A group of researchers in China have lost a 2018 paper after whistleblowers informed the journal that the authors had misreported their data.
The paper, “Long‐term outcomes of 530 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma patients with minimally invasive Ivor Lewis esophagectomy,” appeared in the Journal of Surgical Oncology, a Wiley publication. It has been cited five times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. The researchers were affiliated with Zhejiang University, in Hangzhou.
Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells in DIC microscopy via Wikimedia
A university in France has stripped a researcher of her doctoral degree after she was found to have committed misconduct in at least two studies of yeast.
As we reported in May, Marjorie Petitjean, who received her PhD from the National Institute of Applied Sciences at the University of Toulouse, was accused of having fabricated and manipulated data while in the lab of Jean-Luc Parrou — who described her output as “a complete work of fiction.”
Petitjean left Parrou’s lab for a post-doc in Scotland, where, he said, she continued her bad habits:
Science represents perhaps the single greatest accomplishment of humankind. Of all human institutions, organisations and establishments, science has proven an effective tool for driving progress. It is inherently self-correcting, and tolerates — and even demands — skepticism, challenge and self-critique. Few human institutions can make a similar claim.
However, there is increasing recognition and concern that current research incentives are perverse, and promote behaviors that undermine the very foundations of science. Under the guise of altruism and independence, the self-serving, self-promoting nature of academic science today is typically neither declared nor acknowledged. The dispassionate, objective analysis and presentation of data is frequently lost, as results are seen as personal (“my data”) and subservient to a personal or political agenda. As a consequence, scientists are losing their authority to speak, genuine experts are often disparaged and ignored, and our society is diminished.
When you think of valuable items to steal, you might imagine cash, cars, or jewelry. But what about journals?
That’s what my colleagues and I from Disseropedia, the journals project of Dissernet, which was created to fight plagiarism in Russia, recently found.
The story begins when my Dissernet colleague Andrei Rostovtsev discovered several cases of translation plagiarism and gifted co-authorship in the articles submitted to the journal Talent Development and Excellence by Russian scholars. Those cases are available atthesefourlinks.
Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells in DIC microscopy via Wikimedia
A team of researchers in France has lost two papers on their studies of yeast because the work was “a complete work of fiction,” in the words of one colleague.
The papers came from the lab of Jean-Luc Parrou, of the University of Toulouse, and involved work by a former PhD student of his named Marjorie Petitjean. According to Parrou, institutional investigators are now in the process of revoking her degree, but have been delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic. We could not find contact information for Petitjean.
One of the articles, “Yeast tolerance to various stresses relies on the trehalose-6P synthase (Tps1) protein, not on trehalose,” appeared last year in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. It has been cited 54 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. The other, “A new function for the yeast Trehalose-6P Synthase (Tps1) Protein, as key pro-survival factor during growth, chronological ageing, and apoptotic stress,” was published in Mechanisms of Ageing and Development in 2017. It has been cited 11 times.
An itinerant materials scientist whose former lab head has accused publicly of misconduct is up to nine retractions for manipulating his data.
We last wrote about Hossein Hosseinkhani in 2016, after he’d lost seven papers stemming from his time as a researcher in the lab of Yasuhiko Tabata, of the Institute for Frontier Life and Medical Sciences at Kyoto University in Japan.
Since then, the researcher has lost two more articles, including, most recently, a 2001 article he wrote with Tabata that appeared in the Proceedings of the Japanese Academy of Sciences. According to the retraction notice for the paper, titled “In vitro transfection of plasmid DNA by different cationized gelatin with or without ultrasound irradiation.”
Carlo Croce, the prolific cancer researcher at The Ohio State University (OSU) with a penchant for hiring — and then losing — lawyers to sue those who displease him, has lost an 10th paper to retraction.
Apparently, Croce and his co-author thought that a correction to the newly retracted article was necessary because of “improper reuse of text from previous articles.” The journal, however, felt differently.
A co-editor of the Journal of Neurology has retracted a 2018 paper he helped write because the way the paper was written misled readers about the nature of the research.
The article, “Menière’s disease: combined pharmacotherapy with betahistine and the MAO-B inhibitor selegiline—an observational study,” purported to describe the effects of a combination treatment to reduce the incidence of dizziness in people with Menière’s, a neurologic disorder that affects the inner ear.
The first author of the paper is Michael Strupp, of the Munich Center for Neurosciences at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. Strupp also is one of a troika of editors in-chief of the Journal of Neurology.
Expression of concern, meet expression of frustration.
Eight months ago, in the wake of skepticism about the data in a 2017 paper it had published, the Obstetrics & Gynecology issued an EoC about the article. At the time, the journal, an official title of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said it had contacted the authors’ institution — Menoufia University in Shibin Al Kawm, Egypt — about the article.
Those efforts evidently met with silence. Now the journal has retracted the paper, “Sildenafil citrate therapy for oligohydramnios: a randomized controlled trial,” with a swipe at the school’s apparent lack of interest in the misdeeds of its faculty members:
Researchers in Singapore have lost a 2011 paper in Gene Therapy after an institutional investigation found that some of their data had been fabricated by a PhD student on the project.
Most of the authors were affiliated with the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, a unit of theAgency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).
The article, “Targeted suicide gene therapy for glioma using human embryonic stem cell-derived neural stem cells genetically modified by baculoviral vectors,” purported to show that:
