by country – Page 18 – Retraction Watch

Researcher loses PhD after investigation finds he faked data

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 the Agency 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:

Investigation at Japanese university leads to four retractions

A group of pharmacology researchers in Japan have now lost four papers over concerns about the validity of their data.

The studies come from a group at Kobe Gakuin University, which conducted a misconduct investigation into the articles last year and concluded that 10 papers were affected. (Note: The report is in Japanese and does not identify the person or persons responsible for the deception.)

Among the latest to be retracted is a 2012 article in the Journal of Natural Medicines titled “Honokiol suppresses the development of post-ischemic glucose intolerance and neuronal damage in mice.”

Four retractions follow misconduct inquiry at U Maryland

The Journal of Virology has retracted three papers, and corrected two others, by a group led by a researcher at the University of Maryland, for problematic images.

The articles, published in 2008 and 2014, describe experiments to assess the immune response to Newcastle disease virus in various animal species. The studies were led by Siba K. Samal, a molecular biologist at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Maryland, in College Park.

The retractions make four for Samal, who also lost a 2015 paper in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, “Glycoprotein-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays for serodiagnosis of infectious laryngotracheitis,” and whose work has been scrutinized on PubPeer for more than four years. The notice for that paper reads:

Letter on vaping science paper earns expression of concern because author made up a degree

Leonard Zelig, meet Zvi Herzig.

The journal Circulation has issued an expression of concern about a 2015 letter, putatively written by Herzig, in which the author poked holes in a review article about e-cigarettes.

According to the EoC, however, Herzig, like Zelig, may be a bit of a chameleon.

Researcher formerly of OSU and Taiwan’s Academia Sinica gets 10-year ban

After a 20-month investigation, Taiwan’s leading science institution has hit a former star cancer researcher with a 10-year ban for research misconduct.

Academia Sinica (AS) said its inquiry found that Ching-shih Chen, formerly a distinguished research fellow at the center, was guilty of fabricating or falsifying data in several of the nearly two dozen papers he’d published while affiliated with the institution from 2014 to 2018. AS said Chen was being directed to retract one of the affected papers and correct three others.

A 2018 article in the Taipei Times quoted an AS official, Henry Sun, saying that Chen, who resigned his post there that year, admitted that his staff had “beautified” his results and that he kept loose reins over this lab.

A paper on cats and female students uses up one of its nine lives

Facing a social media storm, a biology journal has temporarily removed a paper arguing that the proliferation of feral cats around university campuses in China is directly related to the proportion of female students — who evidently are more welcoming than men of the wild felines.

The article, “Where there are girls, there are cats,” appeared in Biological Conservation, launching a withering Tweet storm with, at last count, more than 275 replies. The comments ranged from incredulous to outraged, with at least one user noting that the paper was submitted, revised and accepted within a period of about 10 days.

Fourth retraction for Haruko Obokata, focus of STAP cell scandal, after Harvard investigation

More than five years after Nature retracted two highly suspect papers about what had been described as a major breakthrough in stem cell research, another journal has pulled a paper about the work.

The scandal over so-called STAP stem cells took down more than just a few articles. The case centered on Haruko Obokata, a Japanese researcher who conducted the studies as a post-doc in the Harvard lab of Charles Vacanti. Obokata lost her doctoral thesis from Waseda University in 2015 because it plagiarized from the U.S. National Institutes of Health. She also retracted a paper in Nature Protocols.

‘Those unfortunate events:’ Second retraction for stem cell scientist in Canada accused of misconduct

McMaster’s University Hall, via Wikipedia

Citing a misconduct investigation, the journal Stem Cells has retracted a 2009 article coauthored by a researcher whose work has been under suspicion for roughly five years.

The paper was titled “Cell adhesion and spreading affect adipogenesis from embryonic stem cells: the role of calreticulin.” The retraction notice, which is behind a paywall, states:

Journal flags papers two years after university investigation finds researcher faked data

Nearly two years after a University of Liverpool investigation determined that a former researcher there fabricated his data, the journal Molecular Medicine has issued expressions of concern about four papers by that researcher.

As we reported in 2018, Daniel J. Antoine — once a promising young liver specialist — was found to have made up much of his spectroscopic findings. According to the university:

Group that reused cheese cloth in different experiments up to six retractions

The other day, we reported on the retraction this month of a paper that was laid low by reuse of experimental materials — cheese cloth, to be exact — when fresh were required.

At the time, we asked the senior author, Donghai Wang, of Kansas State University, whether any other articles from his group had similar problems. Wang’s response was no — but it turns out the group already had five other retractions in December, and has requested another.

All are from the same journal, Bioresource Technology.

These retractions include the August 2019 paper titled “A study on the association between biomass types and magnesium oxide pretreatment.” According to the notice:

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