A former postdoc at the University of Pittsburgh has admitted to committing research misconduct in published papers and in National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant applications.
The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) said on Friday that Kenneth Walker, who was studying the development of the urinary tract, Continue reading Former Pitt postdoc admits to faking data
A journal has added expressions of concern (EOCs) to four papers about diabetes, including one co-authored by an author who previously sued a different journal when it took a similar action on his papers.
The Journal of Physiology flagged the papers after an investigation “could not rule out the possibility” that they contained duplicated Western blots. Though the three other papers do not include Mario Saad on their author list, he plays a role: The papers include blots duplicated from other papers of Saad’s. And they reveal that Saad may have published those blots multiple times in his own work.
The EOCs all start out with the same statement: Continue reading Researcher who unsuccessfully sued journal to stop retractions earns another expression of concern
We recently discovered a relatively old retraction notice — from 2014 — of a study on pregnant women with HIV.
The paper was retracted two years ago when BMC Research Notes discovered the authors falsely claimed they had obtained ethics approval from an institution in Kenya.
The study looked at the effectiveness of an antiretroviral therapy in 50 women who were receiving care at a center in Nairobi, Kenya. But the authors did not have permission from the center to use data from the women, nor the necessary ethics approval from Moi University to carry out the work.
Here’s the retraction note for “Effectiveness of option B highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) in pregnant HIV women:”
Continue reading Study on pregnant women with HIV lied about having ethics approval
We’ve unearthed four more retractions for Khalid Zaman, an economist who lost 16 papers in 2014 for orchestrating fake peer review.
That brings Zaman’s total to 20, and ties him at the #18 spot on our leaderboard.
One of the more recently discovered retractions is for fake peer review, attributed to Zaman; one is for plagiarism, and two other papers were withdrawn while in press, for reasons that are unclear. (Note bene: These retractions are all at least one year old.)
First, the retraction notice for peer review issues, published in April 2015 for “Environmental Indicators and Energy Outcomes: Evidence from World Bank’s Classification Countries:”
Continue reading Peer review scam leader now up to 20 retractions
The Pennsylvania College of Technology, aka Penn College, has retracted a press release about a sociologist there reviewing a manuscript.
Now, although we’ve covered a few retracted press releases, we don’t typically write about such events. This one, however, struck us as odd: Is reviewing a paper really the bar for sending out a press release? What if every university did that every time one of their faculty was asked to review?
The May 2 press release, issued by Penn State, of which Penn College is a part, begins: Continue reading College retracts press release about sociologist reviewing manuscript
An author is preparing to sue a publisher for retracting his paper.
John Bishop, the CEO of an independent media company called Crocels, argues that by taking down his paper, De Gruyter is breaching a contract — their agreement to publish his work.
Perhaps appropriately, the paper suggests ways to combat negative online comments — including litigation.
Bishop told us he learned that his paper was pulled when he was alerted to the brief retraction notice, published in April. The notice, published in the Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, says:
Continue reading Author: I’ll sue if publisher doesn’t retract my retraction
Data manipulation in a Cell Reports paper blew the importance of a kind of bacteria out of proportion.
Retracted this month — less than three months after it was published — the paper showed, according to a summary on the cover page:
B. subtilis is a symbiont that resides in the gut of C. elegans and generates nitric oxide that is essential for the host. Xiao et al. demonstrate that nitric oxide promotes defense against pathogenic bacteria by activating p38 MAPK, demonstrating the importance of commensal bacteria in host immunity.
But B. subtilis — a member of the Bacillaceae family — aren’t actually as plentiful as they appeared, explains the retraction notice for “Gut-Colonizing Bacteria Promote C. elegans Innate Immunity by Producing Nitric Oxide:”
Continue reading Data manipulation flushes paper on gut bacteria
A team of biologists have earned a fifth retraction for a paper containing manipulated images, following an investigation by the Swedish government.
Last year, the investigation found that former Uppsala University doctoral student Apiruck Watthanasurorot had manipulated figures in five papers, four of which have already been retracted. Earlier this year, we reported that his supervisor, last author Kenneth Söderhäll, had requested PLOS Pathogens simply correct the fifth paper because independent groups have confirmed the findings. But according to the retraction notice for “Bacteria-Induced Dscam Isoforms of the Crustacean, Pacifastacus leniusculus,” Söderhäll has since agreed to the retraction:
Continue reading Biologists earn 5th retraction following Swedish investigation
Here’s a joke for all you middle-schoolers out there. How are doctored images like bad pennies? They keep cropping up!
Here’s the latest one we’ve picked up: Lung Cancer has retracted a 2014 paper on the genetics of tumors after concluding the authors cribbed a figure that had appeared in a 2005 feature story in Science.
The paper, “ß-elemene against human lung cancer via up-regulation of P53 protein expression to promote the release of exosome,” drew attention on PubPeer last September from a reader who noticed striking similarities between one of the images the authors used and a figure in the Science piece (subscription required). According to the PubPeer commenter: Continue reading Cancer paper that doctored image from Science story earns retraction
A pair of stem cell researchers have earned two corrections, the result of images that were mislabeled, distorted, or compiled incorrectly, according to the notices.
Kang Cheng prepared the gels when he was a research fellow in last author Sanjeev Gupta‘s lab at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Gupta told us he reviewed the original gels, and the errors didn’t affect the conclusions in the papers, which were reproducible. He noted he believes the problems are the result of honest mistakes:
The errors did not confer any benefits whatsoever either for the papers or for Dr. Cheng.
On PubPeer, commenters have raised questions about the now corrected papers — along with several others on which Gupta is the senior author, but Cheng is not a co-author.
Edward Burns, research integrity officer at Einstein, told us that the medical school looked into an allegation of misconduct against Gupta:
Continue reading Stem cell researchers fix two papers following PubPeer comments