Category: Hong Kong

Management researcher admits to falsification, resigns

David DeGeest

A business journal has retracted two papers after the corresponding author admitted he falsified his results.

David DeGeest, an assistant professor in the Department of Management and Marketing, has also resigned from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, a university spokesperson told Retraction Watch.

Last month, DeGeest confessed to the Journal of Management (JOM) that he had falsified the results in two papers in the journal—one from 2015 and one from 2016.

The papers explored strategies startups can use to increase their odds of survival. The 2015 work was highlighted in the Wall Street Journal, among other outlets; one story in Business News Daily is no longer on the site.

David Allen, the editor-in-chief of the journal, told us: Continue reading Management researcher admits to falsification, resigns

Caught Our Notice: Big journal, big correction

Title: Tranexamic Acid in Patients Undergoing Coronary-Artery Surgery

What Caught Our Attention: When the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) publishes a correction that is more than a misspelling of a name, we take a look. When NEJM publishes a 500-word correction to the data in a highly cited article, we take notice. This study tested the effects of a drug to prevent blood loss in patients undergoing heart surgery; it’s been the subject of correspondence between the authors and outside experts. The correction involved tweaks — lots of tweaks — to the text and tables, which did not change the outcomes.   Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Big journal, big correction

Author admits to manipulating more than a dozen images in 2013 paper

A former graduate student at the University of Hong Kong confessed to making “inappropriate modifications” to several figures in a 2013 paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC).

According to the retraction notice, the authors identified issues in 13 images while reviewing the data; the paper’s first author, Yingying Lu, copped to manipulating the figures. Even though “these modifications did not change the results or interpretations of this work,” the authors requested the paper be retracted.

The paper’s corresponding author, Jainbo Yue, previously based at the University of Hong Kong and now at the City University of Hong Kong, had nothing to add to the retraction notice, and told us that a “third person” is repeating the key experiments.

Here’s the retraction notice for “Two pore channel 2 (TPC2) inhibits autophagosomal-lysosomal fusion by alkalinizing lysosomal pH,” published in July: Continue reading Author admits to manipulating more than a dozen images in 2013 paper

Author “shocked” after top math journal retracts paper

One of the world’s most prestigious mathematics journals has issued what appears to be its first retraction.

The Annals of Mathematics recently withdrew a 2001 paper exploring the properties of certain symmetrical spaces.

What prompted this retraction? And why did it occur 16 years after the paper was published? Continue reading Author “shocked” after top math journal retracts paper

Authors fix three Diabetes papers flagged for image issues

diabetesResearchers have corrected three studies published in the journal Diabetes after users flagged issues with the images on PubPeer.

All three papers share a number of authors, including the same last and corresponding author, Aimin Xu, from The University of Hong Kong.

Since the corrections appear relatively extensive, we asked the journal if retractions were ever on the table. According to Chris Kohler, associate publisher, scholarly journals at American Diabetes Association, which publishes Diabetes, an ethical panel reviewed the papers before allowing the authors to issue the errata, all of which were published online this month: Continue reading Authors fix three Diabetes papers flagged for image issues

JACS corrects, removes author from previously flagged paper

JACSA paper at the center of a high-profile case of alleged misconduct in Hong Kong has earned a correction notice.

The correction replaces an expression of concern on the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) paper, which followed allegations of data manipulation. It provides some un-cropped images, and removes a co-author from the paper. However, it does not appear to address previous allegations of misconduct, nor a recent ruling from an investigation at Hong Kong University (HKU), which found that some of the data were “invalid.”

Here is the correction notice for “Molecular Imaging of Peroxynitrite with HKGreen-4 in Live Cells and Tissues:”

Continue reading JACS corrects, removes author from previously flagged paper

JACS imaging paper “under editorial review” has been replicated, says author

JACS The author of a paper “under editorial review” at the Journal of the American Chemical Society has told us the results the paper have been replicated, contrary to claims made by a former member of her lab.

What’s more, the author said she has submitted a correction to the paper, which is currently flagged with an expression of concern, to provide uncropped images.

We originally reported on the case in February from the perspective of Roger Wong, a former chemist at Hong Kong University who said he hasn’t been able to replicate the findings out of the lab of Dan Yang, a current chemistry professor at HKU (who is female, despite the fact that “Dan” is frequently used as a male name in English). We unfortunately failed to reach Yang in February because of an email glitch; once we contacted Yang, she told us she does not believe Wong’s side of the story:

Continue reading JACS imaging paper “under editorial review” has been replicated, says author

JACS imaging paper “under editorial review”

Screen Shot 2016-01-04 at 2.02.27 PM

The Journal of the American Chemical Society has issued an expression of concern over “the presentation of results” in a 2014 paper about a new probe for use in imaging.

We haven’t heard back from the journal nor the authors of the paper, so there’s not much we can officially say about what the journal is investigating.

Here’s the text from the expression of concern:
 Continue reading JACS imaging paper “under editorial review”

Image issues force retraction of liver transplant papers

ajtranspA group of researchers in Hong Kong and China have lost a pair of papers on liver transplantation after concerns were raised about the “origin of images” in the two studies.

The articles appeared in the American Journal of Transplantation in January and February of 2006, and came from the lab of S. T. Fan, of the University of Hong Kong. When the authors were asked about the images, they “were unable to satisfactorily mitigate the concerns.”

According to this bio from the journal Hepatobiliary Surgery and Nutrition, Fan: Continue reading Image issues force retraction of liver transplant papers

Investigation ups nursing researcher’s retraction count to 3

Journal of Clinical NursingThe Journal of Clinical Nursing is retracting a paper “due to major overlap with a previously published article” from the same journal, following an investigation by the National University of Singapore.

By our count, this is the third retraction for first author, Moon-fai Chan, all for “overlap” with other papers.

As we reported in May, the Journal of Advanced Nursing retracted a paper co-authored by Chan for “major overlap” with a paper in JCN, that too the result of the investigation. We’ve also learned that the journal Nursing & Health Sciences issued a similar notice last year for another pair of overlapped papers.

Chan said in a statement to Retraction Watch Continue reading Investigation ups nursing researcher’s retraction count to 3