Category: by country

Misconduct earns researcher a five-year ban on federal funding

ori logoA University of Minnesota former chemistry graduate student has been banned from receiving federal funding for five years based on “a preponderance of the evidence that the Respondent intentionally and knowingly engaged in research misconduct.”

Venkata J. Reddy appears to have manipulated findings in one R01 grant application. In recent years, bans are less common than having research supervised. What’s also unusual is that the sanction appeared to have begun two years ago, in 2013, because it lifts August 26, 2018. The report, which is scheduled to published tomorrow in the Federal Register, says the debarment has a “joint jurisdiction,” suggesting another agency may be involved. [See first update at end of post.]

According to the ORI notice, Reddy “intentionally and knowingly engaged in research misconduct by falsifying and/or fabricating data that was provided to his mentor” for an R01 application to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). More specifically: Continue reading Misconduct earns researcher a five-year ban on federal funding

Drug study pulled after researchers admit altering trial protocol

egypt anaesthesiaThe Egyptian Journal of Anaesthesia is retracting a 2014 paper by a pair of researchers at Cairo University who appear to have tinkered with their protocol after having received ethics approval.

The paper, titled “Can Sugammadex improve the reversal profile of Atracurium under Sevoflurane anesthesia?” was written by Heba Ismail Ahmed Nagy and Hany Wafik Elkadi, both in the department of anesthesiology.

Sugammadex, or Bridion, is given to rapidly reverse the effects of drugs that keep patients motionless during surgery. It is available throughout the world but not, as it happens, in the United States, where the Food and Drug Administration has refused to approve the agent because of fears that it might provoke severe allergic-like reactions.

According to the retraction notice:

Continue reading Drug study pulled after researchers admit altering trial protocol

Chem paper fails to catalyze when wrong files are “inadvertently used”

joceah_v080i008.inddThree chemists at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati in India have retracted a paper from the Journal of Organic Chemistry because the “incorrect files were inadvertently used.”

The article, “Room-Temperature Cu(II)-Catalyzed Chemo- and Regioselective Ortho-Nitration of Arenes via C–H Functionalization,” described a protocol to perform nitration — the addition of nitro groups onto an organic compound — using an inexpensive copper catalyst.

All three authors signed the one-sentence notice:

Continue reading Chem paper fails to catalyze when wrong files are “inadvertently used”

Reporting errors sink chem paper on liquid-liquid equilibrium

Jced_coverA team of chemists at Hunan University and Zhejiang Shuyang Chemical Company in China have retracted a paper from the Journal of Chemical & Engineering Data after “inconsistencies with the literature” led them to discover “errors” in the way the data were reported.

According to the corresponding author Qinbo Wang, in December 2014, Robert Chirico, an associate editor at the journal, contacted Wang with concerns that the paper’s data were an anomaly.

Wang then went through the original notes with the first author, and realized that the data reported in the paper didn’t match the experimental results. The lab then conducted further experiments, and discovered that multiple corrections would be necessary. They were, as Wang told us: Continue reading Reporting errors sink chem paper on liquid-liquid equilibrium

Snail egg article retracted for fishing for material from six other papers

APJTB_ak1The first author of a review article on extracting pharmacological compounds from marine organisms, published in the Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Biomedicine, has retracted it due to plagiarism.

There were also some authorship issues, according to the retraction notice for the paper, which absolves the last author, based at Pondicherry University in India, from responsibility:

This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief and the First Author. Both the first author and the journal’s editor confirmed that Dr. A Yogamoorthi is not responsible for the plagiarism since his/her name was added without consent.

There is one other author, R. Siva Sankar, also based at Pondicherry. Somewhere along the way, according to the retraction note, the paper scooped up wording from six papers previously published by researchers in Australia. Here’s more from the retraction note for “Antimicrobial secondary metabolites from marine gastropod egg capsules and egg masses”: Continue reading Snail egg article retracted for fishing for material from six other papers

Chinese medical case study erased after guardian consent withdrawn

JMCRThe editor of the Journal of Medical Case Reports, a BioMed Central title, has retracted and removed a case study of a novel surgical treatment after the patient’s legal guardian withdrew consent post-publication.

