Category: by country

Former UCSD prof’s company admits to grant fraud

court caseA company headed by a former astrophysicist at the University of California, San Diego, has agreed to forfeit $180,000 after admitting to defrauding the government.

If SciberQuest, Inc. is unable to pay back the money — the result of fraudulently obtaining government grants and contracts — then its CEO Homayoun Karimabadi will be personally liable, the lawyer for SciberQuest and Karimabadi told Retraction Watch.

We asked if the company was going to be able to repay the $180,000; in response, Robert Rose of firm Sheppard Mullin told us: Continue reading Former UCSD prof’s company admits to grant fraud

ASU prof resigns following plagiarism charges, receives $150k+ salary until May 2017

Matthew Whitaker
Matthew Whitaker

A faculty member at Arizona State University has resigned after he was placed on administrative leave while the university investigated plagiarism charges against him.

According to a copy of the settlement agreement obtained by the Arizona Republic, he will continue to receive his salary of more than $150,000 for more than one year.

He will also be reimbursed $25,000 in attorney fees.

According to the agreement: Continue reading ASU prof resigns following plagiarism charges, receives $150k+ salary until May 2017

Anonymous complaint about Dutch economist is “unfounded”: Report

Peter Nijkamp
Peter Nijkamp

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) has dismissed an anonymous accusation against economist Peter Nijkamp and two of his colleagues, including one of his graduate students, regarding issues related to “data acquisition and data processing.”

The announcement, released last week, determined the latest complaint was “unfounded:” Continue reading Anonymous complaint about Dutch economist is “unfounded”: Report

Satellite paper grounded for plagiarizing — from the same journal

1-s2.0-S0094576515X00129-cov150hPlagiarism happens; we see it a lot. But some cases stand out from the crowd.

For instance, we just came across an example where authors plagiarized from a paper in the same journal. Specifically, a 2015 paper on satellite orbits was found to have “extensive overlap” with another paper published in Acta Astronautica four years earlier. The last authors of the papers have connections, too — they used to work together at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in India, and in 2006, they co-authored a paper together.

M. Xavier James Raj is author on the retracted paper. He was a PhD student under R.K. Sharma, author of the paper he borrowed from. Sharma currently works at Karunya University in India.

Here’s the retraction note for “Analytical orbit predictions for low and high eccentricity orbits using uniformly regular KS canonical elements in an oblate atmosphere:”

Continue reading Satellite paper grounded for plagiarizing — from the same journal

Robot for stroke patients paper copied 3 pages of equations

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A 2014 paper on a robotic system for patients who have had a stroke contains three pages of equations that are not original.

According to the retraction note, “Cascade controller design and stability analysis in FES-aided upper arm stroke rehabilitation robotic system” copied the equations from a paper that other researchers presented at a conference in 2012. The papers both describe a system that delivers a boost of electricity to stroke patients’ arms to help them perform a task.

Here’s the note, from Nonlinear Dynamics:

Continue reading Robot for stroke patients paper copied 3 pages of equations

Communications researcher regrets “severe shortcomings” in three publications

3A communications researcher in Switzerland has made a few errors in his efforts to communicate his research.

Peter J. Schulz, who works at the University of Lugano, has lost a paper which did not “appropriately acknowledge” another paper as its primary source. He has also corrected a paper with “severe shortcomings in the references.” Both papers were published in the journal Argumentation. 

In addition, he is facing allegations that a book chapter contains some unattributed material.

Schultz acknowledged the problems in a statement he emailed to us:

I regret very much the severe shortcomings in the three publications.

Here’s the retraction note for “Comments on ‘Strategic Manoeuvring with the Intention of the Legislator in the Justification of Judicial Decisions’”: Continue reading Communications researcher regrets “severe shortcomings” in three publications

Paper claiming GMO dangers retracted amid allegations of data manipulation

FNS2015012717103119A nutrition journal is retracting a paper about potential dangers of eating food containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for duplicating a figure, as news stories from Italy are reporting accusations that the last author falsified some of his research.

In the paper, Federico Infascelli, an animal nutrition researcher at the University of Naples, and his colleagues showed modified genes could wind up in the blood and organs of baby goats whose mothers ate GM soybeans. According to our Google Translate version of an article by Italian newspaper La Repubblica, an investigation suggests that Infascelli has manipulated images to suggest GMOs are harmful. He could face fines and be suspended from the university.

La Repubblica reports that a committee appointed by the rector of the university, Gaetano Manfredi, found errors in Infascelli’s data that suggested he had manipulated the results to show GMOs were harmful.

One paper by Infascelli has been retracted from Food and Nutrition Science, “Gamma-Glutamyl Transferase Activity in Kids Born from Goats Fed Genetically Modified Soybean.” The retraction note says the paper was pulled for duplication:

Continue reading Paper claiming GMO dangers retracted amid allegations of data manipulation

List of retractions, corrections grows for Duke researchers

cov200hDuke researcher Michael Foster and his former co-author Erin Potts-Kant are adding to their notice count with a major correction from late last year to a paper on how certain cells in mice respond to a pneumonia infection, citing “potential discrepancies in the data.”

The correction is actually a partial retraction: The note explains that parts of three figures should be discounted.

We’ve also recently unearthed multiple corrections and two retractions from the pair that we missed from earlier in 2015.

After questions about the data in the corrected paper arose, the authors were able to replicate most of the experiments in the paper, according to the note. But since the paper was published, the senior author passed away, closing her lab, so they couldn’t repeat all of the work.

Here’s the correction notice for “Mast cell TNF receptors regulate responses to Mycoplasma pneumoniae in surfactant protein A (SP-A)−/− mice,” published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology:

Continue reading List of retractions, corrections grows for Duke researchers

Authors retract two papers for “severe conflicts of author sequences”

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A group of authors has earned two retractions for a pair of papers on which they had “severe conflicts of author sequences,” according to the retraction note.

All of the authors were involved in a recent spate of compromised peer review that hit Springer journals back in August. Among the 64 retracted papers this summer, one included all of the authors on the two recently retracted papers, including first author Yan-Zhi Chen. Besides authorship issues, the latest two retractions also contain a “striking similarity to other publications,” according to the retraction notices.

The notes for the two papers are the same, except for the title of the paper. (They are also paywalled, tsk tsk!)

Here’s what the notes say:

Continue reading Authors retract two papers for “severe conflicts of author sequences”

Oops! Authors accidentally include extra patients in biopsy paper

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A paper that compared two gauges of needles to take samples of pancreatic masses has been retracted after authors unintentionally included patients from another trial.

“Randomized Trial Comparing the Flexible 19G and 25G Needles for Endoscopic Ultrasound-Guided Fine Needle Aspiration of Solid Pancreatic Mass Lesions,” published a year ago in Pancreas, notes that:

A total of 100 patients with solid pancreatic mass lesions constituted the study cohort and were randomized equally to the 2 needle groups.

The problem? According to the retraction note, some of those patients weren’t supposed to be included:

Continue reading Oops! Authors accidentally include extra patients in biopsy paper