Category: by country

Food packaging journal to retract paper by researchers in Thailand

A food packaging journal plans to retract a 2018 article by Thai researchers who tried to repackage (ahem) a virtually identical article of theirs, Retraction Watch has learned.

That’s not particularly unusual; duplication, sometimes inaccurately called “self-plagiarism,” happens, as they say. What makes the case more interesting is the back-and-forth between the journal and the authors.   

Early last December, the editor of the Food Packaging & Shelf Life, Ali Abas Wani, sent a letter to Chiravoot Pechyen, of Thammasat University, the senior author on a paper FPSL had recently published online (but not yet in print): Continue reading Food packaging journal to retract paper by researchers in Thailand

Researcher banned from federal Canadian funding after misconduct loses medical license

via WCH

A once-prominent bone researcher whose career crumbled after allegations of misconduct has lost her medical license in Canada.  

The researcher, Abida Sophina “Sophie” Jamal, formerly of the University of Toronto, had been considered a rising star in the international community of osteoporosis researchers, winning awards and collaborating with some of the leading senior investigators in the field.

But on March 6, 2018, Jamal was summoned by a disciplinary committee of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario to hear the following letter: Continue reading Researcher banned from federal Canadian funding after misconduct loses medical license

Biochemist in Spain retracts eight papers at once

Carlos López-Otín

A high-profile researcher at the Universidad de Oviedo in Spain has retracted eight papers from the Journal of Biological Chemistry for figure issues.

All of the papers were co-authored by Carlos López-Otín, who studies a group of enzymes that break down proteins, cancer genomics and aging, and whose lab web site boasts that

His works have been collected in more than 400 articles in international journals and have been cited to date more than 44.000 times, with an aggregate Hirsch index of h=100.

A representative notice: Continue reading Biochemist in Spain retracts eight papers at once

After university goes silent, diabetes journal retracts three papers

A group of researchers based in Italy has had three papers retracted for likely using the same images to represent different experimental conditions.

The retractions, in Diabetes, published by the American Diabetes Association (ADA), follow expressions of concern for the papers in early 2018 and the launch of an investigation by the authors’ institution into the work. The status of that investigation by Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, however, is unclear, as the university has stopped responding to the journal’s inquiries.

Here are the three now-retracted papers: Continue reading After university goes silent, diabetes journal retracts three papers

Showdown over a study of abortion policy leads to a retraction, and leaves no one happy

Elard Koch

A paper in Contraception that purported to show serious flaws in an earlier study of abortion laws and maternal health has been retracted, after the authors of the original study found what were apparently significant flaws in the study doing the debunking.

That’s the short version of this story. The longer version involves years of back-and-forth, accusations of conflict of interest and poor research practice, and lawyers for at least two parties. Be warned: We have an unusual amount of information to quote from here that’s worth following.

As the editor of Contraception, Carolyn Westhoff, put it:

I got to make everybody angry.

Continue reading Showdown over a study of abortion policy leads to a retraction, and leaves no one happy

“We were very uncomfortable with this situation:” French group loses aging paper for “overlap”

The authors of a 2017 paper on how chronic inflammation might hasten aging have retracted the work because it turned out to be a collage of previously published articles.

The paper, “Chronic Inflammation: Accelerator of Biological Aging,” appeared in  The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, an Oxford University Press title. It has been cited 41 times, earning it a “Highly Cited Paper” designation from Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science, meaning it has earned more citations than 99% of papers published in its field that year. The first author is Bertrand Fougère, of Université de Toulouse III Paul Sabatier and Tours University Hospital.

Here’s the notice (which we’ve reformatted for readability): Continue reading “We were very uncomfortable with this situation:” French group loses aging paper for “overlap”

“This is something that we have never seen before in any study:” Group loses two more papers

Alexandria University, via Wikimedia

A group of rheumatology researchers in Egypt that lost a paper in 2016 for a variety of problems has lost two more.

The authors common to the two papers, Anna Abou-Raya and Suzan Abou-Raya, are based at the University of Alexandria, which did not find evidence of scientific misconduct, according to one of the retraction notices. The journal that published the two papers, The Journal of Rheumatology, however, found several other issues that led them to retract the papers.

Among them was that for one of the studies to have proceeded as described, all 125 subjects would have had to been enrolled and randomized on a single day: Continue reading “This is something that we have never seen before in any study:” Group loses two more papers

An Australian university cleared a cancer researcher of misconduct. He’s now retracted six papers.

Levon Khachigian

The story of Levon Khachigian’s research is a long and winding tale.

One place to start would be in October 2009, when a paper co-authored by Khachigian — whose work at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has been funded by millions of dollars in funding from the Australian government, and has led to clinical trials, although more on that later — was retracted from Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications. The “corresponding author published the paper without the full consent or acknowledgement of all the researchers and would like to apologize for this error,” according to that notice. Continue reading An Australian university cleared a cancer researcher of misconduct. He’s now retracted six papers.

How to investigate allegations of research misconduct: A checklist

Do investigations into research misconduct allegations need better standards? The Association for the Promotion of Research Integrity (APRIN) in Japan, a group of volunteers who “commit themselves to the promotion of research of high integrity” and provide “e-learning material for research ethics education,” thinks so. Today, we present a guest post by Iekuni Ichikawa, who chaired an APRIN committee that recently came up with a new checklist for such investigations, about the effort.

The procedures currently employed by various institutions in Japan are highly variable; hence there is a risk that complainants or respondents might be treated unfairly and that the public might not be informed of the facts of the matters. We organized the Research Misconduct Investigation Standardization Committee of APRIN in July 2017 to propose standardized procedures for handling investigations of alleged research misconduct. Here, we present the “Checklist for Investigating Allegations of Research Misconduct,” the fruits of our discussions. Continue reading How to investigate allegations of research misconduct: A checklist

Former UAB natural products researcher up to a dozen retractions

Santosh Katiyar

A researcher who studied natural products for cancer at the University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB), had six papers retracted last month, bringing him to a total of 12.

Four of the recently retracted papers by Santosh Katiyar had appeared in PLOS ONE, and two had been published in Cancer Research. They have together been cited more than 250 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science, and are on subjects including compounds found in grape seeds and green tea.

Here’s an example, from PLOS ONE, for “Green Tea Catechins Reduce Invasive Potential of Human Melanoma Cells by Targeting COX-2, PGE2 Receptors and Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition:” Continue reading Former UAB natural products researcher up to a dozen retractions