The paper, “Novel two-stage surgical treatment for Cantrell syndrome complicated by severe pulmonary hypertension: a case report,” describes the treatment of a six-month-old Han Chinese girl suffering from a rare combination of birth defects called Cantrell syndrome, complicated by pulmonary hypertension.

The original article, published in March 2014, has been removed from the journal’s website, though the abstract can be read on PubMed. It is unclear whether the authors, the child’s guardian, or some other party informed the editor of the withdrawal of consent.

The brief notice offers few details:

Continue reading Chinese medical case study erased after guardian consent withdrawn

Former Florida ob-gyn prof notches eighth retraction

University of Florida
University of Florida

Nasser Chegini, the former University of Florida professor currently under investigation by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), has now had eight papers retracted.

The eighth paper, in the journal Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology, is about the effect of a compound used during fertility treatments on Smads, signaling molecules that carry messages from TGF-beta receptors to the nucleus. It’s being retracted disappeared due to the discovery of data that “have been fabricated or falsified by the last author” — namely, Chegini.

Here’s more from the notice for “Gonadotropin releasing hormone analogue (GnRHa) alters the expression and activation of Smad in human endometrial epithelial and stromal cells:” Continue reading Former Florida ob-gyn prof notches eighth retraction

Trove of VA reports reveals research misconduct, medical malpractice

va logoLast week, the Veteran Affairs Office of Inspector General released eight years of reports investigating allegations of nefarious behavior at VA hospitals and institutions around the country, ranging from mistreating a patient in Florida, misspending grant money in New York, and conducting unauthorized research in Iowa.

In one report, Continue reading Trove of VA reports reveals research misconduct, medical malpractice

When should a paper be retracted? A tale from the obesity literature

obesity factsIn our line of work, we see it all — mega-corrections that don’t quite rise to the level of retraction, letters to the editor that point out seemingly fatal flaws in papers that remain untouched, and studies retracted for what seem like minor reasons. It can make you wonder what makes a paper worthy of a retraction. A recent case in an obesity journal may not provide a definitive answer, but it gives us a lot to chew on.

Here’s the story: In September 2013, Rosely Sichieri and a colleague from the State University of Rio de Janeiro submitted an article to Obesity Facts, “Unbalanced Baseline in School-Based Interventions to Prevent Obesity: Adjustment Can Lead to Bias?” The article examined statistical issues in randomized controlled trials of school-based weight loss programs. Peer reviewers said the paper needed major revisions before it could be accepted; the authors revised the paper enough in a second draft, submitted in November 2013, that the original reviewers accepted it. The paper was published in June 2014.

Then, in September 2014, a group of authors including David Allison of the University of Alabama, Birmingham, and colleagues from Clemson, Thomas Jefferson, and the University of Minnesota, wrote a critical letter that was published in the journal in April. The letter, according to a just-published editorial: Continue reading When should a paper be retracted? A tale from the obesity literature

Urology researcher in Iran up to six retractions

safarinejadA urologist in Iran has lost three papers in BJU International, bringing his retraction count to a half-dozen.

In December 2013, we reported on three retractions by Mohammad Reza Safarinejad. None of those notices, about papers related to incontinence and erectile dysfunction, made the reasons for retraction very clear. After that post ran, Safarinejad told us that Hartmut Porst, former president of the European Society for Sexual Medicine, had raised questions about the data in a number of his papers. Porst confirmed that for us earlier this month.

All of the latest papers, about aspects of male sexual dysfunction, are being retracted due to “inappropriate” statistical analyses.

Here’s the notice for “Analysis of association between the 5-HTTLPR and STin2 polymorphisms in the serotonin-transporter gene and clinical response to a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (sertraline) in patients with premature ejaculation,” which has been cited 17 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge: Continue reading Urology researcher in Iran up to six retractions