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The standard in transparency? Editor praises author honesty that led to retraction in anesthesia journal

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Sometimes, a junior member of the team sees things an editor-in-chief misses.

Regular readers know that we’re always delighted when we get a chance to commend researchers and journals for doing the right thing. Here’s an example that sets the standard.

Anesthesia & Analgesia (A&A) is retracting a 2015 paper which purportedly found important differences in patient outcomes based on the quality of their anesthesiologists. The trouble with the article: Continue reading The standard in transparency? Editor praises author honesty that led to retraction in anesthesia journal

Retraction count for Shigeaki Kato climbs to 39

Shigeaki Kato
Shigeaki Kato

We’ve found another retraction for Shigeaki Kato, number seven on our leaderboard.

Our count for Kato has now risen to 39; we added five retraction notices to our count for Kato last month. These notices follow an investigation at the University of Tokyo, where Kato used to work, which found 43 papers contained “likely altered or forged materials,” according to a 2013 news article from The Asahi Shimbun.

Here’s the retraction note for “1alpha,25(OH)2D3-induced DNA methylation suppresses the human CYP271B1 gene,” published in Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology:

Continue reading Retraction count for Shigeaki Kato climbs to 39

Economics paper retracted due to “extensive changes”

727710An article has been retracted from a proceedings of an economics conference after the publisher identified errors in several parts of the study.

The retraction follows criticism from a Romanian blogger, who contacted the journal about several issues, and posted communications she received about the paper, “Sustainability of Social Enterprises: A Discourse Analysis.” It was part of a volume of Procedia Economics and Finance from a 2014 conference, “Economic Scientific Research – Theoretical, Empirical and Practical Approaches,” also known as ESPERA 2014.

According to the paper, peer review was

under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of ESPERA 2014.

Apparently, the peer review process missed a few errors. The retraction note explains:

Continue reading Economics paper retracted due to “extensive changes”

Engineer: Paper plagiarized my thesis — badly

GeoScience EngineeringAn engineering journal has published a statement by a researcher alleging that a 2015 paper in the same journal plagiarized his thesis — and was so poorly done it “should not have been published.”

In the “counterstatement” to the 2015 paper, Christian Seip of the Rostock University in Germany said the paper — about the development of a Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure (MSDI) in Croatia — took content from his dissertation thesis, about MSDI geoportals in Germany.

In addition, Seip argued that the original paper, “A Framework for Evaluation of Marine Spatial Data Geoportals Using Case Studies,” in GeoScience Engineering (GSE) — shows “major weaknesses” and therefore “should have not been published even [if] it was not plagiarized.”

Seip told us: Continue reading Engineer: Paper plagiarized my thesis — badly

Author dispute retracts paper suggesting NSAIDs curb growth in rats

jpedorthoThe corresponding author asked the Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics to retract an article that found popular pain medicines can curb growth in rats, in light of an unresolved authorship dispute.

The article, “Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Cause Inhibition of the Growth Plate in Cultured Rat Metatarsal Bones,” details preliminary results that indicate nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) may reduce growth in rat bones in a dose-dependent manner, suggesting caution in treating chronic inflammatory diseases in children. The editor told us the paper was “highly rated” by reviewers and the results were “never in question,” but the senior author asked to pull the paper after failing to resolve a dispute with a researcher who asked to be added as an author.

According to the notice:  Continue reading Author dispute retracts paper suggesting NSAIDs curb growth in rats

Raw files help fix 2003 figure by heart researcher accused of fraud

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A researcher accused of misconduct by an anonymous Japanese blogger has corrected a 2003 paper in Circulation Research, after providing a university investigation with the original source files.

Allegations of fraud have dogged Shokei Kim-Mitsuyama for years, and even caused him to step down from his position as editor in chief at another journal. However, Kim-Mitsuyama and his colleagues call the latest correction a “mistake,” which didn’t affect any of the paper’s conclusions.

We’ve unearthed a total of five publications co-authored by Kim-Mitsuyama that have earned corrections, the latest of which cites an investigation by the university:

Continue reading Raw files help fix 2003 figure by heart researcher accused of fraud

Authors retract, replace highly cited JAMA Psych paper for “pervasive errors”

JAMA PsychiatryAuthors have retracted a highly cited JAMA Psychiatry study about depression after failing to account for some patient recoveries, among other mistakes.

It’s a somewhat unusual notice — it explains that the paper has been retracted and replaced with a new, corrected version.

The study, which included 452 adults with major depressive disorder, concluded that cognitive therapy plus medication works better to treat depression than pills alone. But after it was published, a reader pointed out that some of the numbers in a table were incorrect. The authors reviewed the data and redid their analysis, and discovered “a number of pervasive errors.”

The notice (termed “notice of retraction and replacement”) explains the consequences of those errors:

Continue reading Authors retract, replace highly cited JAMA Psych paper for “pervasive errors”

Journals retract two heart papers with “nearly identical” abstracts

Screen Shot 2016-02-22 at 4.46.17 PMJournals have retracted two papers after realizing that they contain “nearly identical” abstracts and introductions, published only months apart. 

The two retracted papers, along with a third that also contains similar text, all conclude that a certain polymorphism could signal a risk for coronary artery disease among Chinese people, though each paper presents different data. The papers do not have any authors in common; the first authors are all based at different hospitals in China. The editor in chief of one journal told us that some of the reviewers did not use institutional email addresses, which leaves open the possibility that they were fake emails, and the peer-review process was compromised.

Here’s the first retraction notice, for “Fibroblast growth factor receptor 4 polymorphisms and susceptibility to coronary artery disease,” published in DNA and Cell Biology. The notice states the paper contains:

Continue reading Journals retract two heart papers with “nearly identical” abstracts

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

Singapore investigation leads to another retraction, correction for Harvard research fellow

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After an investigation found evidence of misconduct, a biologist has issued a third retraction.

Sudarsanareddy Lokireddy — now a research fellow at Harvard Medical School — “admitted falsification,” a Research Integrity Officer at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore told us in December. According to The Scientist, another journal has also published a correction that the authors had requested earlier.

The newly retracted paper is “Myostatin is a novel tumoral factor that induces cancer cachexia,” published in Biochemical Journal and cited 40 times, according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science. Here’s the retraction note: