On Monday, we were first to report that a study of green coffee bean extract for weight loss touted on the Dr. Oz Show had been retracted.
That story has been widely picked up by the media, including The Washington Post, which yesterday reported that the show had posted a statement about the development: Continue reading Dr. Oz: Following green coffee bean diet retraction, site scrubbed, “further study is needed”
Two authors of a 2012 paper sponsored by a company that made grand claims about green coffee bean extract’s abilities to help people lose weight have retracted it. The study was cited by The Dr. Oz Show, and last month it cost the company a $3.5 million settlement with the Feds.
Here’s the notice for “Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, linear dose, crossover study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of a green coffee bean extract in overweight subjects,” a paper originally published in Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy: Continue reading Authors retract green coffee bean diet paper touted by Dr. Oz
We don’t love this somewhat incoherent retraction for a paper on coherent states, although luckily the publisher was prompt with telling us a little more about what happened.
On October 2, a 2008 physics paper, “Generation of a superposition of coherent states in a resonant cavity and its nonclassicality and decoherence,” was retracted for “several scientific errors,” pointed out by a comment published in the same journal. The original authors rewrote the paper, but it was not up to the standards of Canadian Journal of Physics, so it was rejected, and the original was retracted.
Here’s the notice: Continue reading “Several scientific errors” sink physics paper after rewrite opportunity
Journal publishers can be agonizingly slow when it comes to officially retracting a paper.
Here’s a prime example of the consequences of that bureaucratic foot-dragging: Ten months after being told that Fazlurrahman Khan had fabricated his data, and two months after announcing two of Khan’s papers would be retracted from two of its journals, Elsevier still has not retracted either paper.
Worse, at least one of the papers, “Degradation of 2,4-dinitroanisole (DNAN) by metabolic cooperative activity of Pseudomonas sp. strain FK357 and Rhodococcus imtechensis strain RKJ300,” in the journal Chemosphere, has been cited since the announcement was made. In fact, the paper was published in Journal of Hazardous Materials, the Elsevier journal that is dragging its feet retracting another of Khan’s papers, “Aerobic degradation of 4-nitroaniline (4-NA) via novel degradation intermediates by Rhodococcus sp. strain FK48.”
Jim Spain, in whose lab Khan worked at Georgia Tech, reached out to us to express his concerns with this timeline: Continue reading Oops: Elsevier journal publishes paper citing paper it promised to retract two months ago
The Indian Society of Periodontology has changed their editorial policy as the result of an author who had “neither taken adequate permission from nor given due acknowledgement to all authors concerned.”
Now, any authors will be required to sign a contract acknowledging accountability for the content of the submitted paper, as well as be able to state the specific work contributed by each author.
Here’s the notice from the Journal of the Indian Society of Periodontology: Continue reading This retraction has teeth: Journal changes publication policy after discovering misconduct
When Pharmacy Practice found out it had been victimized by plagiarists, it apparently took the news personally — and to heart.
In an elaborate statement with more than a dozen references — but not one to the plagiarizing work — the journal lashed out against the behavior of word thieves, and described the discovery as a Road to Damascus moment.
Here’s the notice, which was published in 2012 but was only just indexed on PubMed:
Continue reading Journal that “suffered” from plagiarism purges itself
A mistaken molecular structure has led to a retraction and a withdrawal for group in India studying optical crystals.
Here’s the notice for “Crystal growth and spectroscopic characterization of Aloevera amino acid added lithium sulfate monohydrate: A non-linear optical crystal” in Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Continue reading Crystal confusion leads to retractions for optics researchers
Here’s a physics retraction whose use of an exclamation point — the only one we’ve ever seen in a retraction notice! — makes the editors’ exasperation palpable.
It’s also the the fourth retraction for R. K. Singhal, of the University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, India. Behold the notice for “Magnetic behavior of functionally modified spinel Ni0.4Ca0.6Fe2O4 nanoferrite,” in the International Journal of Modern Physics B: Continue reading Enthusiastic retraction and retracted correction mark loss of researcher’s fourth and fifth papers
The International Journal of Hydrogen Energy is retracting a 2013 article for what appears to be the misappropriation of data.
The paper, titled “Hydrogen production by an anaerobic photocatalytic reforming using palladium nanoparticle on boron and nitrogen doped TiO2 catalysts,” was written by researchers from the Veltech Dr RR & Dr SR Technical University, in Chennai, India, and Arizona State University.
According to the abstract: Continue reading Hydrogen journal pulls palladium paper for data misuse
A stumble in data preparation earned a retraction for a paper on delirium tremens
, a life-threatening side effect of alcohol withdrawal that spans a wide range of symptoms, including hallucinations and seizures.
Though the initial retraction notice was extremely unhelpful, the author stepped in to give us a better picture of the errors that led to the paper’s demise.
Here’s the notice from Alcohol and Alcoholism about “Biochemical Predictors of Delirium Tremens in Patients in Alcohol Withdrawal”: