We last reported, in February, that Imperial College London, where Ahluwalia earned his PhD, was repeating his key experiments “in light of new information received.” Today, an Imperial spokesperson tells Retraction Watch that those repeat experiments are complete, and “the results are currently being reviewed by the College.” We look forward to hearing the results of that review, of course.
A reminder that Ahluwalia’s current institution, the University of East London, is also reviewing his work. We’ve heard nothing from UEL, despite several requests. That’s consistent with the idea that the university has placed a gag order on its faculty and administration, although we haven’t confirmed that either.
In fact, we’re hearing a lot of rumors about this case, many of them left as anonymous comments, and while we appreciate any tips, we do our best to confirm verifiable facts before posting, even in comments. So if anyone has documentation of what’s going on, we’d welcome it.
We’ve also seen Ahluwalia apparently take a page out of the Anil Potti playbook, using social media and setting up a blog to extol his own virtues. Various sites discuss his papers and charitable donations, and he also has a Twitter feed that has a lot to say about the weather. Oddly, none of them mention the misconduct findings.
One of the comments left on his blog was from “MikeUSA”:
Continue reading Imperial, where Jatinder Ahluwalia earned his PhD, has re-run experiments, and is now reviewing results
The other day we wrote about a case of plagiarism in an education journal serving the Whole Schooling community. One of the questions we always ask editors and writers victimized by plagiarists is how they learned about the theft. The answer typically involves some version of “we were reading a new paper and saw some of our own words/figures/tables on the page.”
But in this instance, the story’s somewhat more interesting. We’ll let co-author Ana-Lisa Gonzalez tell it: Continue reading That sounds familiar! Education paper plagiarism caught — inadvertently — by author
The International Journal of Whole Schooling has retracted a 2007 article for what it calls “substantial” plagiarism.
The article, titled “The relations between parenting and adolescent motivation,” was written by Theiienhuong N. Hoang, an education researcher at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona. The aim of the paper:
Parenting practices that influence or teach adaptive motivational and achievement outcomes are an aspect of a student’s success that are in need of consideration. This study will examine motivational outcomes, as predicted by parenting practices that may influence student behavior.
The purpose of this study is to expand upon the existing research on the relation between parenting practices and motivation.
By expand, it seems she meant restate.
According to the June 16 notice: Continue reading Whole schooling paper retracted after discovering that it was largely lifted
We’ve been trying to follow the complicated case of Milena Penkowa, who resigned her post at the University of Copenhagen in December amidst allegations that she had committed scientific misconduct and misused grant money. Today, we learned that one of the three papers that Penkowa had coauthored and were subject to Expressions of Concern has been retracted. Here’s the notice: Continue reading Penkowa Journal of Physiology Expression of Concern turns into a retraction
Here’s a good way to increase the number of times your work is cited: Publish studies three times.
On second (or third) thought, maybe not: The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry & Molecular Biology has retracted a pair of articles by three Japanese researchers who apparently liked their own work so much they decided to submit it, and submit it—and submit it again.
Here’s the notice for the first paper, a 2004 publication titled “Vitamin D receptor (VDR) promoter targeting through a novel chromatin remodeling complex,” by Shigeaki Kato, Ryoji Fujiki and Hirochika Kitagawa, fairly well-known molecular endocrinologists at the University of Tokyo: Continue reading The new math: How to up your citations (hint: duplication). Plus a correction for Naoki Mori