You can no longer count on two hands the number of retractions tallied by Young Hak Roh, an orthopedic surgeon at Ewha Womans University in Korea found guilty of “intentional, repetitive, and serious misconduct.”
The hand specialist has notched his 12th retraction in the wake of the institutional investigation, which, as we reported in July, found sweeping violations by Roh of:
Continue reading Hands up! Carpal tunnel expert loses 12th paper for misconduct
A group of researchers in Japan who study oral stem cells has lost at least nine papers for fabricated data.
We reported on this group, from Aichi Gakuin University in Nagoya, last year after they lost two papers in PLOS ONE for image manipulation. The new retraction notice appears in the Journal of Oral Biosciences, an Elsevier journal, and refers to several other papers that the editors say are to be retracted.
Here’s the notice for “New findings for dentin sialophosphoprotein studies: Applications of purified odontoblast-like cells derived from stem cells,” which was published in 2016:
Continue reading “No original data”: Stem cell researchers in Japan up to nine retractions
A scheme of far-reaching research misconduct among several groups of Iranian researchers may have created hundreds of low-quality and fraudulent publications, according to a new detailed report by an anonymous whistleblower who has already forced the retraction of dozens of papers by one author in the ring.
The whistleblower, who goes by the pseudonym Artemisia Stricta, says that he or she is an expert in the field of construction engineering — the same as researchers behind the alleged misconduct.
In a new report now being made public by Retraction Watch, Artemisia draws attention to four main groups centered on Ali Nazari, Mostafa Jalal, a postdoc at Texas A&M University, Ehsan Mohseni of the University of Newcastle in Australia, and Alireza Najigivi of Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. The whistleblower lists a total of 287 potentially compromised papers in the 42-page report.
Continue reading The ‘Iran Connection’: A ring of four research groups has published hundreds of dodgy papers, says whistleblower
A legal journal has retracted a 2019 article on the facial genetics of ethnic minorities in China for ethics violations, and the publisher, Springer Nature, is investigating more than two dozen other articles for similar concerns.
The article, “Y Chromosomal STR haplotypes in Chinese Uyghur, Kazakh and Hui ethnic groups and genetic features of DYS448 null allele and DYS19 duplicated allele,” appeared in the International Journal of Legal Medicine.
Three of the authors were affiliated with the notorious Karamay Municipal Public Security Bureau, which the U.S. government hit with sanctions in October 2019 for being:
Continue reading Study of China’s ethnic minorities retracted as dozens of papers come under scrutiny for ethical violations
A radiology journal has retracted two papers about the fallout from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan over concerns that the researchers used “ethically inappropriate data” from the people they studied.
The articles, which appeared in the Journal of Radiological Protection in 2017, were written by Makoto Miyazaki, of the Department of Radiation Health Management at Fukushima Medical University, and Ryugo Hayano, a professor of physics emeritus at the University of Tokyo. As we reported, both papers were initially subject to expressions of concern last year.
The papers have been cited a total of 26 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.
The retraction notice for “Individual external dose monitoring of all citizens of Date City by passive dosimeter 5 to 51 months after the Fukushima NPP accident (series): 1. Comparison of individual dose with ambient dose rate monitored by aircraft surveys” reads:
Continue reading Fallout over Fukushima fallout papers continues as two are retractedA surgery journal has retracted seven papers by a group in South Korea after an institutional investigation found evidence of “intentional, repetitive, and serious misconduct” in the work.
The articles, by a team at Ewha Womans University and Seoul National University College of Medicine, appeared in the Journal of Hand Surgery (European Volume) between 2016 and 2019.
According to the journal, in June of 2019, a reviewer raised questions about the sample size in a manuscript by the authors (most of whom remain the same across the papers) — triggering an inquiry by the editors that led to Ewha’s investigation.
That investigation found that the first author on all seven articles, Young Hak Roh, an orthopedic surgeon at Ewha, had committed sweeping violations:
Continue reading Hand surgeon in South Korea loses seven papers for “serious misconduct”
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.
According to the abstract:
Continue reading Whistleblowers bring receipts, journal retracts swiftly
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:
Continue reading French university rescinds researcher’s PhD after misconduct finding
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.
Continue reading Better (publishing) background checks: A way toward greater integrity in science
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 at these four links.
Continue reading The case of the stolen journal